Days Of Wonder

I am here on the island, my ostensible reason being to see a roofer about the leaky chimney, but, in truth, mainly because I love it here. The only downside is that the Groupie has not been able to join me on this occasion. It has been a notable break.

For journeys up here I have abandoned the M6 even though it is potentially the quickest route - the expense of the M6 Toll cannot be justified and, besides, if you get held up on the motorway, you really do get held up. The shortest route is the old A5, also the most scenic. However I favour the A458/A55 - quickish (exactly three hours on Thursday) and scenicish. 

A very productive meeting with the roofer, RJE, on Friday. Like all the tradesmen on the island (in my experience) he is friendly, reasonable and charming. So far , so good then, but it was yesterday (Saturday) that turned into one of those days of wonder. Up early and drove to Anglesey Golf Club where I maintain country membership (ludicrously cheap compared to Birmingham) and I had bitten the bullet and entered a Stableford. Now playing with strangers can be daunting but not at The Anglesey. I was warmly greeted and paired with AJ, a Mancunian who served with the RAF at Valley and married a local girl and stayed here after he left the forces. The course was wet but eminently playable and there was a strong wind that made the back nine very challenging. We were round in three hours. The course won but I had a lovely time. If you see me, remind me to tell you about my birdie on the fourth. 

And as if that was not enough, as I drove back across Mon, Snowdonia (sorry, Eryri) glared at me, sun-kissed and snow lying on the northern slopes. Beautiful. 

I was back in plenty of time to open a bottle of Rioja (Gran Reserva naturally) and watch England subside to defeat to Ireland in the Six Nations. This much was predicatable and I won't bore you with another lecture on the problems besetting the grand old game in England. I then watched the recording of the Scotland v Italy match without knowing the result. Isn't Blair Kinghorn a good player!

Anchovies on brown toast for supper. 

You will notice that I have drawn a sensitive veil over the demolition of Wales by France on Friday evening. I find it best not to intrude on private grief. Mind you, DH the greenkeeper was kind enough to remember that I had been a player and elicited my opinion. I comforted him by saying that England would lose and that Wales have unearthed another quality player in their captain, Jac Morgan.

Slept like a baby. Days of wonder.

Yesterday I Have Mostly Been:

Visiting Bodnant Garden. This is a wondrous place and as good a reason as you might find to justify the National Trust policy of taking over a great garden even if the adjoining great house does not come with it. I believe this policy may have been instituted with Bodnant as its first example. The Groupie and I walked extensively and enjoyed a picnic lunch at the Far End of the garden. 

Eating - anchovies on toast. A particular favourite.

Drinking - Chianti.

Feeling - good about life.   

Advent 19

The best course I have played this year? Royal St. David's at Harlech. Stroke Index 1 at Royal St. David's? The 10th, a 400 plus yard par 4 to which I hit a career three wood and made my par. Thus the hole gets into this list because sometimes, just sometimes, a plan comes together and keeps you coming back for more punishment. Mind you I didn't feel many good vibes at Telford yesterday - not until my approach shot to the final hole - a six iron that was at least well-struck if a little misdirected. Ain't that just the way it is?

Royal St. David's

Some, possibly most, golf courses can seem an affront to nature - they are imposed on the landscape. However the very best courses foster the illusion that they just happened. Such a course is Royal St. David's in Harlech which I had the great pleasure of playing last week with one of its newest members, my mate Big Willy, latterly of Cavendish Golf Club (another, though lesser, gem) though now beginning a new life in North Wales.

A golf course overlooked by a castle, flanked by a railway, sitting amongst rumpled dune land. Beautiful. Oh and thanks to the miracle of the handicap system, I actually won our match with an improbable par from the bunker on the eighteenth. Wainwright's Bitter in the clubhouse.

What's Not To Like? No. 3 - Of Red Wine And Trifle

Storm Callum is today battering Ynys Mon so the Groupie and I have been housebound, her doing some housework (which, yes, does make me feel guilty) and me clattering out a few hundred words of the thesis - actually clattering is the wrong word of course because the modern keyboard does not sound the percussives of old-fashioned labour. How many of you who happen upon this will wonder quite what the old fart is on about?

More good times have been had here on the island and indeed on the mainland. Bodnant Garden: another bloody brilliant experience - been there umpteen times but it still enthralls and we actually managed to find a part of the garden that had eluded us on previous visits.

