Sunday 24th May
We managed to gather ourselves together
(after a wonderful wedding on Saturday) and pack the things we needed for a
week in Wales and set off for Stafford after lunch on Sunday. Stafford is where our friends Marion and Barrie
live and it’s their flat in Tywyn that we are using for the weekend. We stayed overnight in Stafford and caught
up on news and family doings and got the low down on the flat and the town. We met Marion and Barrie over 50 years ago
and our first visit to them was to the flat in Wales, so it’s been a family
retreat for them and their children for many years. And now it’s our retreat for a week. Thank you Marion and Barrie!
Monday 25th May
We arrived in Tywyn on Monday afternoon
without a hitch and switched everything on and then went exploring in the
town. We found the Co-op supermarket and
bought some things for supper and then toured the high street noting the
restaurants.
The flat is a minute or two from the sea
and we have a triangle of the Irish Sea visible from the living room
window. Now all we need is some decent
weather…and a phone signal would be nice, but alas mid-Wales is apparently
hopeless for phone networks so messages and emails come in when the gods see
fit! How much we fret about getting
messages will be a test of how relaxed we really are!!
Tuesday 26th May
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| Peter enjoying the breeze |
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| Jelly fish |
A great day today. It was cloudy as we set off to walk 6 miles along
the beach to Aberdovey. The clouds out
to sea were light grey but darker over the hills to our left. The temperature was great for walking and the
sea air felt wonderful. The beach is a
wide expanse with low dunes on the landward side and the odd cluster of rock
pools along the shore. Jelly fish galore
stranded on the sand and pebbles and shells that demand to be picked up and
examined. Often we looked round and
there was no one to be seen.
As we
neared Aberdovey a few more couples and families appeared but it could hardly
be called busy. And then the sun came
out!
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| Ruth, slightly ruffled by the breeze. Look at the emptiness! |
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| Rock pools between Tywyn and Aberdovey |
At Aberdovey we had lunch and then tried to
find my great grandmother’s grave. She
is buried at Aberdovey and various text messages exchanged with my cousin told
me her birth date and names of parents.
We tried one cemetery in the town but couldn’t find Ann Humphreys. It was a very overgrown cemetery on a slope
and not an easy task to push through the brambles and weeds. We did find out that there is another
cemetery further along the road out of the town and we spotted it from the
train on our way back. We shall take the car there another day.
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| Aberdovey |
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| A gourmet lunch! |
Back in Tywyn we went out to eat at the
Salt Marsh bistro where we had a decent dinner (whitebait/panzanella salad, sea
bass fillet on crab risotto/ spring vegetable risotto) and shared a bottle of
Welsh cider.
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| Peter contemplates the cider |
Wednesday 27th May
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| The Mawddach estuary |
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| The footbridge to Barmouth over the estuary |
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| Looking back over the estuary from the Barmouth side |
As the weather forecast predicted a wet
afternoon we decided to take the train from Tywyn towards Barmouth and get off
at a request stop called Morfa Mawddach.
When the train drew in to Tywyn it was already full so we stood all the
way to our station and the guard didn’t charge us! Wouldn’t it save money if you didn’t have to
pay anytime there was no seat between Liverpool Street and Norwich! The guard even came and helped us off the
train. From the platform we spotted the
path leading towards the estuary and the footbridge across to Barmouth. The guard described it as a half mile walk
but it was easily a mile with wonderful views across the estuary to Barmouth
and the hills to the east. Barmouth was
busy with holiday makers from Liverpool, Birmingham and Manchester. We strolled around and went to an art
exhibition and then had lunch before getting the train back to Tywyn just as
the rain started!
At Tywyn Peter collected his laptop from
the flat and we set off for the library to connect ourselves once more to the
outside world. The library was
closed! Shock, horror! I was rather anxious as a couple of messages
about bed and breakfast bookings (my new venture) had pinged in and I wanted to
be able to reply to them properly. We
sat in the car in the road opposite the library and miraculously the free Wi-Fi
extended to us so we were able to do business as the rain beat on the
windscreen and the car fogged up!
Eating at the flat tonight as the rain and
wind will ruin a wander round the town.
Thursday 28th May
A quick dash to the supermarket to get the
newspaper and then on to the train at 9.30 to our ‘go to’ station of the week
(!) Morfa Mawddach. From the platform we
started out on a 9-mile walk along the line of an old railway that went from
the end of the bridge across to Barmouth to the town of Dolgellau.
