O.R's Trip

(from 2019)

So the Occasionals went away for the weekend. Within Wales. Since they actually live in Wales that may not seem too adventurous, but the weekend involved a day-long religious conference that we normally attend twice a year. It has been fraught with difficulty in the past. For the last event we had torrential rain and many had to turn back before reaching the venue. We had come up the day before and were staying in the hills above the place, unlike those who were swimming in the valleys below. The time before, a year ago, it snowed. That was in March. We were stranded in a hotel in a borders town called Welshpool, eating expensive food and drinking expensive drink, and the whole event was cancelled.

This time, in February, we have been in the midst of a highly unseasonal heat wave, which made a welcome change.  The event was highly successful and we were exposed to total Welsh all day. My favourite Welsh expression has been “Fy pen tost.” Translated it means “My head hurts.” Even Mrs O was flagging by the end of day and she is a retired language teacher. Although her specialities, Spanish, French and Portuguese bear no relation to Welsh.

The conference was all day Saturday, so Sunday we left our farm house accommodation and headed for Aberyswyth, an old Victorian era seaside town with a brilliant University library, which of course wasn’t open on Sunday. So instead it was Sunday lunch on the pier. Dodging the waves that crashed on the seafront and which have trashed the town in years gone by. Then a visit to a Red Kite Center. Red kites became extinct in England and Scotland in the last century, and were down to about five pairs in one known valley in Wales. A special feeding and breeding campaign has restored the breed and there are three Welsh feeding stations that come into their own in winter. We visited the one at Bwlch Nant yr Arian near Aberystwyth and watched over a hundred birds hover overhead – making one uneasily think of Alfred Hitchcock and The Birds – before swooping down in formation, grabbing food and making off with it.

It was nice to hear all the families with small children speaking Welsh at the Kite center. When kids whine and demand food and the potty and parents bawl them out – all in Welsh – I can actually understand every word. It probably stems from my first experience of Welsh – my future mother-in-law bawling out her dog. So “sit down” and “shut your mouth” are Welsh phrases ingrained in my psyche. I tend not to use them with Mrs O though.

The Kite Center was in a nature reserve that was originally a site for lead mining. North Wales has its slate and South Wales its coal, whereas mid-Wales added lead to the mix. (Celtic Cornwall to the south adds arsenic and tin). All long gone, and nature – with a bit of help from European money – has transformed them. Out the back of my home is a huge nature reserve where once three coal mines stood. I’ve lived through the transformation. But Wales deserves it. All those years when the British Empire grew rich on the back of Welsh resources – and the native Welsh had to make do with pneumoconiosis and silicosis as their share. And their language stamped on with kids punished in school for using their own native tongue. It wasn’t surprising that so many of them took off for Pennsylvania.

So it’s been a good weekend. Now it is a mellow evening with Endeavour on the TV, a glass of red in the hand and a leisurely drive home tomorrow.