Church Bay in the rain - spendid. Robinson's Blonde Ale at the Trecastell Hotel - splendid. Coronation chicken on white bloomer with side orders of chips and onion rings - even more splendid. Red wine for supper with Tesco trifle - food of the gods. That wasn't all I ate but those are the bits I can recall. Lovely.

Schitt's Creek. Heard of it? On Netflix. Rather good.

It's still pissing down but storms do have an attraction. Weather is transient, scenery is permanent. 

 

Are Brilliant ... Mark XXIV

Running up hills - actually this is hell whilst you do it but the aftermath floods your mind with unwarranted righteousness, even if the hills in question have all but finished you physically.

Benllech beach - ran on it before I tackled those pesky hills. In the off-season, as now, the sand is at its cleanest peak and you can run in near solitude. Endorphin city.

Canyonero (it's a Simpsons reference - look it up). This car has served us well and still it basks in the glory of its seven year warranty. Now that's great marketing.

Llyn Padarn, around which magnificent water we walked today. Yes, all the way around and me fresh from a run as well. Made up for the mess of food I ate yesterday.

Guinness and a portion of chips, with which I rewarded myself at the end of the walk. The Groupie went slightly more upmarket - sauvignon blanc and chips.

Llyn Ogwen, still bound in ice and which we took a scenic diversion to drive past on the way back from Llanberis.

My mood. Top draw deluxe. And next week is Cheltenham. Life is good.

The One Less Traveled By

(And by the way, for the curious, that is the spelling of 'traveled' that Robert Frost chose). The road less taken for me in my journeys to Anglesey is these days the one that I invariably took in our early years of ownership - the A5. The more prosaic M6 is a speedier route. But today I took my time and came up the old coach road. As I turned into the Ogwen Valley I was reminded of Snowdonia's majesty and the CD brought up some clamorous Verdi right on cue. Life's been good.

The road to somewhere

Holidays 16.7 - The Middle Class At Leisure

National Trust membership is de rigueur for the ageing middle class, or so it would seem. OG and Groupie have, of course, been members ever since they were young fogeys, which was, naturally, shortly after they were amongst Thatcher's chosen few - the original yuppies.

I have already championed the rhododendron garden at Plas Newydd and the remarkable mural in the dinning room at that property. But we have been getting full value from our membership this week so today the story of two more gardens and one quite arresting property.

The laburnum arch at Bodnant

First of all a garden which comes without a house - well not quite accurate because there is a house at Bodnant but it is not in National Trust care. It is only the gardens that have been bequeathed to the nation. They are enough. I'm no expert so won't essay a description except to say that there is a photegenic laburnum arch; there is a photegenic series of water features; there are photegenic formal gardens; there are photogenic massive trees; there are - well, you get the picture.

A river runs through it

Bodnant is testament to man's penchant for accommodating and improving mother nature. As a postsctript: if using satnav, ensure that yours is not set to avoid all tunnels. It transpired that our was so disposed - why would this be - are Koreans ubiquitously tunnel-phobic?

Treardurr Bay...  Nice.

Before I return to National Trust properties, a word for Trearddur Bay where we walked pleasingly yesterday and got sun-burnt. A stunning coastal resort. I think we have to admit that the south of the island has even better vistas than the north where sits the OG country estate. Oh well.

Today it was the turn of Penrhyn Castle. This huge folly is gloriously bonkers. Don't let the name fool you. This was not built for miltary purposese. It is a mock Norman fortress established at the behest of Richard Pennant (1739-1808). It always puts me in mind of the fictional Xanadu, lair of Charles Foster Kane in Citizen Kane. It is impossible to imagine anything quite so grandiose being attempted by a potentate of modern British industry. Just at the moment (and credit to the National Trust for this) there is an 'installation' on show which draws parrallels between Penrhyn and the architectural adventures of Las Vegas. It does not avoid the awkward truth that some of the Pennant fortune that paid for the building (most of which came from the local slate industry) had the taint of the slave trade upon it. No matter, go and have a look and be awed by what can be achieved. It does have gardens which, if you want to be hyper-critical, are looking faintly tatty but this place is all about the bricks and mortar.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure dome decree

Holidays 16.3 - The Birds

I was out running this morning - yes I know I had said that I wasn't going to do it anymore but I have brought the old (very old) mountain bike to reside here at the country seat and when I took it out for a spin the other day I came to a grinding halt at the first hill of any substance. The superior gearing on the Precious Cannondale has made a wimp of me and I can't move the bloody old machine. So, ill-advisedly, I ventured forth to shuffle the mean streets of Benllech. You've guessed it - as I  approached the three mile mark (this it seeems is my watershed) the left calf gave its telltale twinge. Bollocks. Still I did stop at the first sign of damage so hopefully this afternoon's planned beach walk will be alright. Getting old is a pig.

