Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch  

Fortunately, life gets easier after that. 

Disclaimer: no more photos on this blog post. No excuses offered. So there! 

We’ve been to exotic places, seen a fair few ‘bucket list’ Wonders of the World like the Pyramids and The Great Barrier Reef, both of which were a disappointment, but there’s far more to travel than ruins and wonders of nature. We like people watching. It’s, usually, free, varied and one of our greatest providers of amusement. When the weather isn’t good and you need to stave off boredom, there’s usually a widely available resource on hand – people. Humanity is fascinating and we study it assiduously. 

G Says…

We’re off ‘abroad’ again at last. Technically, that’s correct, but in reality we’re only visiting Wales. In fairness, though, anyone disputing the population of Wales don’t regard themselves  as a separate nation have obviously never played rugby against a team from The Principality.

On our way into Wales we took the coastal route to visit some legendary North Wales holiday resorts such as Prestatyn. Rhyl, and Colwyn Bay. The French Riviera has little to fear in our view. 

Llandudno used to be a favourite destination for a New Year’s Day walk along the promenade. The promenade is still there, wide enough to drive a dozen buses along, side by side, and most of the hotels along the front have been spruced up, but not everything was as we remembered. A few years ago, as a flood defence initiative, fifty thousand tons of rocks were dumped on Llandudno’s beach, covering up great swathes of golden sand. It’s not a pretty sight. Especially when this beach was the crowning glory of a great seaside resort. Just a small sandy section of beach remains near the pier. It’s fair to say we weren’t impressed.

We’ve booked an overnight stay on the Isle of Anglesey. It’s island living, despite being fairly recently joined to the mainland, with all the obvious differences that living on an island brings. A certain superiority and an impression of being different, Anglesey offers all this, but it’s a special place anyway. Very rural in nature, fairly sparsely populated, farming and tourism are big here. 

We crossed the Menai Strait, very undramatically, by driving over the bridge. It’s a long drop to the sea foaming away far below, but it’s not remotely scary. The Thomas Telford designed suspension bridge dates from 1826 and there’s also another bridge, the Britannia Bridge, erected in 1850. We went to the railway station, just to look at the name on the station building.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch railway station is known exclusively for that place name. This village name is the longest officially recognised place name in the U.K. and one of the longest in the world, 58 letters in length. Marigold made several attempts to pronounce it, without conspicuous success.

The name means: St Mary’s Church in a hollow of white hazel near the swirling whirlpool of the church of Tysilio with a red cave. When we discovered this meaning, Marigold’s reaction summed up the general feeling. ‘Ridiculous,’ she said and who am I to disagree? Of course, we almost instantly found a know-all local who took great delight in showing off by saying the village name out loud. Twice. We weren’t impressed. He also told us over 3,000 people lived in the village – full time, not ‘in-comers – and over seventy-five percent spoke Welsh fluently. I got the impression he wasn’t too impressed by those wretches who only spoke English.

Our overnight stay was in a guest house, not a hotel. The owners were very clear on the distinction. In practise, this meant living as part of the family and we were fine with that. It also involved sharing a sofa with the family dogs, two immensely fat Basset Hounds, when we wanted to unwind in the evening. The fattest dog in Wales overlapped into ‘my’ space, while Marigold got the ‘rather sweet’ one who just perched alongside her accepting stroking as its right. When they both offered fulsome evidence of their last meal by farting, repeatedly, in unison, we decided we didn’t need to sit on the sofa after all. Marigold said she was glad it was only the farty dogs on the sofa as the guest house owners may have tried to persuade us to join a cult. I saw no obvious evidence of this likelihood but Marigold  sees things hidden from the rest of us mortals.

The next day we drove all around the island, stopping at interesting spots.  Marigold decided against visiting the South Stack lighthouse with its 400 steps down a cliff face for reasons she didn’t elaborate upon, so we went off to nearby Treaddur Bay instead. This is where the well heeled come to play and buy property. There’s not much there, I saw one family jumping up and down with excitement when they discovered the Spar shop, but that’s the whole point of this place. Unspoilt, pretty, with good beaches, safe bathing and a Spar shop. Beat that, Benidorm. 

