Last night Mike and I stayed in Barmouth beside the sea. Due to a lack of occupants, our innkeeper upgraded our accommodation to a large room with an ocean view. Very generous but the view was mostly of crashing waves through rain and fog.
The morning showed no improvement. Ever hopeful, we had made an expensive reservation to ride the train up the mountain in Snowdonia National Park. The drive was more fog and rain. The little we could see was an amazing landscape of hills of Welsh slate darkened by rain, water cascading down between rocks, patches of yellow-green vegetation, and large impressive waterfalls. The blobs of light color were the hundreds of sheep calmly nibbling grass in every field and verge.
The only interest of our train ride was our fellow passengers. It was easy to concentrate on them as our visibility was little more than twenty feet. There was the Japanese lady sitting next to us who slept for the hour to the summit and the hour back to the station and the overwrought child who screamed for the first fifteen minutes of the return trip and whined off key with each exhale for the rest of the journey. The most disturbing was the sleazy smoker of advanced age with the very young Korean woman who looked to still be a teenager. She played Tetris on her iPhone while he was inappropriately affectionate. Released from captivity we headed for a late lunch where everyone in the cafe was speaking in Welsh. It does not sound like the spelling indicates it should.
At my request we retraced our steps through the slate hills. The clouds lifted, the rain stopped and we were rewarded with a clearer view of the slate hills and endless cascades of water flowing down the hills from every direction. The elevation of the road must be close to an ecological dividing line. Dropping down the hills changed to thick forest that created an umbrella canopy over the road. Bordering the narrow roads were miles of stone walls and white houses with slate roofs. And, of course, more sheep.
Our last port of call for the day was Portmeirion. It is described in a guidebook as "a seaside fairy tale of Italianate buildings in a hotchpotch of pastel shades set on an isolated peninsula with a backdrop of a beautiful tidal estuary." Beginning in 1925 Clough Williams-Ellis spent fifty years developing the site. It is truly an odd place. The public faces of the buildings, very expensive to rent, are brightly colored and elaborate. The backs are quite plain. The terraced gardens found in front of and between the buildings are well tended. We soon noticed the preponderance of religious figures representing every faith built into the walls, gardens, and sculptures.
Tonight we are staying in a bakehouse, our very own small detached dwelling, one of the outbuildings of a farmhouse. The stone walls are about two feet thick with the interior painted a cream color. The ups and downs of the carpetted floor give the impression of it having been simply spread out over a ploughed field. The old stone fireplace sits at one end of our small, cozy space. The hearth now forms our sitting room of two chairs, with the chimney above our heads. Our own private garden is around the back, down a few stone steps, with an ancient boat oar salvaged from a nearby beach utilised as the handrail. The two donkeys belonging to the farm owner are corralled a few steps away from the front door of our wonderful little abode, and the view of the sea is in the distance. I wonder if the donkeys provide our morning alarm call?
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