Tag Archives: Cycle tour of Wales

Day 199: Can’t Think of Anything I Need

19 Wednesday Mar 2014

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A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 90

I’ve stayed longer than I’d planned. Newtown gets you like that. It wasn’t a town I knew much about, but the longer I stay, the more engaged I become. It’s not every town that has a claim to have pushed along democracy; and it’s not every town that has  a famous son. Newtown played it’s part in extending the vote; and as far as a celebrity, it had one right out of the very top drawer of British history. In the game of famous people top trumps, Robert Owen just about outscores the pack in every category.

But I’m hungry and I’ve got the scent of England in my nostrils.  I like to travel to different places and I’ve found it one of the great pleasures of my life to explore Scotland, Ireland and Wales on this jaunt, but there is no place like home. Those hills I can see in the distance are in Shropshire  and I didn’t expect to be within shouting distance of it today. The weather is brightening and there are still a lot of hours of daylight, a lot of strength in my legs and plenty of determination in my heart. The closer I get to home, the stronger the pull. I’ve been away long enough, I want to see my family, walk my dog and sleep in my own bed.

There don’t seem to be too many places to eat so I plump for the sandwich shop on the main street. Despite it approaching teatime, the shop is still doing a lively trade and the four girls are being kept busy. Two are Welsh and two (sisters) are not. Their accents are a little bit Cerys Matthews veering rapidly in and out of Julie Walters doing a Brummie and Jane Horrocks in Little Voice. They are all under twenty and remind me of many a back row of a disaffected classroom. In my teaching experience such girls don’t care much for being interupted in their discourse on make-up, Vodka Breezers and how high they can pile their hair, to discuss the poetic devices employed by Christina Rossetti in Goblin Market. Here they are freed up from the exigencies of the curriculum but they seem equally bored.

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“Ham salad is it? Do you want anything on that?”

“What salad cream and mustard? You sure of that?”

“Have we got any mustard Kerri? This man wants mustard and salad cream both on the same sandwich.”

“We haven’t got any English mustard.”

“No we haven’t got any French mustard either.”

“No, looks like we haven’t got any mustard at all. You still want salad cream?”

“Yes, we’ve got plenty of that. Now white or wholemeal?”

She continues refining my order in a way that would do Descartes credit. If there is any doubt about any of it, it gets ditched. I ask her what it’s like to live in Newtown.

“I’m not from here see. Me and my sister are English. Dad moved here so we had to come with him.”

“It’s all right I suppose. Bit shite if you want to do any thing. We go to Shrewsbury for a night out. Mind you. That’s a bit shite too. That’ll be two pounds ninety five please.”

I get a polystyrene cup of tea with two sugars and lean against my bicycle. A portly cyclist in full kit, wraparound sun specs and a decent looking bicycle goes past. I wonder if it could be Barry Hoban. I know he lives near here. Nobody pays any attention so maybe it isn’t the man who at that time held the record for the most stage wins by a Briton in the Tour de France. Or maybe superstar sportsmen are ten a penny in Mid Wales.

I buy a map in Smiths and plot some sort of a route. I’m keen to reach England, keen to find some back roads after spending all day on a red route, and keen to be aiming at Shrewsbury in the hope that I’d be able to find somewhere decent to stay. I have the usual dilemma of the cyclist who is trying to get from A to B. Big direct roads or quiet lanes that meander back on themselves for miles. If I stay on the main drag and follow the Severn I come to a place called Abermule. The internet on my phone tells me that it has a canal, was the site of a railway crash in the twenties and was the one time home of composer Peter Warlock. I’ve never heard of him. But if I get there, I’ve got  much quieter roads all the way to Montgomery, and once I’m there I’m practically in England. I’ll be able to say I crossed Wales in a day on a bicycle. Abermule it is.

It’s a pleasant mixture of old and new houses and a three storey hotel imaginatively called The Abermule Hotel. There’s nothing else there to hold me long and the village does prove a gateway to green lanes, quieter roads and a shadow that slowly elongates as it moves round  in front of me. My legs still feel strong and this is some of the pleasantest cycling of the whole journey. The  pastures are green, the harvest is coming in and the trees hang heavy in full summer leaf. The road goes gently up and down and I keep going mile upon mile. On days like today it doesn’t matter when a car cuts you up. I just smile and wave and they double the revs and show me just how much faster their car can go than a fifty two year old cyclist on a thirty year old bicycle laden with panniers. I’m suitably impressed and make a note not to take them on at speed trials again.