Runner's enemy

Before my injury trauma I had been attacked by a flock of seagulls. Honestly - the bastards kept dive-bombing me. It was like Hitchcock's The Birds. Well, I exaggerate, but it was mildly disturbing. Do they react to the colour red? Answers on a postcard to etc.

Barbecue tonight. Sod any diet. 

Holidays 16.2 - A New Contender

A day of familiarity and at its end a new discovery right under our very noses.

the Whistler mural - a national treasure

Familiarity - the rhododendron garden at Plas Newydd. Rhododendron are an invader but now glowingly assimilated and at the far end of the Plas Newydd estate they make a pretty picture - as can be seen from the OG + Groupie papsnap hereto attached. As for Plas Newydd, well we didn't have time today to trot through the house (we are National Trust members natch, compulsory at our age and station in life) but everyone, and I mean everyone should do so because of the Whistler mural.

The new discovery: The Tavern on the Bay, a restaurant and bar at St David's Park, Red Wharf Bay. Now you would have thought that putting a gastro pub type operation on a holiday park would be a recipe for disaster. Well, I'm still not quite clear how they've got away with it but most assuredly they have. Yes there are families there but the service is so swift and charming that you are taken aback.  A light and clean room with panoramic views from Moelfre to the North and the great Orme to the South. Bosting. None of this would work without the food being good and the news is that it was more than good. OG had a steak which was terrific (and he's fussy on steak) and the Groupie loved the chicken in a parmesan sauce with onion rice. Nice chablis to wash it down. We'll be back. Within the week I suspect. Genuinely arresting experience - Tavern on the Bay

Holidays 16.1

The Boy Roberts and the Groupie are at the country estate for a long break. No foreign holiday this year what with us being poor and all.

First built by the Welsh, captured by the English and  recaptured by the Welsh

We sat together in the grounds of Criccieth Castle yesterday afternoon and beheld a perfect sun flecked sea. As Joe Walsh correctly said (and as I've oft quoted before) 'life's been good to me so far'. Criccieth is genteel, yes that's the word, genteel. No, bonheddig, which my dictionary tells me is the welsh descriptor. There is a pleasing plenitude of civic grass and an absence of seaside tat.

Criccieth took me back to 1968 when the Roberts family took its annual North Walian holiday in the town. I recall it vividly because it coincided with the final Ashes test at the Oval, a game most remembered for its denouement when Derek Underwood felled the Australian batting to deliver an unlikely victory for England. But my memory of the match (which I followed in the newspapers, there being no television in the rented house) was the batting of Edrich and D'Oliveira, their scores still burned in my mind - 164 and 158 respectively. Edrich (like me left-handed) was a particular hero.

I have it in my mind that something earth-shattering also happened during that late August week to burn itself on my eight year old consciousness. False remebrance has always told me that it was the shooting of Robert Kennedy but that in fact occurred in June of 68. Checking back I note that our holiday in fact coincided with the rolling of Soviet tanks into Prague and the end of the Prague Spring. Cursed to live in interesting times.

Another Good Day - Winter Golf

Big Willy and I completed our brief North Wales tour with a round at Conwy Golf Club on Monday. The weather again benign although not quite as bright as the two previous days. Altogether a lucky trip. As if to emphasise our good fortune it rained copiously out of foggy skies as soon as I got back home.

OG advises avoiding the bunkers

Conwy is a proper links and a proper grown-up test of golf, not as pleasing on the eye as Holyhead but, if you get my drift, probably a 'better' course. Yet again the hospitality was notable. As is only right and proper Big Willy won on all three days. It's only a game (I refer you to my last blog on that particular topic).

Climbing Up Another Sunshine Mountain

There is an infallible test for gale force winds - simply find out when Number One Daughter and I are taking to the mountains of Snowdonia. We were at it again yesterday, this time following the Fisherman's Path out of Beddgelert. But nothing could stop us, not the gales and certainly not the flooded ground and swollen rivers. On we ploughed undaunted until we came to our happy abode, or more precisely until we got back to the Canyonero aka Kia Sorento. Of which more below

 It is ten months since I announced the purchase of the Sorento, its major attraction being the seven year warranty. Well, 12500 miles on and the reports are all good. One minor quibble - the radio is pretty rubbish, a fact that Sharon never lets me forget - getting it sorted is one of my new year resolutions. Another is to leave the gym, of which more another time perhaps.

