Category Archives: Travel

Travels in the Van, Visits to People and Places

Walking the Walk

It just so happens that Ty Rhos is only about half a mile from the West Wales Coastal Path, so as Thursday dawned bright and dry it would have been weak and unmilitary not to make the best of our lovely location and take a quick stroll along the coastline. I use the word ‘stroll’ advisedly as setting one foot in front of the other is still a bit of a struggle for me, not least when the path involves conquering the odd contour. Nevertheless we/I managed a mile or so of the cliff-top path which afforded some magnificent views and convinced us that we need to return here to walk more of the coastal path once I’m a little bit further along the way to full recovery.

View from the West Wales Coastal Path at Ty Rhos
Spectacular view from the West Wales Coastal Path at Ty Rhos

The drive from mid-Wales down to the Black Mountains was enjoyable; the roads were relatively empty, the scenery was attractive and the sun shone. For the past week we’ve been telling ourselves that we’ve been fortunate with the weather during this trip, but perhaps we’ve had it all wrong and this part of the world isn’t quite as monsoon-prone as we’ve always thought? Naw! The forecasts can’t all be wrong and if/when Atlantic weather comes rolling in towards the UK there’s little doubt that it’s going to drop its lot on this part of Wales first. No matter, as I’ve said before timing is everything and if you can time your visits to avoid the equatorial rainstorms then you’ll be rewarded.

Our final stopover on this adventure was at Pencelli Castle which sits in the River Usk Valley just outside Brecon.  The castle is long gone but the campsite that sits in its place is very pleasant and we were once again fortunate with the weather.  A short walk along the towpath of the Monmouthshire and Brecon Canal in the company of all manner of wildlife was followed by the inaugural ‘firing’ of the portable barbeque that the kids bought for my birthday.  Burgers and kebabs have never tasted so good – but we decided not to eat the wildlife!

Heron on the bank of the Monmouthsire and Brecon Canal
I wonder if this is the one that ate our goldfish?
Travels in the Van, Visits to People and Places

Let the Train Take the Strain / Colour My World

Having settled the ‘van’ onto the very well-manicured and equally expensive Islawrffordd Campsite for a couple of nights we decided yesterday to ‘let the train take the strain’ and bought a brace of ranger tickets allowing us to explore the coastal railway line that follows the edge of Cardigan Bay, skirting the coastline and stopping at numerous small towns and even smaller villages along the way. The grey landscape and buildings seemed largely to be unaffected by the equally grey weather – perhaps on a bright sunny day it would have been a more uplifting experience, but I doubt it. Not that the place is depressing or dull – just a little bit, well, grey.

We journeyed north past Harlech as far as Pwllheli, did a quick tour of the town, took in a few charity shops, had a coffee and slab of bara brith cake and then hopped back on the train which chugged (I’m old enough to remember the days when trains puffed rather than chugged) its way south, past our starting point of Tal-y-bont, through Barmouth and on to Tywin, which sits on the coast below Cader Idris. There’s not a great deal to do in Tywin, so we took in a couple more charity shops and scoffed a brace of sandwiches from the local Co-op on the promenade whilst looking out for bottle-nosed dolphins – which had obviously decided to stay home for the day. Yes, I know it doesn’t sound very exciting, but we enjoyed our day.

Today was Denise’s birthday, so obviously the wind dropped, the sun shone and the temperature started to rise. Having decided to advance our itinerary by a day we drove south to Aberystwyth which came as a pleasant surprise. Quite why the Victorians decided to establish a place of higher learning in the middle of nowhere I’m not at all sure, but no doubt generations of university students have been extremely grateful for their decision to do so because it’s lovely. Or at least it is when the sun’s shining and there’s ice cream to be eaten.

The surprise of the day was Aberaeron. It seems that at some time in the 1970s one of the residents decided to paint her house a bright shade of something and the idea caught on. Now virtually all the houses in this well-preserved town are painted in bright and contrasting colours and the effect is wonderful. Perhaps because they haven’t allowed the thing to become gaudy or ‘over the top’ the colour scheme just seems to work extremely well and it’s quite uplifting that so many in the community have joined in to make something that obviously gives pleasure to residents and visitors alike.

Aberaeron Harbour
Need to work on that waistline John ….

Tonight we’re staying at Ty Rhos, a small campsite just outside New Quay, which is a pretty and as yet unspoiled harbour village just a little further down the coast. A nice birthday meal in the village followed by a short walk along the harbour breakwater convincing ourselves that we could see bottle-nosed dolphins a good half mile out to sea made for a very pleasant end to a very pleasant day.