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| The walk |
The walk is flat of course which meant that we could look up and around and not down at our feet so we were able to enjoy the estuary of the Mawddach as we went along.
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| The Mawddach trail |
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| From the path looking inland |
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| Looking out at the estuary |
The hillsides were once covered in oak trees which were used to build
boats which were floated down the estuary to Barmouth to be rigged. When the oak trees were used up the boat
building stopped but the woods are being replanted with oak. There were parties of cyclists to avoid and
the odd walker or two in the opposite direction but for a lot of the time we
had the path to ourselves. We looked in
at the George III inn after about 7 miles but decided not to stop and pushed on
to Dolgellau where we had lunch in a beamed restaurant.
Then, creaking and stiff, we went across
the bridge to the library where Peter got free wifi and a computer to keep the
emails under control and I got help from a librarian in the archive department
trying to find out where and in what name my great grandmother was buried. No luck; she doesn’t appear on any records of
births, marriages and deaths for the area so the mystery continues. She may be in the public cemetery at Aberdovey
and we’ll try and get there and take a look.
Back across the bridge we went into a café
which owed its décor to a former life, perhaps as some kind of general
store?
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| Best coffee and walnut cake in the world! |
We had two excellent mugs of tea
and the best coffee and walnut cake I have EVER tasted! A 9-mile walk deserves a small reward! Then we waited in the square for the bus and
sat in front so we could watch the rotund driver with anger management issues
throw the bus around the bends on the coast road back to Tywyn. Between Dolgellau and Tywyn there were a few
bus stops but the driver also stopped and let people down outside their houses
when they rang the bell.
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| Home we go! |
Back at Tywyn we decided we couldn’t face
going out again to eat later as planned so we bought something for supper on
our way home. As I have portion control
problems we now have three bags of leftovers in the freezer to take back to
Norwich with us. One portion of chicken
curry, one portion of pasta Bolognese and one portion of pasta with tuna and
sweetcorn! After supper we lay on the
large sofas like beached whales waiting for the news and the weather forecast
for Friday. Alas, not good.
Friday 29th May
It was raining when we got up in the
morning so we decided on an indoor sort of day and drove south via Machynlleth
where we stopped for coffee. Then on to
Llanerchaeron, a National Trust property not far from Aberystwyth designed by
John Nash. But first lunch! Then we toured the house which has been left
in its Victorian incarnation.
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| Out side the house at Llanerchaeron |
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| At Llanerchaeron |
When we
walked into the study the red plastic telephone on the desk started ringing…so
I picked it up and there was someone on the end of the line pretending to be
the owner of the house announcing he would be back in time for dinner! I looked all round the rest of the house
hoping to find the owner of the voice – it definitely wasn’t a recording! The upstairs portion of the house was
moderately interesting but there was more to see downstairs and out in the
service yard. Extensive kitchens, a
cellar, butler’s pantry, laundry room, cheese making rooms, meat store,
somewhere for the servants to change after they had walked across the fields to
work etc and then a farm complete with pigs, sheep, ducks, turkeys, sheep
dogs. The glory of the house, however,
was the walled garden with vegetable beds, orchard and herbs. By the time we had gone round the house the
sun came out so our wanderings round outside were in sunshine. We
never made it to the lake.
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| Turkey lurkey |
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| The walled garden |
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| Llanerchaeron |
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| Llanerchaeron |
On the way back we stopped at the cemetery
outside Aberdovey and tried to find my great grandmother’s grave. The headstones were packed in, the ground uneven
and on a slope and the grass thick so it was pretty difficult to walk about and
some of the gravestones were teetering at odd angles so it didn’t seem a good
idea to hold on to them to regain one’s balance. Great grandmother remained elusive but I now
have some better information to begin a search at the library.
Back in Tywyn we decided to go out for
dinner and went to Proper Gander which looked rather smart from the doorway but
turned out to be ordinary upstairs. The
food was fine but by 9.0pm we were the only people left in the restaurant. Even the kitchen staff and the serving staff,
bar one, had pushed off home! I achieved
my ambition to eat some Welsh lamb while in Wales. My chops were delicious!
Saturday 30th May
We decided to return to Norwich today so
that we have Sunday to catch up. As we
were packing up we discovered some additional guide books we hadn’t noticed
before and now we know there are plenty more walks and places nearby to explore…and
that grave to find…if we go back to Tywyn.
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