Second post of the day! Do go back if you missed the post on Avebury and Bath.
At any rate, from Bath we continued west to Wales, where the presence of signs in both English and Welsh announced our presence there.
[nearing a tollway, trying to decipher signs]
Thayer: None of those pictures mean anything to me.
Hayley: The first one’s a car. The second one’s a… giraffe.
Thayer: Really? I thought that one was a turd.
Are the Welsh known for their hospitality? If not, they should be, as we encountered nothing but friendly and generous folks throughout our three days in Wales.
We arrived at Louise and Adele’s house in Pontypridd (that’s PONT-uh-preeth) at around 8 p.m. They showed us to our pretty purple room with our own little en suite bathroom, and recommended some places for dinner in Ponty’s tiny downtown, though we’d have to hurry because they generally stop serving food at 9 p.m. We settled on Trattoria and enjoyed some Italian food and a bottle of wine in a hurry because we wanted to make it back before Louise and Adele went to bed.
We happily found our Airbnb hosts still awake, watching soaps on the couch and playing Words with Friends. They invited us to sit with them and have a drink, which turned in to two or three, and we stayed up until 2 a.m. chattering and laughing the night away with the delightful Welsh couple, talking life and politics and fawning over their cat Milli every time she pranced into the room. In the morning they left us a buffet of bran flakes and granolas, juices, coffees, and teas, which we took our time enjoying before heading out. Louise’s appreciation for Jimi Hendrix may have sparked a trip to Seattle for them in the future; we certainly hope that was not the last we’ll see of Louise and Adele.
From Ponty we continued northwest via the Brecon Beacons. Brecon is pronounced with a short e, as “Brecken,” but it was hard to break the habit of calling it “Breekin.” We spent the drive frequently busting out into an R Kelly-style “It’s the Brecon Beacons, baby I’m about to have me some fun.”
The beacons are big, fat, tall rolling green hills, often dotted with sheep, their fields separated by lines of thick hedges, making the landscape look like a flowing bright green patchwork quilt. The hedges themselves may be thousands of years old, living history, and they also run along much of the road, leaving little wiggle room and rampant claustrophobia, as do the dreaded roadside rock walls in Ireland.
Thanks to a detailed map from Alex and Renie (a diminutive of Irene), our Airbnb hosts in Cardigan, we found our way through the Welsh countryside along unnamed one-lane roads lined with grassy moss-covered stone walls that were taller than the car—a bit like driving through a car-sized ditch. A chalkboard in the kitchen of their old farmhouse read, “Welcome, Hayley and Thayer,” and our room and bath were cozy and warm, the bathroom rustically decorated with shell and beach art. Most noticeable was the absence of a shower—only a big green bathtub—a welcome reminder to slow down.
Alex and Renie are an American ex-pat couple in their fifties who have lived and raised their family in the UK for the last twenty years, in Wales for the last fourteen. They chose the west coast of Wales because Alex once had a dream in which he was running down a hill toward the water with Renie and their youngest daughter. Years later while visiting the west coast of Wales, he recognized it as the place in his dream, and they bought an old derelict farmhouse and moved their family, steadily upgrading the house over the years.
They invited us to sit down with them and their daughter Jess, who had just finished nursing school, and have some tea and homemade cookies and cream ice cream—the thickest, creamiest, most decadent treat of my life. Here’s what happened when we asked where the rest of their children lived these days, now that they were grown.
Renie: Hmmm… well, Jess lives with us, two of them live in Wales, two of them live in America, three of them live…
It was at this point that our eyes began to bug out, and Renie giggled as she explained there were nine of them, spread out all over the world.
After a terrific night’s sleep in our cushy guest quarters, we enjoyed an authentic English breakfast in the kitchen with Alex, Renie, and Jess, complete with beans, toast (made from homemade bread), eggs (fresh from their own chickens), potatoes, and mushrooms. We’ve found that Wales does not mess around with its mushrooms. Every time we’ve had a meal with mushrooms, they’ve been huge, fresh, wild things, not the few tiny chopped up things most often found at American restaurants.
That afternoon we took a long hike along some cliffs in Newport, the views of the ocean endless and stunning, the ground muddy and slick. We’d thought the walking poles Alex and Renie loaned us would be just a nice convenience, but it turns out they were paramount to keeping us upright rather than us taking digger after digger as our ungraceful bodies were wont to do.
We then drove south and out along the Gower Peninsula, arriving at its tip at Worms Head just in time for the sunset. As “worm” is from the Old English “wyrm,” meaning dragon, the outcropping of rock vaguely resembles a dragon rearing its head out of the water, enchanting at sunset or any time. Since it was getting dark now, we began our drive back up to Cardigan.
Thayer: All these little cars—they look like they’re either from the seventies, or… space pods.
By the time we made it back up to Cardigan, it was almost 9 p.m. and we were in danger of missing last call for dinner. Shivering from the freezing cold outside, we went into a very old-looking place called The Lamb Inn and glanced around like lost sheep. “Well, come on in, then,” said an old gentleman at the bar, as several of his friends gestured the same. The bartendress came out, clad in a very short, sleeveless jumper, and told us they served only drinks, not dinner. A gentleman in a Wales rugby jersey, whom we understood to be the owner, told us to go next door and get take-out pizza and bring it back into the Lamb Inn, which we did happily.
The Lamb was warm and small with stone walls and low, wood-beamed ceilings. “Seventeen eighty-three,” Rugby Jersey said when we asked him when the inn was established, smiling proudly as our young Yankee jaws dropped.
Pretty soon the Lamb’s regular crowd came a-flocking. “With those accents, we’re quite sure you’re not English,” one man ventured. Upon revelation of our U.S. origins, we learned they all had a common acquaintance who lived in Florida. Everyone buzzed about the Americans in the Lamb, and even the Inn’s proprietress—a roundish middle-aged woman named Jill—came out to meet us. On and on she went about her son in Florida. Following were story after story about a woman named Gemma. Actually, several women named Gemma. After all, “it gets a bit confusing with four Gemmas living in the parish, innit?” It does, Jill. It really does.
Other chatty folks included Jamie—Rugby Jersey—who was Jill’s son and also ran the inn, Jamie’s son Nathan; a lady who joked that we’d come all the way to Wales just to go to the Lamb; a man named Gerwyn with a broken leg he’d sustained by falling off his roof; a man whose Welsh accent was so thick the only words we could distinguish were “Kurt Cobain;” and…
Hayl: Oh, that toothless guy who came and hugged us goodbye.
Thayer: Yeah, who was that?
Hayl: I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure he wanted to marry me.
We were sad to leave such friendly company, but found more of it back at Alex and Renie’s house when we returned around 10:30 p.m. Alex invited us to join in a game of five-person solitaire with Renie, Jess, and himself, and they told us about how they went on a walk that afternoon with Toulouse, their tiny poodle mix, and a stray lamb had mistaken him for one of its own, following them until they came upon the rest of the lamb’s flock. Possibly the cutest story ever told.
In the morning, we had granola and coffee with Renie and Jess, as Alex had already left for work. The “Welcome, Hayley and Thayer” sign had become “Bon Voyage, Hayley and Thayer,” and we sadly packed our car and climbed in. Renie, Jess, and Toulouse stood on either side of the driveway, and as we drove through—I am not kidding you—they tossed daffodil petals onto our car. I nearly wept with gratitude that I have the opportunity to meet such wonderful people around the globe.
Now we are headed back east into England to meet up with our Irish friend Kirsty and spend the night at The Churchill Arms, a pub/inn in a Cotswolds town by the name of Chipping Campden. I am already dying of the cuteness of the name alone.
Until next time!
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