It's just not Welsh enough round here. So off to Pembroke/Ceredigion border for a week of the
REAL THING. Packed the JA (even though I knew I'd be unpacking it in a week's time with not a word added). Packed warm clothing and waterproofs. Packed green wellies and best black wellies for Sundays. Packed 'Great Vegetarian Restaurants of South Ceredigion' (I wish).
Very nice hotel: The Cliff. The cliff in question dropped a couple of hundred feet below our window so no one can say it didn't do what it said on the tin. This is the USP about Wales - it delivers. On our first walk out we're met with a notice. We were to make sure we didn't tread on the adders in the long grass. There is only long grass, all the sheep, presumably having been bought up by the Big T and turned into cutlets...then we're approached by a very bemused-looking South African man who says, "About so-big with marks along their backs?" "Those would be the adders," my husband confirms. We watch him stepping carefully back to the safety of the hotel like a man doing his first fire-walk. (But he's South African! Don't they wrestle poisonous mambas while still in their cradles?)
But South West Wales is wonderful and so are its adders. It's the place where you can plummet 200 feet off a cliff if you want to - and not be bothered by a sign telling you how a ten-second bracing plunge followed by a brief splat on the rocks may damage your health. It's the place where you can put your hand on the casket containing St David's bones (AND St Justinian's bones AND another second-division saint whose name I've forgotten) and have a quiet word with him. Like I said Wales delivers. I feel like running out of the cathedral and finding somebody English and going, "yeah, go on then, bet you can't do that with St George, can you? Can you? Bet you haven't managed to hang on to so much as his little finger, have you? Bet you haven't even got his fingerNAIL in a matchbox. Have you?
It's the place where you go to the man selling fish and laver-bread off a stall and ask for laver-bread and he says "The woman did the laverbread died yesterday - but her husband has promised to bring it in himself tomorrow."
REAL THING. Packed the JA (even though I knew I'd be unpacking it in a week's time with not a word added). Packed warm clothing and waterproofs. Packed green wellies and best black wellies for Sundays. Packed 'Great Vegetarian Restaurants of South Ceredigion' (I wish).
Very nice hotel: The Cliff. The cliff in question dropped a couple of hundred feet below our window so no one can say it didn't do what it said on the tin. This is the USP about Wales - it delivers. On our first walk out we're met with a notice. We were to make sure we didn't tread on the adders in the long grass. There is only long grass, all the sheep, presumably having been bought up by the Big T and turned into cutlets...then we're approached by a very bemused-looking South African man who says, "About so-big with marks along their backs?" "Those would be the adders," my husband confirms. We watch him stepping carefully back to the safety of the hotel like a man doing his first fire-walk. (But he's South African! Don't they wrestle poisonous mambas while still in their cradles?)
But South West Wales is wonderful and so are its adders. It's the place where you can plummet 200 feet off a cliff if you want to - and not be bothered by a sign telling you how a ten-second bracing plunge followed by a brief splat on the rocks may damage your health. It's the place where you can put your hand on the casket containing St David's bones (AND St Justinian's bones AND another second-division saint whose name I've forgotten) and have a quiet word with him. Like I said Wales delivers. I feel like running out of the cathedral and finding somebody English and going, "yeah, go on then, bet you can't do that with St George, can you? Can you? Bet you haven't managed to hang on to so much as his little finger, have you? Bet you haven't even got his fingerNAIL in a matchbox. Have you?
It's the place where you go to the man selling fish and laver-bread off a stall and ask for laver-bread and he says "The woman did the laverbread died yesterday - but her husband has promised to bring it in himself tomorrow."