We're All Climbing Up The Sunshine Mountain

just for information I'm not as fat as the bottom left picture suggests - I had my top knotted around my waist!

Well actually once we got past half way on the Pyg track we were shrouded in mist. To complete the difficulties there were very strong winds but nothing was going to stop the Overgraduate and his number one daughter (I speak chronologically) from reaching the peak of Yr Wyddfa (that's Snowdon to you and me) last Saturday. A brilliant day in excellent company and with Sharon acting as taxi at either end of our exertions. This was part of Helen's training for Kilimanjaro next January. As for Snowdon I'm going to do it again on a sunny day when I can see for miles. Bosting fun. And there was surpassingly excellent home made chilli con carne back at base camp.

We went up the Pyg track which is not for those averse to a bit of scrambling but discretion was the better part of valour on the way down and we came down the Llanberis path. The winds were brutal enough to blow me off my feet at one point in the descent, fortunately suffering nothing worse than a sprained ankle. I repeat, bosting day.

Sequence And Consequence (No 1) Mountain Sea Sand

(       )

There

is

no rhyme

in mountains

but sharp poetry

today embraced by lying snow's

deceit flowing in fair face frozen invitation

(                                                                     )

Alienated by ocean we wait on the beach's poetry zone

of practical amplitude and measure

maximum oscillation by skimming stone

we can insert equal and opposite

forces of disruption and still they come

and still they come plain exquisite

exquisite plain away and home

(Appian Way St Peter's Dome

We stray) and lift behold again

and now redux exquisite plain

What I Did On My Holidays. Day 2.



Shaz and Dave on the Orme

 The Great Orme. Even better views than Portmeirion and these are absolutely free if you take on the mildly strenuous task of walking all the way to the top. Alternatively you can be a day tripper and take the cablecar or the tram or even drive up. You should walk. I prepared for our expedition by eating a generous portion of Llandudno seafront cod and chips which is no doubt what Hillary and Tensing scoffed before they set off up Everest. There are several paths up the Orme. Take a circular route by following a different one down and thereby make sure you get to take in the views both east and west.

Chilean sauvignon blanc with tea. Very acceptable.

What I Did On My Holidays. Day 1.

Rhod Gilbert puts it best, 'Come to Wales ... it's not shit any more.'

We spent today at Portmeirion, Clough Williams-Ellis' bizarre and lovely folly. Not one building but more than forty perched beautifully on a private peninsula.

Williams-Ellis worked on the site from 1925 to his death in 1978, fitting this consuming hobby around his professional practice as an architect. Before he acquired the site he had found time to serve in the Great War, winning the M.C. in the Tank Regiment. He lost his only son at Monte Cassino in the second War. I also note that he had attended Oundle School thus proving that my dear friend ViperJohn was not the first glorious nutter to grace that hall of academe. 

Portmeirion is not pristine. It has an air of getting-by rather than profiteering and is an antidote to the Disneyfication of architectural whimsy. The architecture adds to the scenery rather than seeking to overwhelm it. There's lovely.

... Are Brilliant Mark XI

brilliant

The Dyson Airblade. How much are they? I want one in my bathroom.

I was reminded of this wonder of design when visiting the highly commendable toilets at the also brilliant Conwy Castle, wherein you find not altogether subtle signage commenting on the role of the English in subjugating the Welsh. Mind you we did build quite staggering  castles and  thus made a gift of a tourist industry so we can't be all bad.



brilliant

Next ... it's on BBC1 at this very minute which is a great good fortune at the end of a good day ... Pirates of the Caribbean, or most particularly the wondrous Johnny Depp therein. Brilliant also in Blow and Public Enemies, the latter also starring the almost equally watchable Christian Bale.



brilliant

Telford's Menai Suspension Bridge. Best viewed of course from the larger Britannia Bridge we use to cross to our happy island. Which remains brilliant.