Right then, where else caught our attention/was worth a stop off on this trip? Machynlleth was the seat of Owain Glyndŵr’s Welsh Parliament in 1404 and has been widely regarded as the ancient capital of Wales. It’s a pleasant market town nowadays and a place we’ve visited a fair few times. Like many places in Wales, there are few clues as to pronunciation, but ma-hun-cliff is close enough. If you live there, you just call it Mach.

We went for a coffee and cake, no shortage of Independents here, and our jolly waitress told us about a Mach institution, the unique item of footwear known as a Shandal. The name gives it away; a hybrid of shoe and sandal perfected by Ruth Emily Davy under the brand name RED. It’s one of those shops that reflects a time gone by and we found it fascinating.

Laura Ashley opened her first ever shop in the town, in 1961, the first of what was to become a vast empire of over 500 shops scattered throughout the world. Humble beginnings. The actual building is now The Deco Shop. The  Victorian frontage is misleading as on venturing inside we realised this building predates the Victorian era by a couple of hundred years. When we moved to London in the 1960s I remember a Laura Ashley shop and the Biba store were a big draw in Kensington for a new breed of shopper. When a new Laura Ashley shop opened, just along the Fulham Road from my office, the female staff disappeared every lunchtime and in its first week of trading that shop sold four thousand dresses.

Aberystwyth was rather ‘odd.’ We stayed overnight in a ‘sort of hotel’ overlooking the promenade, but extensive road works meant the only points of entry to the vast collection of hotels were at the far ends of the promenade. Chaos. Not that the three different hen-party groups in our hotel seemed to mind as after arriving back from an evening of partying in the town, they combined forces in the hotel bar. They were fairly rowdy until midnight, after that the decibel level was off the scale. We were on the second floor and sleepless until dawn. 

Stepping over a dozen scantily dressed ‘hens’ lying in the bar area we set off next morning to see what was happening on the promenade. Groups were assembling, mostly female, on a clear but bitterly cold Sunday morning. When they started stripping off we realised these were groups of all year round swimmers. Marigold showed no signs of joining in so we walked to the far end of the promenade, muffled up and complaining while to our left fifty or sixty people flung themselves into the sea with apparent joy. 

There’s a routine to go through at the far end of the promenade. Kicking The Bar. This involves tapping or violently kicking, it depends on mood, the scuffed white metal railing marking the end of the promenade. We kicked the bar, respectfully as we were only visiting, and went back to the hotel.

We decided to visit Tenby, the jewel of Welsh seaside resorts. Having been before and found it charming this visit was to be a crushing disappointment. It wasn’t beach weather, fair enough, and neither was it the height of the ‘season,’ but Tenby on that day was at its worst. I can’t bear to describe our levels of disappointment, so from now on, no more places, just people. I’ll abandon tourist info and concentrate on people watching. There’s no off season for that, regardless of the weather. Human idiosyncrasies are a constant delight for Marigold and myself.

We found the café about which Marigold had said,  ‘I quite like the look of this,’ an opinion based entirely on reviews in Trip Advisor. Bitter experience has led me to take a judgemental view of a page full of glowing reviews, but we were obviously  trying to be open minded on that particular morning.  

It wasn’t a fancy place. Cafés rated number four on TripAdvisor should have virtues aplenty, I mused, but now we’re here it makes me wonder what number five must be like. We’d passed the number one rated cafe on the way in. I remembered the name and mentioned it to Marigold. ‘It looks a right dump,’ she said. I was busy watching the road, but Marigold’s instincts are usually good. 

We weren’t expecting haute cuisine which was just as well as the man pouring liberal quantities of suspiciously runny brown sauce on his baked beans certainly wasn’t sending out hints we were in a temple of gastronomy.

