I was the first to rise this morning, which is a first. Normally, John is the early riser, followed by me and then Lisa. I had no real reason to get up especially early, but I wanted to get on the road reasonably early enough to enjoy a full day out.
The plan was for a full, cooked English breakfast this morning. To that end, I had pulled some pre-packed portions of bacon and sausages out of the freezer and into the fridge last night in preparation for this morning. Each clingfilm-wrapped portion of bacon was labelled with a letter, which I noticed but hadn’t fully appreciated the significance of. One letter meant ‘breakfast’, and the other meant ‘dinner’, and I had pulled the wrong one out. Fortunately, John caught that in time and corrected my error.
John decided he would cook our English breakfast this morning. That was probably because he read my ‘I have no idea where to start or what to do’ demeanour when I was hovering around the kitchen, looking lost. Mission accomplished, then. I took a seat and prepared myself to be dazzled by John’s legendary cooking. I was not disappointed. My plate full of bacon, sausages, eggs, mushrooms and toast & butter was served piping hot and just beginning to be devoured. Lisa happened to walk in just as he was plating, but turned immediately around after spotting (or smelling) the eggs. Lisa has a strong dislike for the smell of eggs, so we tend to only cook them when she’s not in the kitchen. I knew I’d probably be having fish ‘n’ chips later today, but I figured it would be rude to refuse a home-cooked English breakfast. Indeed, I took one for the team and scoffed the lot. Well, it would be rude to refuse the hospitality, right?
After breakfast, John put a load of washing into the system, so I added what little I had to go with it. That was fortuitous, as I was running low on clean clothes. I had originally packed for a single week, but it is looking like I’ll be here for at least another week.
The three of us considered further some potential destinations for me today, but I decided to stick with my Plan A and programmed Aberystwyth into my maps app.
I made it a few hundred metres from the house before stopping on the side of the road to tend to an engine service light that had been on for the past few hundred miles or so. I wasn’t overly concerned, since the engine wasn’t running hot and there were otherwise no other indications of an issue. I just thought I’d take a moment to explore the car’s menu system to see if I could reset it or something. I’d been meaning to do this before but kept forgetting each time I arrived somewhere and parked the car. I figured now would be as good a time as any to look into the situation more closely. I had no schedule to keep. After a few minutes of research and exploring the various menu options, I couldn’t find a way to reset it. It requires either plugging the car into a special reader to read out the specific error code, or disconnecting the battery for a few minutes to reinitialise the system. Sod it. I pulled away and ignored it. What could possibly go wrong anyway?
I meandered through the Welsh hills and valleys towards the west coast and the town of Aberystwyth. I had no idea where I would go upon arrival, but I drove until I reached the sea and scoped out a spot to park the car near one end of the promenade. It was a pay-and-display location, so I found the nearby parking meter to collect a ticket. Normally, everything in Wales is posted in both English and Welsh, but the on-screen display on the meter panel was only showing Welsh. I prodded a few buttons and reached the point in the process where I had to present my phone for payment. The number 3.50 was displayed sandwiched between some other Welsh words. I had no idea what that meant, how long the ticket was valid, etc. I took a risk and presented my phone, hoping for the best. As it turned out, I paid £3.50 for a two-hour ticket. It could have been much worse, I suppose. I placed my ticket onto my dashboard, and wandered off to explore the Aberystwyth promenade. I did note that very few other vehicles lining the promenade were sporting parking tickets on their dashboards, but some were. I was happy to contribute for the privilege of parking my car, even though a parking ticket would likely have no real-world consequences for me.
One of my avid blog followers and very good friends in Florida, Kristy, has been following along vicariously through my writing for the past week or so. She had sent me a QR code for an Adventure Lab geocache route that explored the Aberystwyth promenade. The idea is that you follow the instructions to explore different points of interest along a given route, answering quiz questions about each waypoint as you go. It’s like the next level up from regular geocaching, which Sandy and I enjoy doing occasionally. Kristy and Carlos are also avid fans of the pastime, so she pointed me to an Adventure Lab route for Aberystwyth as a suggestion for what I could do when I got there.
Kristy’s Adventure Lab route turned out to be a huge success for me. It just so happens that the route trails the length of the promenade, and I happened to be parked near the start of that route. As I walked from waypoint to waypoint, I listened to some narration on the app about each point of interest, learning a few things as I went. It gave me an anchor and a direction to follow. I might otherwise have wandered off in some random direction and missed out on some interesting facts about the town.