... Are Brilliant Mark IX

a culinary revolution

The Golden Fry, The Square, Benllech, Anglesey. There are two chip shops in Benllech, but this is the one for the connoisseur. It has the less auspicious  position but this is where you should go. In a tradition defying departure it serves its chips in boxes (I know, who would have thought) which not only helps prevent chip adhesion (sorry but if you don't know what I mean you obviously don't eat badly regularly enough) but also allows compartmentalisation of your chosen fish - I think one will agree that haddock is the gourmet choice but cod will do.

The National Slate Museum at Llanberis. It's free - an edict of the National Assembly, rather like free prescriptions it's one of those boons of devolution about which an Englishman shouldn't think too long. It's really interesting. And if there's one of the slate splitting demonstrations on, you must go because if you get the chap we got , he's a shameless and very effective comedian.

William Selwyn, a North Wales artist. 

Glaslyn Ale. My taste for real ale has been reawakened over the past couple of years, an unexpected benefit from amateur dramatics and the habit of its participants of going for a post rehearsal bevy. An honourable mention here does have to go to the oft derided Witherspoons pubs because they maintain a selection of reasonably priced cask ales.

A Midsummer Night's Dream. Another piece of Shakespeare I had underestimated - how do I keep making this mistake? On close acquaintance with this play (currently rehearsing Egeus - another grumpy old bastard - why do  I always get these parts?) I realise it is, and here as ever I bow to Jonathan Bate, 'one of his [Shakespeare's] truly essential works because nowhere else is his double vision more apparent'. Production details at Shakespeare in the Park Lichfield 

State Of The Nation

James Delingpole is by way of a lucid right wing nutter, that at least is how the liberal concensus would rather demean him. He rails against the anthropogenic global warming industry and against received economic wisdoms. One should, one is told, not be duped by his erudite blandishments. His sort is dangerous. The Boy Roberts is not so sure. We are, I trust you will agree, in a bit of a mess at the moment and you will have sussed by now that I am inclined to the view that certain received wisdoms have helped us on our way. Now Delingpole, as columnists are paid to do, goes a little too far on occasions but he never ever ever spouts drivel. Here's a sample of his eminent sense,

Until we can educate ourselves that, as Frederic Bastiat put it, 'Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else', we will never get out of the ginormous heap of economic and sociopolitical ordure in which we find ourselves buried up to the neck.

I was painfully reminded of this when I saw some oaf of a teacher on television last night talking of her poverty and signally failing to comprehend that the nationalised education industry has degenerated into one run not for the benefit of the customer ('kids' as we must call them) nor even for its wider 'stakeholders' (that would be you and me by the way since we pay for it all) but for the convenience of its employees. If you want to see where this finishes then try dealing with our politically invulnerable but utterly bonkers National Health Service. Talk about the law of unintended consequences.

Enough. In a pub yesterday we had a vast and reasonably priced all-day breakfast and were charmingly greeted by a bit of local colour - Dai Davies, veteran of 267 fights (he told me this - never knocked out) and silver medallist at the 1970 Commonwealth Games, welterweight division. Dai was not entirely sober but neither odiously drunk. He told Sharon she was pretty so the man is a good judge. I dare say you will find him in the White Lion Bangor most days and I dare say he will talk to you. And the breakfast alone is worth the visit.

You might gather from this that the Roberts are Eastering at their coastal estate. The new floor looks marvellous (Karndean oak lookalike) and the new boiler is wondrously silent, something you notice if you knew the cacophony of the ancient model it replaced. I bought two designer tee shirts (RochaJohn Rocha since you ask) in Debenhams in Bangor and I had a pint of cider with my all-day breakfast, both of which acts felt allowably decadent. As I write this I am eating chocolate for breakfast. I am not drinking alcohol. Yet. I am going to have a second mug of decent coffee - which stimulant tastes markedly better when taken in view of the sea. Today we plan to go to Conwy. England appear to be in the process of redeeming themselves a little by winning a test match in Sri Lanka.

Last night we watched the Douglas Sirk melodrama All That Heaven Allows. I watched quite a bit of 50's melodrama during my not entirely happy term studying film last year and this is a real period piece, a type of film just not made any more. One does have to say that worse hands have been dealt to a man than looking like Rock Hudson. There is an intersting and worthwhile treatise to be written on the use of windows as framing devices in this film.  

An announcement to all our listeners. Iron Dave will not be partaking of an early season triathlon because of his rehearsal schedule. He has auditioned for and won the part of Egeus in the Lichfield Shakespeare in the Park Midsummer Night's Dream. This is not a major part but it is a thespian step forward for Iron Dave - details of the production at Shakespeare in the Park