Not that there’s anything wrong with adding brown sauce to baked beans. It’s a natural order of things, like rhubarb and custard.

This is very obviously only a café and yet also appears at number eight in the ‘restaurant’ category on TripAdvisor which is stretching a point. Are the Trade Descriptions people aware of greasy spoon cafés such as this masquerading as restaurants? 

A woman with Zeppelin lips catches hold of Marigold’s hand as we enter. ‘Love your nails,’ she said, ‘just look at the state of mine.’ She offered up a meaty paw and showed us her fingernails, talons would be more accurate, each a cross between a scalpel and a bacon slicer, painted in a shade I hadn’t ever seen before and had never even imagined to exist. 

She waggled the nails in a final flourish, they looked even more dangerous at close quarters.  

‘Fifty-eight quid they cost me, but I have to go back every fortnight or they look a state. How can I manage that? I missed three appointments last week ‘cos of my hubby’s condition. I had to clip them myself in the end.’  

We moved on before Marigold became too engrossed in speculating on the, no doubt gruesome, story of ‘hubby’s’ condition. We were admitted at last – it’s one of those ‘wait here to be served’ establishments – and chose a table with padded chairs. The other tables had those hard, upright chairs which are ideal for a cafe owner wishing to discourage lengthy stays to increase profits, but they’re no fun to sit on. 

They don’t just serve coffee here. Oh no, that’s for normal cafes, this is a shrine to the beverage, nothing less. It said as much in Trip Advisor. 

A sign informed customers of the provenance of the wares on offer. The ‘home’ country, the specific region, names of the growers, altitude, acidity levels, do we really need to know all this stuff about a few coffee beans? Everything was Fair Trade Certified, obviously. The highly polished machine behind the counter belched out copious amounts of steam like The Royal Scotsman in its heyday. All this to transform these wondrous, fair trade beans into a quaffable liquid. The whole process sounded like the pit lane of a Formula One race ten seconds before the race began. 

Despite the groaning beast producing dark liquid on an industrial  scale, this cafe was not particularly fancy in reality. 

The teenage girls opposite us, who we’d imagined to be bunking off school, turned out to be on a ‘field trip’ to interview local residents about fishing quotas. They must have been taking a break from their arduous duties as they appeared to have no interest in asking questions, or ordering any refreshments, attention  being fixated solely on their mobile phones. One particular student’s face was tinged with panic as the waitress interrupted her for a few moments to ask what she’d like to order. Thoughts of missed text messages or emails in the twenty seconds or so her attention had been diverted brought a scowl of concentration so acute her artfully, not to mention liberally, applied layers of makeup developed a myriad small cracks, yet still managed to conceal any hint of actual flesh behind the mask. 

Marigold nudged me and told me to stop staring. ‘I can’t help it,’ I said, ‘it’s those eyebrows.’ 

Marigold snorted and I realised she’d been equally fascinated by what amounted to twin examples of performance art. Great bushy swoops of immaculately arranged follicles teased into an unlikely arrangement. In no way did they resemble any eyebrows ever seen in nature. These were a completely separate species. Tearing my gaze away for a moment I noticed the vast, bulbous objects that, I assume started life as lips. Painted a vivid scarlet the effect was of a vast mouth that had been repeatedly and violently hit by a baseball bat. I speculated that had not been the wearer’s desired intention. 

Another small group of mismatched teenagers were hard at work, deeply engrossed in ‘colouring in’ a street map of the area. They each had a full complement of felt tip pens and were making generous use of each one. Marigold whispered, ‘how old are they, five?’ She had a point, the activity was more suited to the distraction offered to a toddler while a harassed parent sought refreshment and a few minutes of relaxation. Not all the teenagers were attending to their task with diligence. One girl appeared to have a wandering mind. Her minuscule attention span approximated to the breaking strain of a Digestive biscuit. A few seconds attention, at most, before she started staring around again.

