A few days in Wales

impossible songs in wales

impossible songs

A few days in Wales etc.

Monday marked a trip to IKEA, meatballs and furniture and the grandchildren in tow. The cars are loaded with cardboard and polystyrene all the way home.

Tuesday a hot drive down the M6, top down in the blazing sun, then the twisting roads of North Wales, just made for an MX5. Llandudno is our main port of call, a random destination for us but filled with fading grandeur, sunglasses, Victorian hotels, promenades and more old people you’ve ever seen hobbling and zimmering across the streets. An odd but pleasant place to find yourself. Our hotel is enormous, empty and straight out of the Shining. We feel strangely at home in this architectural curiosity, the owner is eccentric but caring – we watch the standards slowly slip as our stay progresses, not an easy trade to be consistent in. The food is first class but the sense of collapsing weirdness prevails and lasts all week. Day trips, seaside, virile young surfers and the geriatric majority. Trams and pubs, walks along cliff top paths, a Bronze Age mine and empty beaches. I buy trousers, Ali buys a bag. The World Cup plays on in the background and we ignore most of what is going on in the wider outside world.

We take the train to the top of Snowdon, in a crowded, rattling condensation filled bathtub of a carriage. The peak is in the clouds and once there we drink coffee and eat sausage rolls in a weatherproof bunker of a café. The sights are however spectacular. Then Pirates of the Caribbean at the late night movies (a nice piece of flimsy fun), then back up via Manchester, the shops and the art gallery for a minor family gathering. A fine little holiday.