The promenade is roughly crescent-shaped, about a kilometre and a half in length. The main drag hugs the coastline and is lined with Victorian seaside terrace architecture. Much of the promenade looks like a single 3-4 story tall building, with the same-style façade stretching for hundreds of meters. Subtle changes in pastel colour distinguish the properties from each other, each of which was advertising vacancies in its windows in Welsh. I got the distinct impression the vast majority were currently vacant. Despite the seaside town vibe, with locals and tourists alike milling around, I got the impression this town’s heydays are behind it. It’s the height of summer and in the middle of the school holidays. The weather is really quite pleasant. By all rights, this should be absolutely bustling with hordes of people, but it seems a little subdued. It doesn’t feel run-down or depressing, as some seaside towns can, but it does feel like it should be busier this time of year. I get the sense that British seaside town culture has shifted over the years. A few decades ago, places like Clacton, Southend-on-Sea, Brighton, Blackpool, and Aberystwyth would have been absolutely heaving with people, such was the allure and popularity of ‘going to the seaside’ with the kids. Today, the zeitgeist seems to have shifted, leaving these places feeling a little more like relics from the past. I could be overstating it. Maybe it does get busier here depending on the time of the year.
I noted the funicular climbing Constitution Hill at the end of the promenade. It’s the longest of about a dozen or so cliff railways still operating in the UK, at least as far as electrically operated ones go. I made a mental note to ride it later in the day.
The sea was lashing the stony shoreline quite relentlessly as I wandered the length of the main drag. There was a manned lifeguard station, but there were some flags out, presumably signalling the dangerous conditions, and nobody was in the water. The beach, if you could call it that, was a grey stony beach with little to no sand anywhere in sight. If it weren’t so turbulent, I might have enjoyed a climb down there to explore the rocks and crevices.
The unmistakable sound of gulls squawking rang throughout. Dozens of them hung effortlessly in the air, floating on the sea breeze, looking for easy opportunities to collect fallen chips and other human snacks. Between the gulls, crashing waves, and salty sea air, the whole place had a definite seaside vibe.
Despite my full English breakfast, nostalgia called and I couldn’t resist partaking in a traditional seaside fish ‘n’ chips meal by the pier. When in Rome, as they say. They only had cod on the menu. That’s still the default everywhere, though these days even cod is far from immune to the same overfishing pressures that pushed Rock Eel, my personal past favourite, off the menu. One wonders how long even the staple cod will last. A disdain for unsustainable fishing is actually one of the reasons I tend not to eat as much fish compared to when I was younger.
I sat immediately outside the amusement arcade to polish off my fish ‘n’ chips, keeping a watchful eye on the gulls and pigeons scavenging daringly close to everyone. When I was a child, the amusement arcades in the seaside towns we visited would typically be half-filled with prize bingo halls, penny-pusher machines, and the like. The penny-pushers are still here, mixed with other brightly coloured and loud machines employing all manner of techniques to part children and adults alike from their money. It’s not uncommon to have to spend £20 or more to win enough tickets to convert into a small sweet or plastic toy worth a few pennies at most. There’s something seductive about the bright flashing lights and exciting sounds that draws the punters in, and the arcade operators know it all too well. A visit to an amusement arcade remains a popular part of going to the seaside here in the UK. It’s a part of the culture that refuses to die.
I made my way to the end of the promenade after finishing lunch, past the architecturally interesting Aberystwyth University. Alas, it wasn’t showing its best side, as it was clad in scaffolding and undergoing renovation. A short walk farther was the Castle Point War Memorial, adjacent to Aberystwyth Castle. The castle ruins are freely accessible, which was a nice bonus. Between the memorial and the castle, I was spoilt for choice with photo opportunities. I made it a point to linger for a while, taking in the stunning views in every direction. With no pressing need to move on, I wanted to absorb it all.
Eventually, the prospect of riding the funicular grabbed me, and I slowly made my way back along the promenade. By the time I reached my car, I was huffing and puffing a little, so I got in and tried to find a spot closer to the railway’s entrance to repark the car. I wasn’t that far away to begin with, but I do find myself struggling with long walks or hikes nowadays. Even trimming off a few hundred meters was worth the effort. Fortunately, I found a hidden spot to place the car, although I was lucky to do so. It had by now got busier. For good measure, I popped a few more painkillers in anticipation of back problems to come.
