The Brecon Beacons

Tuesday 28th October, 2008

Arrived at the Brecon Beacons Youth Hostel at lunch time today, after a brief stop to see the castle at Abergavenny (above photo taken from that vantage point). I followed my own advice and left Bath very early to avoid any chance of arriving here after dark. Thank God! I would never have found it if the girl in Tourist Information had not given me explicit directions and written them on a map. It’s one of two YHAs within a few miles of Brecon, and they’re both wedged in between farms on narrow roads bordered with hedges. Another problem is that I’ve lost the folder I assembled with all my bookings and addresses and phone numbers. I do have most of them in the memory of my laptop; I hope that will be enough when I turn up to take the ferry to Ireland in a couple of days.

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One would imagine that coming from NEW South Wales, as I do, I would see something like the landscape of South Wales. Look and judge for yourself. Do we have green grass? Do we have black hills? What a shock for someone who believes that language carries meaning.

It’s beautiful here. Go here to see the photos of Wales. Tomorrow we’ll ramble round the hills and look at the country about us.

Not feeling particularly comfortable tonight. The youth hostel is chockers with families (fathers & matching mothers) with children. (It’s mid-term break.) I am the odd one out, the single parent. Alex is fine, though. Enjoying himself immensely. He’s downstairs now having found some children to play with. I’m alone keying my computer and feeling like a goose among the swans. I never felt this lonely when we stayed in empty accommodation or when we were surrounded by pairs of friends traveling together. Something about other people’s families that is so exclusive.

Bath in Daylight

Sunday 26 November, 2008

This was our first view of Bath as we approached the centre over a paddock yesterday. We’d seen nothing like it the night before and we stood in awe.

Bath is narrow ancient streets of creamy bathstone and cobbles, churches and the Abbey, the Roman Baths and buskers, street performers and sightseers. More people than we’ve seen together in one place since London. Crowded and a bit crass, I’m afraid.

I had a lot to look at, though: all the places associated with Jane Austen from her holidays and later residence here. So many scenes from “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion” played out among the Georgian structures.

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We walked around looking at the buildings where Jane and her family had stayed, where Anne Elliot had gone to the theatre, where Catherine Morton and Isabella Thorpe had followed the two insufferable swains from the assembly rooms. I enjoyed it, despite the hordes blocking my way at every step. Alex was mightily patient.

His favourite activity was watching the jugglers, the card tricksters and acrobats in the square in front of the Abbey. He must have spent a couple of hours in the first row, collecting the jokes and savouring the death-defying moves. Back down the hill to Bath today, to go inside the Abbey and the Baths, to have a (very expensive) cup of coffee at the Pump Room.

Go here to see a selection of the Bath photos.

Tomorrow morning (early!) we leave for Wales and the Brecon Beacons.

Bath

Saturday 25 October 2008

Every journey has its low point and I hope I reached it yesterday. There are so many baffling things when you travel to a new country, even when the locals speak your language. I have renewed respect for the major hurdles our students have to leap. Not that my experience yesterday was as difficult as theirs, but for me it was frightful. I made a few basic errors and found myself in the poo.

Lessons to learn: 1. Always set out early enough to arrive in the new place before dark.

We had had to put off seeing Tintagel Castle on Thursday because of the weather. It was closed due to danger of death. There was a gale and the sea and rain were strafing the sheer edges and peaks of the island on which the castle stands. Also due to the weather, we hadn’t walked to St Materiana church. It’s on another part of the island, less dangerous to traverse, but not pleasant in a howling gale with lashing rain. And we had not seen Merlin’s Cave, underneath Tintagel Castle. We could hardly leave Tintagel without seeing the sights which had brought us there, so we stayed in town for three hours or so, clambering over rocks and climbing up and down impossibly steep, rocky staircases.

So wonderful! Such hard work! (See Tintagel Images.)

After our walk, we hopped into the car and drove to Port Isaac (Port Wenn from “Doc Martin”). We could not leave Cornwall with going there. And we were so close! So we arrived, parked -- parking is always difficult in England and it always costs -- and walked around with a host of other pilgrims, to view the holy relics of the TV series. Pretty town, with the screams of seagulls and tiny, crooked old houses.

I had my first bona fide Cornish pastie sitting above the little fishing harbour. Wonderful. The examples I’d eaten in Oz before yesterday were not even the same species. The crust was buttery and we tried two kinds of fillings, steak with sweet potato and potato, and cheese and onion, neither of which resembled the grey, gluggy mass that I’ve had on occasions in Australia.