Montgomery is every bit as lovely as its name suggests. I’m reminded of Kirby Stephen. A small town packed full of character; a medieval castle and a rather lovely church. Not many towns have a bell museum; Montgomery does. It also has a proper ironmongers with galvanised buckets outside. It doubles as a cycle shop and I’m very tempted to go in but can think of nothing I lack. I am almost completely happy. In the words of the song. “If I could have a wish, I think I’d pass. Can’t think of anything I need.” I wonder if Marion Montgomery (sixties British singer who occasionally appeared on television) ever sang that song. Was it in Jim Montgomery’s (Sunderland FA Cup winning goalkeeper) record collection? I slowly go through all the Montgomery’s I know. When I get to Colin the golfer I change games. Life’s too short for golf.

The hills of Shropshire form a dramatic skyline. They are some of the finest hills in England and have some of the best names; Wenlock Edge, The Long Mynd, The Wrekin, The Stretton Hills. Fortunately for me and my legs, the hills are to the south and will remain my skyline for an hour or two longer. I don’t have to climb them.

Day 190: Milk Bars and Memorials

10 Monday Mar 2014

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A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 82

I added nine hours straight through sleep in the most comfortable of rooms overlooking the sea. I’ve always enjoyed waking up in the morning and enjoyed it ten fold this morning. The body had been tireder than I would care for it to become again. It was exhausted through physical effort and fatigued through lack of sleep. And now, it felt like it had been re-born. Strength was in my legs and my lungs pulled in more air than they had managed for days. I even felt that I had cast off the illness that I had carried with me since the Sperrin Mountains. That wasn’t to be but it felt very good to be alive.

A Room of On'e Own

It was pretty classy to sit in the window and write my notes while drinking tea. The tide was half way in. A wide sandy beach, hills, pier, harbour and wide stretching sea. I’d seen a lot of the British coast in these three weeks and this was likely to be my last sight of it. I spent as much time looking out of the  window as I did looking down at my writing. It was cloudy and breezy. You could almost say downright windy and from my bedroom it was impossible to tell which direction it was coming from. If it was behind me then I was going to be blown over the Cambrian Mountains. If it was going to be in my face, I’d consider another day on the coast.

Breakfast came and went in a dining room which felt the nineteen fifties so keenly it had forgotten to move on. Even the teenaged waiting staff were from my distant past. One almost expected them to be in black and white, and they were.

I was keen to get on my way; the next stage of my journey, whether it took me three, four or five days, would end with home and it was beginning to exert its pull. I wasn’t going anywhere though until I had had a look around this unique town.

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I’ve never seen a National Milk Bar. Like Lyon’s Corner Houses  and Maypole Groceries, I’ve heard of them, absorbed them into a part of the pre-me Britain, but had never actually visited one. There’s one just around the corner from my hotel and I’m seven and a half months too late. It’s deserted and for sale. And even though I have no desire for a cheese toastie or a cup of frothy coffee, this seems a pity.

A National Milk Bar 1935

A National Milk Bar 1935

Once there was a minor empire of these shops. Willie and Florence Griffiths came up with the idea after seeing the growing popularity of milk bars in the United States. Like Billy Butlin, he took and American idea and made it work in depression hit 1930s Britain. The first one opened in Colwyn Bay in 1933. Within 10 years there were a dozen of them, mostly in Wales but there were National Milk Bars in Birmingham, Liverpool and, of course, Shrewsbury. Coffee bars were the new meeting places of the young after the war. Lionel Bart wrote that, “Once our beer was frothy and now it’s frothy coffee ‘cos, Fings ain’t what they used to be.” Sixties publicity made a big point of saying that the Beatles met in a National Milk Bar. It was true but a matter of semantics. They didn’t actually meet, as in become known to each other, in a milk bar but they  once met up in one.

Inside the National Milk Bar Llandiloes before its closure.