A woman pushing a disabled walker, one of the heavy duty ones with an attached seat and shopping basket, pushed aside the ‘please wait here for a table’ sign on its rope barrier and barged into the back of my chair. 

‘Watch yourself,’ she said and plonked herself down at a table for four leaving her walking frame protruding halfway across our table. 

A harassed waitress rushed over and said, ‘is it just you, love? Shall I find you a table for two?’ 

‘No, you can’t, I’m all right where I am.’

‘Oh.’

‘I tell you what you can do, you can bring me a menu and don’t take all day about it.’ 

The waitress indicated the large card standing upright on the table. The woman perused it at great length while the waitress stood with pencil poised over her pad. Eventually she said, ‘coffee and don’t be stingy with the milk.’ 

We tuned her out, eventually, but a few minutes later two other women on the way out stopped in the doorway and one shouted out,  ‘Marjorie.’ 

The woman with the walking frame ignored her, so the repetition was much louder. 

‘Marjorie.’

Again, no response. 

‘Marjorie,’ it was a raucous bellow by now, but still had no effect. The stentorian shouter came back inside and tapped ‘Marjorie’ on the shoulder. 

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you’re not Marjorie.’

Her friend came over and whispered, quite loudly, ‘that’s the other one.’ They nodded to each other and left having been completely ignored by the coffee slurping woman whom the entire cafe now knew was not called Marjorie. 

A harassed man with a peaked cap on his head and wearing a white shirt and badly knotted tie came inside, staring around. Coach driver, I surmised and so it proved. He spotted ‘the other one, certainly not Marjorie’ and gave her a lengthy explanation about being obliged to move his bus to a different location. The directions he gave were detailed and explicit, but I had realised after ten seconds they were being ignored. After a final, plaintive ‘so, turn left, go through the archway, then keep on going’ his voice tailed away and he left.

‘Not Marjorie’ turned to us and said, ‘I shan’t be knocking myself out looking for the bus he’s hidden away somewhere. He knows where I am, he can come and get me when the time comes. I don’t even know why I came on this trip. The rest of them are as thick as mince and that fool only takes us to dumps like this place. It is a dump, isn’t it?’ 

Marigold and I agreed Tenby was not looking its best today. 

‘Do you know that Marjorie those other women were looking for?’ Asked Marigold. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist. 

‘Yes, a right miserable old devil, takes her five minutes to get on and off the bus with that contraption of hers and spends half an hour in the toilet every time we go out. Not a good word to say for anyone else, either.’

By now we had realised the significance of that confusion between Marjorie and the ‘other one.’

Attempting to leave I was obliged to clamber over the ‘other one’s’ walking frame. She scowled at me and said, ‘I’ll be glad when you pair have gone so I can get a bit of peace while I drink my coffee. Not that this muck tastes anything like coffee. It’s not fit for pigs. If you see that fool of a bus driver tell him I’ll be ready to be picked up in five minutes  so he should look sharp.’

We ended up that evening at a very plush hotel. It had spa facilities, an indoor swimming pool, a fully kitted out gym and various other attractions we didn’t actually need or desire. After a swift wander around the place it appeared that nobody else seemed very bothered either.

We dropped off our far from fancy luggage in the vast bedroom and then wandered down to check out the downstairs areas. The main room was impressive, as befitting the former grand salon of the stately home this place used to be. It was understated, refined and classy. Shame the other guests were anything, but refined or classy. As for understated,  the man wearing tight, red trousers, pointed patent leather shoes and a yellow scarf had surely never heard the word before. All the group clustered around the bar seemed to be loud, opinionated and thoroughly objectionable people. Even worse, two of their number decided we were suitable choices for an unsolicited chat. 

When, ‘I’m not a racist, but…’ is a person’s opening remark you know you’re in for a hard time. It’s all downhill from there. The group were more than a little ‘merry’ so it was a relief when our ‘not racist, but’ new friends  were  called away to once again replenish their glasses. It was only mid afternoon but the ‘Champagne Bar’ was doing a roaring trade. 