So on to Bath. Took an age. Had wanted to stop at Coleridge’s Cottage on the way, so took the A39, a smaller road than the motorway, only one lane in each direction, most of the way. Joined a slow procession of holiday makers (today begins the half-term break) behind tractors and slow supply trucks. Coleridge’s Cottage closed for the winter, so we made our way to the A4 and headed for Bath. A4 was good. Up to 80 mph a lot of the way, but then we had to turn off and approach Bath through a hundred hundred narrow lanes, lined with hedges and miniscule villages whose single laneways were choked with parked cars.

Finally arrived in Bath after dark. But where was the Youth Hostel?

Lessons to learn 2: Always get clear directions to the accommodation BEFORE you arrive in the place. We drove around and around Bath for an hour before we could park and then ask someone who knew where Bathwick Hill was. Luckily he was going in the same direction so invited us to follow him. Thought our troubles were over. But no. There’s another lesson to learn.

Lessons to learn 3: Make sure your mobile has enough credit to make emergency calls. It’s easy in Australia, I know roughly how long my top-ups will last and it’s always easy to top-up before I run out of calls. But I don’t know the worth of a pound, I don’t know how much each call costs on Mobile-T. I don’t use the phone much; I hadn’t expected that after 5 or 6 calls I’d used 10 pounds worth of credit. Did manage to call the Youth Hostel to get more directions. The Mobile-T voice tells me I have one minute of talking time. Dave at the Youth Hostels says, when you see a bus shelter on your left, our driveway is on the right. Sign outside says YHA. OK. Bus shelter, driveway opposite, sign, got it. (Was there more than one bus shelter? No, lots of bus stops but only one shelter. ) Phone cuts out.

Not enough light to make out a sign. Drive into the driveway opposite bus shelter. Big, spooky old house. No lights. Ring the doorbell, bash the massive knocker against the door. Light upstairs. No one comes to the door. Waiting, waiting, ringing, knocking. Nothing. I suggest to Alex that we walk back down the hill a bit. Perhaps we can see a sign from the footpath.

We meet a couple of walkers and they tell us the youth hostel is just around the next bend. We find it about a kilometer down the hill, opposite another bus shelter. Walk up the steep gradient of the long, black driveway, sit Alex down, check in, then I walk back to get the car, up the dark hill. Some of the characters we’d encountered while asking for directions in town made me think I wasn’t in Port Wenn any more, and I wasn’t very happy as I approached a group of young people walking towards me. Tried to peer through the gloom, hoping not to see shaved heads and hobnailed boots, hoping to see girls among the boys.

But I did make it back to the spooky house where the car was parked, and finally back to the YHA.

Alex very disappointed after the luxury of Avalon to land in the tiny, uncomfortable room. No telly. No fluffy dog to pat. No choc-chip biscuits in the tin on the chest of drawers. I told him it was good experience for his own journeys when he grows up and wants to travel and hasn’t got much money. Not a lot of consolation.

“Mum, have we had dinner?” Kitchen closed by now (8.45 pm). I can’t face a walk down the hill into to town to buy something for him to eat. (Can’t face getting into the car again, for fear of getting lost.) So, he has cereal, eaten in fistfuls from the packet. He has an apple. I discover a junkfood machine. He has nasty crisps, a Kitkat and a bottle of water. Call it dinner. Lets make the bunks and lie down.

Tintagel

Friday 24 October, 2008

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The lanes used to do my head in. This is a two-way road we drove along to arrive here. Now, though, I’m used to passing vans and buses on roads like this. Ha!

Tintagel is beautiful: a village dangling off the edge of a cliff over the Atlantic Ocean. Yesterday Alex and I did a walk to St Nectan’s Glen. (See the photos of Tintagel.) Good St Nectan settled here in 500 AD and since the sixth century, pilgrims have been making the trek to his sanctuary on the Trevillitt River. It’s magic. People come from all over the world and leave offerings and keepsakes, photos, drawings, letters asking for prayers, and build stacks of flat stones. They tie rags and ribbons and bits of wool to the branches of the trees. They burn candles. And Alex and I were there all alone in the the wood, looking at the waterfall and the offerings, with only the sound of the water rushing down the cliff to break the silence.

It rained here in the afternoon and I thought we’d go for a trip to the south of Cornwall to see if the weather was any better. Well, of course, as you warned me Vik, it took longer than expected. And when we arrived in St Ives two hours later, there was a wall of rain, impossible to leave the car, even when we managed to find parking. Stayed just long enough to back into a low rock and break a small light on the bottom of the bumper bar. We’ll see how much this ill-advised trip to St Ives will cost me when I take the car back.

I wish I had booked an extra day in Tintagel, but I’ve already booked and paid for the next three days in Bath, so we’re off east this morning, after a side-trip south a bit to see Port Isaac (Doc Martin’s Port Wenn).