Travels in the Van, Visits to People and Places

Quiet and Comfortable – What’s Wrong With That?

There’s no doubt about it, life in the ‘van’ is infinitely more comfortable than camping. No tent to erect, no beds to make, hot and cold running water on demand and, most important of all, a large fridge to keep all that nice wine and beer properly chilled. I’m not at all sure how we’re going to cope if we have to revert to spending nights under canvas with the ‘Tufty Club’. Still, life is full of compromises – so perhaps we’ll just have to get used to occupying our ivory tower and be content to feel superior when necessary.

First stop on our Welsh itinerary was Powis Castle and gardens which proved to be a very worthwhile stopover. In the care of the National Trust since 1957 the castle has been in continuous occupation since the 13th century and was formerly the home of the Herbert family whose alumni, we learned, included Clive of India. The house/castle is fascinating (made even more so through the efforts of the many enthusiastic NT volunteers who were on hand to answer our questions) and certainly worth a visit …… but the gardens are simply sensational!

Powis Castle Gardens
Ah! So that’s where the gardeners were hiding!

Timing, of course, is everything and I think that we probably judged our visit to perfection. Just about everything was in bloom and, although we didn’t actually see any gardening staff at work, there must have been dozens of hard working horticulturists running ahead of us just making sure that everything was perfectly prepared for our visit. Highly recommended and perhaps even worth a return visit at some time in the future.

Our second night’s stopover was at Tal-y-bont, just north of Barmouth on Cardigan Bay. With more holiday homes to the acre than it’s possible to calculate without using an abacus this type of location probably wouldn’t be our first choice in high season, but outside the school holidays there’s nothing more raucous about most of these sites than the sound of pensioners gently snoring their way through Coronation Street or Eastenders. It seems that quiet and comfortable has got to be the way forward.

At Home in Woodmancote, Austin, Family, Travels in the Van

On The Road Again

The past nine months have been a tad difficult – not least when it came to sitting down and attempting to write an interesting, entertaining or informative blog. In August of last year I started to feel unwell and by the time I had been diagnosed with kidney disease towards the end of 2016 I was well and truly under the weather and largely ‘confined to barracks’ with little prospect of having anything interesting to write about.

These days the media seldom seems to have much that’s good to say about the NHS, however I have to say that my personal experience has been pretty much wholly positive. No doubt I’ve been fortunate to live in a part of the country where the service doesn’t seem to be permanently overloaded and in crisis, however being able to get to see my GP at virtually no notice and most importantly being able to rely upon the services of the experienced, caring and highly professional staff of Gloucester and Cheltenham hospitals has made the overall experience of being ill vastly more bearable than it might otherwise have been. I am immensely grateful for their help and support but, at the risk of seeming ungrateful, hope to be seeing rather less of them in the year to come.

Anyway, enough of all that! The good news is that as I hopefully near the end of my initial treatment (the wonderfully named Ponticelli Regimen) I seem to be making good progress and have at last been able to get back towards living a more normal existence, enjoying some of those things that I’ve been looking forward to over the past few months.

The first and most important news to report is the arrival of our first granddaughter, Gretel Lilly Ewbank, who came into this world in Nürnberg on 23rd February 2017 courtesy of her parents Richard and Collette. Gretel Lilly Ewbank She’s a beauty and a delight and no doubt will one day be a famous scientist, renowned artist or perhaps even a skilled restorer of classic cars. Who cares, just so long as she remains healthy and happy?

On the automotive front I have to report that Bertie has moved on to pastures new. Although we thoroughly enjoyed our relatively short period of Austin ownership it became increasingly clear over the past year that he was just one car too many for us and that we would have few opportunities to gain full use or enjoyment from him going forward. The good news is that he’s moved on to enthusiastic new owners and that for the first time in 47 years of automotive ownership I’ve actually managed to make a small profit from buying and selling a car!

Nature abhors a vacuum and the prospect of having a little spare space on the drive was obviously insufficient reason for not going out and buying another vehicle (not sure that sentence makes sense, but you know what I mean) so we immediately went out and bought a motorhome – what else? Our first short expedition to the north Devon coast in early May was an unqualified success so as I sit here tapping away at the keyboard we’re actually parked in a field in Powys at the start of a six day break which, if all goes well and the weather stays reasonable, should see us exploring the Welsh coastline and getting to know our new mode of transport. Today Welshpool, tomorrow the world – we’re on the road again!