In a way their passing is a good thing. They were very successful while their founders and owners lived. They provided  a generous living and were part of the big push to drink milk of earlier times. We had a free bottle of milk to drink at playtime in primary school. Adverts cajoled us merrily to “Drinka Pinta Milka Day”. Cycle races were sponsored by the Milk Marketing Board and my favourite was the winning players from the FA Cup final being interviewed in the Wembley tunnel while quaffing from a pint bottle of the white stuff. But they were also a part of the nadir in British catering. The milk shakes were thin, the coffee tasted vaguely of coffee and was mostly foam and the food was largely uninspired. They would have suited me down to the ground. If only I’d done this trip a year earlier.

The last National Milk Bar is still open in Rhyl. It’s time to make that trip if I am going to catch a last taste of the Britain I was born into.

Map showing the National Milk Bar Empire at it's height in the 1960s

Map showing the National Milk Bar Empire at its height in the 1960s

At the southern end of the parade is what many regard as one of the finest war memorials in Britain. It indeed has a timeless beauty which sets it apart from most of its fellow monuments. It was built between 1921 and 1923 to a design by Professor Mario Rutelli. The money was raised in the town and Rutelli himself gave his plans and skills for free. There are four elements to this piece of work. They all work individually but collectively they are an impressive and fitting memory to the Welshmen who gave their lives for the freedom of others. The statue on the top represents Victory, the leaning statue pushing towards the sea is Humanity emerging from the effects of war. There are inscriptions in Welsh “Dros Ryddid: For Freedom, and in English “Greater love for no man than this…

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The War Memorial Aberystwyth

It is a thing to see. I’m a sentimental old fool and I’m touched to the trickle of a tear.

A pale watery sunlight welcomes me back onto the sea front and in full daylight it is glorious. The town piles up the hills and cliffs behind to provide a glorious backdrop to the buildings nearest to the sea. The castle, the church and the old university college buildings are the three graces to Aberystwyth every bit as much as the three glories of the Liverpool pier head. The stone is largely the same but many hundreds of years, three very different architecture styles and three very different uses separate them. They blend perfectly. A monument to a warlike race, a monument to centuries of worship and a monument to higher levels of learning. They somehow encapsulate the town and what it stands for.

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To have three such buildings on a British seaside promenade is unique and splendid. The rest of the seafront curves around the bay in long terraces of elegant houses and hotels. There is an extra dimension to Aber. It is cut off on one side by high mountains and on the other by the sea. It has always remained in touch with the latest developments in the world, but there is something detached about the town and that is something that makes it all the more special. All I need to fill my cup completely would be a major centre for the arts and a great national library. And Aberystwyth provides these too. All I’ve got to do is collect my bicycle from the hotel, post my notes home to the family and push my way, gently, up the hill.

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Day 184: It’s in the Mirror

04 Tuesday Mar 2014

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A Journey Around the British Isles … Part 77

There are no plateaus on the tops and no valley floors. I cycle up one side of the hill and glide down the other. The day gets stronger, occasional cars pass and farmers begin to tend their fields. It’s still before the getting up time of the majority and my sleepless fatigue is balanced by the stunning beauty of the west of Wales. When I take the main road option at Newport I leave the sea and the coastal views but plunge into the interior. It’s an adult portion; no gentle, undulating flatlands here for the faint-hearted; these are the hard yards for the legs but the sweet miles on the eye and the ear.

I continue to pass little guest houses and farmhouse b&bs. If it were after six in the evening I would stop at any one of them, but it is only just after six in the morning. I resolve a plan. If I can’t fill up with sleep; and it is at times like this that you appreciate just what an amazing job sleep does in restoring the body, what enormous strength we draw from it; then I will fuel myself on food. If only Cardigan would come closer.

The Afon (river) Teifi marks my arrival. This is a river to study. Almost perfect in every detail whether you are a painter, a fly fisherman or a coracle builder. This river is rewarding and beautiful in equal measure. Its source is a collection of tarns in the sparsely populated regions of mid Wales, its course contains one of the largest natural bog lands in Britain and it flows with grace and power through all the stages of a river. It’s entry into Cardigan is hidden and mysterious in a steep wooded gorge. It is a majestic stream that flows under the town’s bridges and after Cardigan it opens out into an estuary to match any in the five nations. I’ve camped by the Teifi, swum in the stream and built sand castles where it reaches the sea. I like this river.