Lyme Regis II

Tuesday 21 October, 200

Image via Wikipedia

Had our first bad weather since we arrived. It rained all day yesterday. Our fossil hunting tour was cancelled and there are no more until the end of the month, when we will be in Wales. Alex very disappointed. It’s because there are no low tides in daylight hours until then, I think. And today’s rain made the area dangerous and the cliffs liable to slips. Despite that we will have to go and have a try at least today even if it is still

Image via Wikipedia

raining, otherwise Alex will be inconsolable.

Went to the Lyme Museum yesterday and saw information about the history of the place. Quite prominent were the major slips from the past especially the great landslip of 1840 when the wheat crops fell over the cliff and had to be harvested from the undercliff.

Despite the rain got out and about and saw the Royal Lion Inn where the Uppercross Party spotted their handsome cousin William Elliot in “Persuasion”. Yes, there was an entrance where the horses and carriages would have entered and departed and also one across the street from where William Elliot’s would have departed. Saw Captain Harville’s cottage where Loisa Musgrove was carried, senseless, when she was taken up from the Cobb. It’s now called Jane’s Cafe. Unfortunately, Anne-Marie Edwards, whose book I had been using as a bible for Jane Austen spotting, and the Jane Austen society, don’t agree totally on all points relating to Jane’s geography in Lyme. This means I check out two or three possible sites for every place. Some places have disappeared, such as the assembly rooms where Jane danced on September 13 1804. It’s now a car park. But, the particular letter which was addressed to Cassandra and recounted the happy Ball at the assembly rooms, might well have been posted from the extant letter box in the external wall of the Old Lyme Guest House, where Alex and I are now staying. I’ll get a photo of that hole in the wall when the rain stops.

Lyme Regis I

Monday 20 October, 2008

Arrived here yesterday after a beautiful walk through the house and gardens of Stourhead in Wiltshire. (Thanks Merrie for turning me on to to it.) Autumn leaves, a temple of Apollo, a grotto, a Pantheon, an obelisk, a Palladian Bridge, an inn: it’s got it all. Click here to see the photos.

Beautiful 2-mile walk. Alex complaining all the way, telling me it would rain. His mood improved remarkably after some hot chips and an ice cream at the Spread Eagle Inn. Joined the National Trust for one adult and one child: something that you can’t do online from Australia. You have to join for two adults or a family, both of which are prohibitively expensive. But now I have a year’s membership, so if you’re coming over sometime in the next year, just pick up my card first.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Old Man & the Sea at Lyme

Arrived at Lyme Regis around 5.30 yesterday. Thought we’d drive around & try to find the Old Lyme Guest House. It was scary. Narrow streets, only enough space for two cars if both drivers breathe in. And cars parked. They tell me buses go down the streets too, but I can’t imagine it. I was afraid of scratching the Jetta. Car is parked up the hill in a council car park & we’ve got a pass to leave it there. We won’t be driving it around here.

Tiny, tiny, beautiful rickety little town clinging to a steep hill on the edge of the sea. Like a fairy

Image by audreym via Flickr

tale full of pirates and lost boys and treasure. Tried to walk down to the harbour last night, but the icy gale blew us back up the hill. No sight yet of the Granny’s Teeth where Louisa Musgrove jumped. We had dinner in an Indian restaurant called Qilla Lal. Very good. This morning, after breakfast, the Jane Austen walk around town and to Uplyme.

There is an internet cafe, in town, so I hope to be able to publish the last few entries to the internet this afternoon.


Tuesday, 21 October 2008

Had our first bad weather since we arrived. It rained all day yesterday. Our fossil hunting tour was cancelled and there are no more until the low tide. The tide comes in and washes the cliff away, strewing fossils on the beach.

Stonehenge

Sunday 19 October, 2008

This morning got up early to pack sandwiches and dress to be at Stonehenge for the morning viewing. It costs almost twice as much as the later viewings, but it’s quite exclusive and the group is allowed inside the inner circle, whereas those who come later must look from outside.

It was lovely in the misty sunrise to walk among the great stones. The twenty or so people there with us were quiet, as we were, perhaps feeling the magic in the rings.

We looked at the place where the British Army had used the stones for target practice during WWI. (Shades of the Taliban and the Buddhas of Bamiyan.) We saw the famous graffiti.

Went for a walk along the Avon River in Salisbury after that. Bright sunshine, dazzling on the water; swans, ducks, little kids and dogs. We ate our sandwiches watching the waterbirds diving.

Back now at Cholderton. Alex is out saying last goodbyes to his animal friends as we leave for Lyme Regis tomorrow.