Travel, Triumph

Le Mans Classic 2016

Working on that age-old (and probably deeply flawed) principle that lightning seldom strikes in the same place twice, and having replaced the Stag’s steering rack after it let us down at Laon earlier in the year, we decided to chance our luck once again and set off confidently for the Le Mans Classic along with the majority of Gloucester TSSC members.

TSSC gathering at le Havre en route to Le Mans
Preparing for our own ‘Le Mans’ start as we exit the Le Havre Ferry Port – any resemblance to a convoy is purely coincidental

As it turned out the car behaved impeccably from start to finish and thanks to the perfect weather, great classic racing and some very sociable company we were treated to a memorable and very enjoyable long weekend in La Belle France  – just don’t get me started on Brexit again!

PENT9769w
The real thing! The start of the first race for Vintage cars – Talbots, Bentleys, Bugattis, you name it and it was racing.
Triumph, Visits to People and Places

Laon Historique

Having thoroughly enjoyed last year’s TSSC trip to Spa we decided that for 2016 we’d ‘double up’ and join in with the Club’s planned trips to both Laon and Le Mans.  As we once again planned to camp it was an easy decision to take the Stag, which has enough room to squeeze in essentials such as camp-beds, extra blankets and a comprehensive toolkit.laon scheduleThe attractive provincial French city of Laon sits on one of Picardie’s rocky outcrops just to the north west of Reims, and as the drive from Calais passes through the Somme region we decided that after the Laon events we’d stop off for an extra night in Albert to visit a couple of the July 1916 battlefields.

PENT9516
Now, who’s got the map .?

In company with six other intrepid members of Gloucester TSSC we crossed from Dover early on the Thursday morning and then enjoyed an excellent and fairly uneventful drive through rural France, ending up in the central square at Arras with around five hundred other classics just in time for lunch.

Arriving at our camp site just outside Laon  in the late afternoonfate intervened.  Having stopped the car for a few minutes to help move a tent I jumped back in again to find that the power steering had packed in.  Disaster!  The wheel wouldn’t turn at all in one direction and would only move jerkily (a word I never knew existed) in the other.  Doom and gloom descended as I made arrangements for the car to be recovered (likely to take weeks), cancelled our stay in Albert and contemplated the prospect of once again attending a classic event without a classic car.  Fortunately at that moment a fellow traveller (thanks Matt) made the sensible suggestion to see whether the car would steer with the power steering disconnected.  It would – albeit you quickly develop arms like Schwarzenegger.

PENT9673
Could it really be ………? Yeah, baby!

The rest, as they say, is historique.   Saturday involved a 100+km ‘topless’ route through the local countryside, whilst on  Sunday everyone congregated in the centre of Laon to show off their cars before tearing through the cobbled streets at high speed whilst the local gendarmerie conveniently looked the other way.   Overall a lovely weekend in great company with more than a thousand classic cars as a bonus.  Next stop Le Mans – what can possibly go wrong …….?Scan_20160620

Cars, cars, cars, cars cars!, Triumph, Visits to People and Places

Down Memory Lane

As Saturday dawned bright and moderately warm we decided to drop the top on the Z3 and drive down to Calne to take a look at the Atwell Wilson Motor Museum which sits on the outskirts of the town.  With probably no more than half a dozen other visitors in the building it wasn’t exactly crowded, and it was nice to be able to get up close and personal with some of the exhibits.  They have an ‘eclectic’ range of vehicles on display , ranging from the 1920s through to the eighties and most are in pretty good condition.

The Atwell Wilson Motor Museum

The only Triumph car on display was a Dolomite Sprint, which was apparently on loan from the Heritage Collection at Canley, though there was a nice little Standard from the late 20’s and a 1920 Triumph 550 motorcycle – which by all accounts was the model that gave Triumph their first success before they went into car manufacturing.

Triumph 550 Motorcycle
Apart from the tyres this is exactly the state it was found in after sitting in a garden for 80 years.

On our way home we stopped at Avebury to get a meal in the pub and then walk round the Stone Circle.  Fascinating place (the Circle, not the pub) and much more accessible than Stonehenge – well worth a visit.

Avebury Stone Circle
I’m pretty sure they didn’t have colour film in Neolithic times!
Skiing

Pozza di Fassa

I’m not entirely sure why it should have taken me two complete months since returning from our week ‘s skiing in the Dolomites to get around to pulling a blog together.  Perhaps now’s the time to come out with that well-worn excuse trotted out by the recently retired  …’ I don’t know how I ever found the time to go to work’.  All true!  Anyway, notwithstanding the blogging delay, I can report that a very good week’s skiing was had by all.

DCIM100GOPROGOPR0184.