One of the many ‘hangers-on’ attracted my interest. The description ‘clean shaven’ had rarely seemed less appropriate. This man had a face that had been scraped raw and appeared so painfully abraded I surmised a welding torch had played a significant role in his morning ablutions. Marigold nudged me, urgently, and whispered, ‘look at his tiny ears.’ They were, indeed, remarkable: protruding on either side of that scraped face like fine porcelain handles on a Dresden teacup. 

We were carrying books, but there were far too many distractions in this room already to even consider sitting down to read. The man who was checking in when we arrived was wheeling a suitcase more appropriate to a teenage girl. Pink, very pink, actually and with a poodle transfer on each side. He was evidently possessed of a fair few eccentricities, one clue being his trousers extended only as far down as mid calf revealing a pair of immaculate brogues, one vivid blue sock and one in an equally garish shade of yellow. In between there was nothing much, just a hairy shin bone resembling a section of an ancient skeleton. Marigold and I guessed his age at either 92, my estimate or 105, Marigold’s considered opinion. 

He was wearing a pair of those clip-together glasses that split into two parts on a cord around his neck. He tried to reconnect the two sections, several times, but eventually gave up, leaving the miscreants dangling forlornly. 

I had been trying to identify a tattoo on his female companion’s wrist. Was it a heart, a ladybird, the ace of diamonds? The mystery was solved when she licked her wrist with a pink, fleshy tongue and the mysterious design disappeared. Tomato ketchup or a stray splash from a Bloody Mary, who knows? Marigold, of course, decided it was blood and there was a dead body residing in their car boot, but I usually prefer to ignore the most gruesome possibilities at such an early stage. 

An hour later I met him in the lift, along with his younger wife and couldn’t resist mentioning the socks. 

‘How long ago did you make that style decision?’ I asked. 

He looked at me, solemnly. ‘Thirty years ago, almost to the day. I was in a rush, getting ready for my 40th birthday bash, never noticed I had put odd socks on. Afterwards, I thought, this is me, never had a matched pair on since.’

‘He’s got some funny ways,’ his wife confided. When I repeated the odd sock saga to Marigold she initially didn’t believe me. ‘What? He’s only 70? Younger than us? He must have had a hard life.’

The sun was out so I decided I would go for a wander round while Marigold had a cup of tea. I saw a sign saying ‘tennis courts,’ so I wandered over. I wasn’t actually intending to play tennis, but no signpost that points to a gap in the rhododendrons should be ignored. The gap led me on a steep downward path with rather less than immaculately tended lawns on either side. Outside the hotel, everything in the garden was lovely, but through the gap it was a case of out of sight, out of mind. I found the tennis courts, two grassed rectangles without nets, and was glad I didn’t get dressed in my tennis whites as it was difficult to see any actual grass anywhere due to the presence of at least a hundred sheep. There were many more in the field below a hedge, but these trespassers were obviously enjoying the variety of grass on offer in the forbidden territory. 

I wandered back to the car park. No sheep there, so far. There was a sitting-out area near the spa entrance offering big armchairs and enormous parasols providing shade. The Receptionist in the Spa looked bored. She waved at me and shouted, ‘on yer own, are yer?’ Obviously not a local. 

‘With my wife,’ I said. She didn’t appear particularly devastated to hear this so there was clearly no intention on her part of chatting up the male guest. Yes, I know, of course there wasn’t. 

‘Where is she then?’  She went on, a tad intrusively. 

‘Tea and cake,’ I said, motioning towards the conservatory area where Marigold was sipping tea in a decorous manner. Well, it’s a high end hotel, no slurping allowed. 

‘Right idea,’ said the Receptionist before adding, portentously, ‘my mum told me the secret of a long and happy marriage was trying never to be in the same room.’

‘Really? Sounds a bit extreme.’

