Friday, 20 September, 2019
Wales is beautiful…well, Pembrokeshire is. I’ve not seen that much of Wales – bits and pieces and some of it so long ago that I no longer remember the details.
Pembrokeshire is in southwest Wales in that sticky-outy part of the coast where, if you look up to the sky, there are planes travelling from and to North America. In fact, when I cross the Atlantic from Toronto, I’m aware that I’m probably flying over Emma’s town as we reach the coastline.
The trouble is – look away you country folk – Pembrokeshire is rural, dotted with little villages and towns, and it’s wasted on me. Somehow the gene that makes people sigh with relief when they reach the countryside and drink in all that greenery and smell that fresh air skipped me.
Give me the urban life.
But there were five days, more or less, in Wales. Precisely in Goodwick (in Welsh, Wdig) a small coastal town that is twinned with Fishguard (in Welsh, Abergwaun, meaning “Mouth of the River Gwaun”) . There are about 5,000 people living in Fishguard and Goodwick – yes, it’s that small. Emma’s little part of Goodwick is called Stop-and-Call. Confused yet? The photos below show the view from Stop-and-Call, 330 feet from the centre of the town. You can see that you’re high above the harbour.
Most my time at Stop-and-Call was spent sitting with Emma in her bedroom. Since she’s become less mobile, she’s set up the space with an armchair she can sleep in, a work space, and a small area with a microwave and bar fridge. She goes downstairs when she’s going out. Emma has carers and her son, Sam, helps out. Most of the time it’s Julie, who lives a short walk away. There seems to be a regular routine to all this but Emma says that, after years of yearning for time alone, she spends hours by herself now. She misses London, where she once owned a flat off Brick Lane. I used to love visiting her there.
Emma’s husband, Colin, has been living in a rest home for some time now. He has’end-stage’ MS and so there’s also a complex routine for him, which is shared by Julie and another carer, also called Emma. A lot of Emma’s time is taken up with advocating for Colin and for herself and her family. It’s interesting to see the choreography of it all.
After a quiet but chatty day spent with Emma in her room on Tuesday, we made plans to get out on Wednesday to a spa hotel called The Cliff on the edge of Cardigan. We were promised a stunning view so why not. Elaborate plans were made for the drive – Sam’s friend, Dave, drove us there along many narrow, hedge-lined road, country highways with all the attendant farm vehicles intruding briefly, and through the lovely little towns of Newport and Cardigan – two places I’d consider going back to should I be in Pembrokeshire again.
The Cliff hotel was at the very edge of the Irish Sea. We ate lunch in the sun on the patio, Emma with her wheelchair umbrella. I chose a pasta with local cockles but regretted my choice. It was heavily sauced and this completely swamped the flavour of the cockles, and it was heaped with some crisp, crumbled bacon, which I pushed aside after a couple of tastes. So much for my food review. Well, not quite… Krish and I strolled down to the edge of the cliff to look at the sea, where I took a couple of photos. Then we walked back to have dessert on another bit of the patio that had more comfortable chairs. A deconstructed cheesecake to share…hmm. Three ice cream scoops of under-flavoured dense cream cheese, some biscuit crumbs, a slice of dried orange and some (I thought bitter) blood orange sploshes on the plate. Awful!
(P.S. we preferred the view from Goodwick!)
The following day we had more elaborate plans that would include Colin joining us. We were going to The Shed, a fish and chips shop in Porthgain. They advertise that they catch their own fish and it’s decent – the locals and tourists love it. We’d been there before and I was looking forward to it.
Porthgain is Welsh for beautiful port. It’s an inlet with fishing boats and some little cafes and shops where The Shed is. The most striking feature of the port is the large brick hoppers, now unused, that sit on the hill above the sea. From below they look like the ruins of some impressive fort. They’re considered ‘ancient monuments’ of the town’s industrial past and are protected.
We drove back to Stop-and-Call after checking out the local artists gallery (I saw some paintings I’d quite like to have!) and dropped Sam off at his cottage. Then Rhian and Emma drove Krish and me to Strumble Head.
It’s described as a ‘rocky headland’ and is dominated by a lighthouse that is a way-point for transatlantic flights. The land is wild. As we drove along, we saw cows but also a herd of wild horses, which I sadly couldn’t capture from the van as we sped along – a few blurry photos of nothing much haven’t made it here to the blog!
In fact, there aren’t many photos at all. The land is open, like farmland, but people sat in their deckchairs contemplating the ocean and the sea. We didn’t have much time.
It was our last night. After dinner, Krish and I went out to the back garden and stared at the stars. So many! Had things been different – Sam had just had knee surgery and wasn’t allowed to drive, we might have gone out to darker space to see the night sky. This, however, was far more than we’ve ever seen in London, and haven’t seen for many years anywhere. But we saw stars, so many stars, and the Milky Way – they are all still up there! We tried to take photos, with hilarious results.
And so we were headed home. A comedy of errors meant that we had to walk down the steep hill to the station with our cases. I was dreading this, while at the same time looking forward to it. The views are nice and we’d finally be free to walk by ourselves and look about. It’s definitely steep but there are interesting things to see along the way. An old house with ‘Ebenezer 1828’ on the side, near the top of the hill. A house with a Canadian flag flying over it – what on earth is going on there? And just the little houses and the harbour below.
Two hours to Port Talbot and two and half to Paddington, where we got caught in severe delays on the underground home, but home it was!