The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway opened in 1896, and scales roughly 130 metres as the cable-connected twin carriages trundle at a slow 4 miles per hour in opposite directions up and down the cliff track every ten minutes or so. It used to be a water-balanced system, but was converted to electricity in 1921. A single adult fare was £9, but for an additional quid, that included the return journey. There was also the option of walking the meandering track to the summit. There was no way I was going to be able to walk all the way up. Those days are clearly behind me now. I spent the full £10 just in case I was too knackered to attempt the walk down. That turned out to be the right decision in the end.
The views from atop the summit are nothing less than spectacular—very much worth the effort I put in to reaching this location today. The weather was just about perfect, with a lovely breeze taking the edge off the summer sun. The views out into the distance were topped only by the views down to the rugged coastline below. Footpaths reached perilously close to the cliff edges, which at times were really quite sheer.
I decided I’d earned myself an ice-cream in the gift-shop/restaurant at the top—another typical seaside visit ritual from my culture. My enjoyment was only marginally dislodged by a small group of Middle Eastern women wandering around with a speaker blaring out Middle Eastern music to which they were all dancing and singing. I had nothing against them enjoying their music. It’s just that everyone within a hundred-metre radius also had to listen to that music whether they wanted to or not.
For the princely sum of £1, I bought myself entrance to the Camera Obscura, one of only a handful that exist anywhere in the UK. It’s essentially a periscope that funnels light from the top of the building down through a cylindrical opening, focusing a resulting image onto a viewing disc. It’s pitch black inside the ten-metre diameter enclosure, and all you can see is the image from the periscope reflecting onto the disc. There’s a joystick that electronically controls the direction the periscope points, so you can manipulate the image to show parts of the promenade and bay. It was a lot of fun for a few minutes, and a genuinely interesting curiosity.
Having gawked in awe of all the wonderful views from atop Constitution Hill, it was time to make my way back to the car. I considered walking down, but not for long. I’m glad I didn’t, as I struck up a conversation with a group of 4 elderly Welsh women while waiting to board the train. We had a lovely little natter. I actually drove past them a short time later after retrieving the car and making my way back through the small side streets back onto the main road.
I programmed Llanwnog into my maps app, electing to take a different route home than the one that brought me here. I figured it would be nice to see more of Wales, and it would only add fifteen minutes to the journey.
I did stop at a crafts shop that I spotted as I made my way back home, figuring why not? It turned out to be a bit of an expensive tourist trap, so I didn’t linger.
Back home, I wrote up today’s blog notes and sifted through the day’s photographic takings, which were considerably more than any other day so far. I really enjoyed myself today, and I think the plethora of photos I brought back with me shows it.
I got a message from Jae while I was sorting through everything. She recently started working for our nearby supermarket and wanted to show me her very first payslip. As a bonus, she got paid for the portion of her first month on the job. She wasn’t sure whether she would receive that money already, expecting instead for that to be paid in arrears in next month’s pay. I could sense her enthusiasm for being paid a relatively large amount of money compared to the weekly pocket money I had been giving her. I’m really proud of what Jae has achieved these past months and years. Against all odds, she has graduated, passed her driving test and now started earning an income—all significant milestones. All of this gives me great hope she will fledge and be fully dependent on her own steam for the future. That makes me incredibly proud, pleased and hopeful for her future.
After putting this blog entry together, the three of us polished off another truly hilarious round of LIJONG, where Lisa’s near statistically impossible run of bad luck continued, much to John and my entertainment. As a happy bonus to polish off the day, I was also able to help resolve the mystery of why their music system wasn’t seeing all the tracks on the USB stick they were using. It turned out their particular music system doesn’t support more than 1024 tracks on a single USB stick. Figuring that out was incredibly rewarding, if slightly frustrating, as I tiptoed around John’s understanding of how the technology works.
I had a fantastic day today. I’m really glad I decided to visit Aberystwyth. This represented something of a pilgrimage for me. I had always wanted to revisit this place ever since I was taken there by Mum and Dad some fifty or so years ago. In some ways, I feel like I’ve come full circle. Aberystwyth didn’t disappoint. I don’t know if I’d go back there by myself again, although I’d be tempted to take Sandy there if ever the opportunity arose. There are still plenty of other corners of Wales I could explore in the remaining week I plan on being here. I can’t wait to let Dad know. I’m sure that will evoke plenty of memories for him to recount, which is one of his favourite things to do. I look forward to exploring them when I see him again in about a week.