‘Worked for my mum and dad. Couldn’t stand each other, but stayed together for thirty eight years. Right miserable pair they were. When I were a kid I thought everyone’s mum and dad lived like that.’

She wandered off again and I resolved to spend as much time as possible in close proximity to Marigold from now on. I decided it was  warm enough to seek out shade so plonked myself down in a deep cushioned cane armchair under an immense parasol.

A small van drove up moments after I sat down. It belonged to a company claiming to be Spa and Pool Maintenance Experts since 2017. Not such a long lineage then, yet ‘experts’ all the same. I couldn’t see the van driver, just a sunburnt, beefy forearm resting on the side window. A few moments later the van door opened and what can best be described as a ‘strapping young woman’ emerged. She was wearing blue bib-and-brace overalls, had forearms like Popeye and thighs so muscular they necessitated a John Wayne style walk across the car park. She was hefting a large metal toolbox and carrying it in one hand as if it weighed no more than a bag of sugar. 

The woman from the spa reception desk tottered over again, her vertiginous heels clacking. ‘Did you clock the gym bunny?’ She asked. ‘She’s pretty scary, don’t you think?’ 

I nodded, cautiously.

‘She goes for a swim in the pool after she’s done the cleaning,’ the Receptionist continued, pausing for effect before adding, ‘with nowt on.’

I was uncertain what reaction to show, but it became a moot point as the Receptionist wandered off back to her perch behind the counter for some urgent nail polishing.

It was an ideal spot here for people watching and I tried, in vain, to attract Marigold’s attention. A couple getting out of a red Jeep Cherokee looked interesting. I assumed that would have been their intention. They were wearing matching clothing designed specifically for the great outdoors complete with a multiplicity of logos. 

Both of them stretched their limbs as they got out of the car limbering up as if for a triathlon rather than the 20 pace walk to the hotel entrance. Toes were touched, hamstrings rigorously tested and shoulders loosened. It was impressive. I was the only person on site but there was still a fair degree of ‘look at me, see how fit I am’ in the self congratulation manner of their routine.  

One more final check in the reflexion afforded by the windows of the Jeep and they set off to check in. 

Their vast suitcases on wheels, no doubt very expensive purchases after extensive research into ‘top of the range best buys’ were gleaming in the sunshine while their immaculate clothing reflected the general ambience. The impression they conveyed: look at how healthy we are, we eat all the right foods, our skin-tone is beyond reproach, we are the Golden Couple – all of that projected superiority had vanished by the time they reached the halfway point twixt car and hotel.

Tiny wheels and heavy suitcases aren’t remotely suited to densely packed pea gravel drives and problems were evident from the start. 

The woman, no longer concerned about the appearance of her fringe, dropped the handle of her suitcase on the drive and strode off without it. Her companion, a fair few years older and with suitcase troubles of his own, watched her abrupt departure in apparent confusion. He stood alone, staring ruefully at their luggage, both cases now lying on the gravel drive, when the woman suddenly reappeared. The man made a token effort to lift his suitcase only to be sharply admonished.  

A few seconds later a young man we’d already surmised to have responded to a job vacancy advert stating ‘strong youth wanted,’ appeared. We had noted him carrying cases of beer and spirits up to the bar from some unseen cellar and I realised this was a ‘cometh the hour, cometh the man’ situation. The strong youth lifted a suitcase in each hand as if each were a feather pillow and strode off into the hotel.  

Nature boy and the fitness queen trudged mournfully in his wake. They appeared to have aged 10 years since leaving the sanctuary of their car.

When we initially checked in, Marigold had noted a jug containing numerous ball point pens on the desk. After signing us in, she asked, ‘is it okay if I keep the pen?’  She obviously, appreciated its vibrant orange vulgarity. The woman on the desk waved a hand airily. ‘Take as many as you want, they’re all crap.’ We took one each. Both were no longer working by next morning. In fairness I had already written two pages of observations and recollections by then, but the verdict of the woman on the desk was correct. They were crap.