I like Cardigan as well, even if it is a little slow to provide this cyclist with the sustenance I require. The café I had been fantasising about doesn’t seem to exist. The smoking mugs of coffee and the plates of devilled kidneys and hot rolls belong to another world. I’ve got empty streets and closed shops.

The town is pretty. Not a word I often use to describe towns of this size, but it has preserved its good looks while providing all the services a grown up town needs. Except at seven in the morning! I’m not alone. A number of directionless fellows are wandering the otherwise deserted streets. I park my bicycle and join them on the aimless saunter. Always hoping that the perfect breakfast is just around the corner but finding everything as closed as an oyster. Even the Portaloos near the river are firmly shut, though my need obliges me to find a way inside. I almost wish I hadn’t.

I park myself on a bench in the muffled middle beneath a Welsh flag and the town clock and watch the somnambulists of the west stare into shop windows or shuffle by untrusting. A portly, bearded man on a mobility scooter waits patiently at the pelican crossing until the light shows green. There isn’t a car for miles. Once across he engages me in a conversation. He could be speaking Welsh. All I hear are incomprehensible phonemes with a rising inflection that suggests that he is asking me a question.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t quite catch that.”

The phrase gets repeated three more times, each time with increasing waving of the arms and a darkening of fierce facial features. The nearest I can make out is “Are you rough?” and I decide to go with this.

“No, I’m just a little tired thank you.”

He seems to think that I’ve spent the night on the tiles  There’s a half empty beer glass on the ledge behind me that I hadn’t noticed.

We grunt at each other a little more and he seems satisfied and scooters away.

Down a side street a Premier shop opens and I become the first customer. The woman is beyond delightful; she is seriously lovely. She’s sorting the papers into piles on the floor of the shop and before I’ve properly entered she’s being helpful. “Which paper is it you are wanting?” (the full magical glory of the lilting tones of Welsh are there. I feel as though I am in an opera.) “So I can sort it out for you.’

“Well, actually. I wasn’t wanting a paper. I wondered if you sold maps.”

“No we don’t.” It was said rather beautifully with full apology in the manner. “But!” she announces as her hands fall on a pile of thin road atlases. “They are giving these away today with the Daily Mirror. They look very good, see? They’ve even got a map of Ireland.”

“That’s where I’ve just come from.”

We look at the pages together. They are really quite good. Enough detail and the all important confirmation that I have chosen (by accident) a sensible way of getting from Fishguard to Derbyshire. We both agree that fate was on my side when it brought me to this shop on the day the Mirror was actually giving away road atlases.

“A lot of people don’t like that road (to Aberystwyth), it’s so bendy see.”

“I’ll have a Daily Mirror then please. And, have you anything that I could have for breakfast?”

“I’ll sort your newspaper for you. You go and see what you can find.”

And stone me if there isn’t a coffee machine and a selection of yesterday’s sandwiches. The machine produces me a Nescafé cappuccino and the shelf provides me with a ham and egg roll.

“You get the coffee half price because you have bought it with a sandwich. It’s a meal deal see.”

She has made my morning. Friendly, cheerful and wonderfully helpful. I take my purchases back to my bench. I’ve had better breakfasts but I can’t remember one that I enjoyed more. A street cleaner shows undue diligence in collecting every tiny scrap of paper from around me without acknowledging my presence. Another man walks by, stops in front of me and stares in a manner I would have found unsettling half an hour earlier (I now recognised it as a local pastime), took out a comb, straightened his tousled locks, stared at me again as if to garner approbation, and walked on.

The coffee is delicious and it brightens my brain magnificently. I use these renewed mental powers to look through the tabloid. Ten minutes later I feel enriched enough with the world of boob jobs, minor celebrities and the detailed news of Manchester united and Chelsea to dump, all bar the road atlas, into the nearest bin. I am watched closely by the road sweeper. I contemplate a second coffee and sandwich. It starts to rain.