Having thoroughly enjoyed our visit to the Val di Fassa last year we decided to repeat the experience – but this time with the added bonus of being accompanied by Peter and Suzie who, throwing caution to the winds, agreed to join us and trust in our choice of resort.  Fortunately the ‘skiing gods’ must have been with us because we certainly struck lucky with the hotel and, as it turned out, the weather.

DCIM100GOPROGOPR0197.

Looking at the rotten snow reports in the days leading up to the holiday I must confess to having panicked a little and at one point actually thought of cancelling our ski passes and packing the walking gear.    In the end, however, I needn’t have worried; although the snow was decidedly ‘sparse’ the resorts did an excellent job of making the best of what they had available, and with the help of numerous snow cannon they produced pistes that were well up to our fairly limited standard of skiing.

The end result?  No broken bones, a few centimetres extra on our waistlines and, most importantly, a thoroughly enjoyable holiday with good friends.

DCIM100GOPROGOPR0183.

 

New England, Travel, USA

Cape Cod

Provincetown, which sits at the very tip of the Cape Cod peninsula, was the first landing point for the Pilgrim Fathers before they moved on to establish their colony a  little further up the coast at what was to become Plymouth.  It was also the final holiday destination for our three week New England trip.  The town has a special feel about it; as the local fishing and whaling industries started to fade away towards the end of the 19th Century so the area drew in artists who were attracted by the gentle scenery and the soft light which,  rather like some of the western tips of the British Isles, has a particular quality about it.  Hard on the heels of the artists came sculptors, glass workers, writers and poets, and with them the gradual establishment of a small, close knit, bohemian society which eventually, and perhaps inevitably, became a focus for America’s gay community as they ‘came out’ in the final decades of the last century.   By all accounts the summer months also bring vast numbers of tourists, but by the dying days of October most visitors have departed and we were able to stroll through what is effectively a one street town with mainly locals for company.

Whether as a result of strict planning laws or the application of good taste most towns on the Cape seem to have avoided the out-of-town shopping developments and commercial ‘strips’ which, in my opinion, have blighted some of the towns we’ve visited over the past three weeks.  Perhaps as a result of land in Provincetown being at such a premium most of the residences in the town are modest in size and those that nestle along the sea shore are universally picturesque.

Pilgrim's Monument, Provincetown
The Pilgrim’s Monument towering over Provincetown

The Pilgrims’ Monument which dominates the Provincetown skyline is incongruous in the extreme.  Built by local subscription in the early nineteen hundreds to remind the rest of New England of the town’s importance as the Mayflower’s first landing point, it rises 252 feet above the town with a design based on the Torre del Mangia in Sienna.    As one Boston architect said at the time ‘ if all they want is an architectural curiosity why not select the Leaning Tower of Pisa and be done with it?’

Life's a beach .........
Life’s a beach ………

Outside town the land consists mainly of dunes which, having been largely de-forested over the past three hundred years, are now closely protected from development.  As you walk along the foreshore the sea looks pretty much as it does in other parts of the world, though the iconic Cap Cod lighthouses add something special to the landscape and inevitably, therefore, feature in everyone’s holiday snaps.

Yes, I know its not a lighthouse, but I like the light
Yes, I know its not a lighthouse, but I like the light

Fortunately the weather was kind to us for this final stopover.  After a spectacular sunset on day one we were rewarded by a bright but cool day, which was perfect for exploration, and a ‘hunters moon’ to round off  a great holiday.

Hunter's Moon at Provincetown
The Hunter’s Moon
New England, Travel, USA

Conspicuous Consumption

When sociologist Thorstein Veblen visited Newport at the turn of the twentieth century he coined the phrase ‘conspicuous consumption’ to describe the actions of some of America’s new entrepreneurial millionaires in flaunting their newly acquired wealth.

The evidence of their excesses can be seen in the many opulent mansions, known to the locals as’ cottages’, which were created by families such as the Vanderbilts and Astors who were determined to out-do one another, and whose creations today still line Newport’s famous Bellevue Avenue and Ocean Drive to draw tourists from far and wide.  Fascinating viewing, but more than a little incongruous to find a French chateau sitting alongside an English country mansion and  with a Chinese Teahouse at the bottom of the garden!

A Newport cottage
One of Newport’s so called ‘cottages’ – who says American’s don’t do irony?

A number of the properties are open to the public, but rather than add to the tourist footfall we saved our pennies and completed the seven mile ‘Ocean Walk’ which provides plenty of opportunities for peering over hedges into the back gardens of the rich and famous.