Where's Bertie? He's sitting in the front garden of a bungalow in Prestatyn. The owners allow motorhomes to park here for £10 per night, including water and waste. One electric hook-up point is available on a coin-operated meter.
Weather: Yesterday fine and warm, today a showery start, but dry from just after 9am.
Back in the middle of March Bertie made the monster drive home from the south of Spain over the course of four days, since when he has, bar a one-hour interlude, sat patiently waiting to go somewhere else. At the end of March we SORNed him, but at the end of July we'd been without a car for a couple of weeks, and had an empty fridge and pantry, but supermarket delivery slots were still almost as rare as hen's teeth. So we re-taxed him and on 1 August we drove him to the supermarket. We also had optimism at that point that we would be taking him on a trip somewhere before the month was out.
By Saturday evening just gone there were just four days left in the month, Bertie still hadn't been anywhere and it had become clear that our intended month-long trip in October was going to have to be postponed. Having forked out for two months road tax already, there was a sudden imperative to get something for our money, before SORNing him again on Wednesday.
"Let's go to the seaside!" I said. A quick think about the nearest bit of seaside that's easy to reach via good roads, and I suggested Rhyl as a destination. We've only been there once before, when we stayed on a campsite for a couple of nights in Colin (Bertie's predecessor) when I was walking the Wales Coast Path. Whilst my experience of the town only extended to walking the seafront (at around 7am, I would guess, which perhaps didn't give a true representation), I didn't find the place as tacky or offensive as its 1980s reputation suggested I might*.
The fact that the campsite we'd previously stayed on was charging £25 per night to rent a small patch of grass didn't put us off entirely, after all, we were only going to be there for 2 nights and this year has been easy on almost all categories of our household budget. It was only as we were in Wales, proceeding along the A55 westwards yesterday (Monday) morning, that I asked Google Maps how far it was from the campsite into Rhyl itself and discovered that my memory had significantly shortened the distance. Why pay £25 to stay 2 miles away from town, when we could come to Prestatyn and pay £10 to be a 5-minute walk from the beach in one direction and town in the other?
There are possibly good answers to that last question. I wouldn't want to offend anyone who likes holidaying in Prestatyn, but I also haven't yet come to understand why anyone chooses to come here on holiday ... and I do appreciate that I'm saying that as someone who chose to come here on holiday. It's an odd place is Prestatyn; not like most seaside resorts I've visited in the past.
It's of no matter for our current purposes. Our objectives for this trip were:
- to have a few days break from Project Erica;
- to sit around reading a lot;
- to go out for breakfast;
and we've been doing a good job of achieving those aims. That also means there's not much to report as to our activities; we've mainly been sitting in the front garden of a bungalow on Marine Road (which, objectively, could come across as a strange way to choose to spend a couple of days!).
From this morning's run. Fine weather looking towards Rhyl; overcast looking back to Prestatyn.
There have been a couple of walks, and one run along the seafront (I nearly went to Rhyl this morning, but turned back just a couple of hundred metres short, at the point where the promenade was closed for engineering works), books have been read and we did indeed enjoy breakfast (brunch really; it was gone 11) out. The latter was an unexpectedly relaxing activity once we'd checked in, having chosen, entirely by chance, an establishment with good social distancing in place (although the 'order over the internet from your table' arrangement was a tiny bit stressful, particularly when I accidentally hit 'back' at an inopportune moment).
Quality breakfasts. The eggs were cooked to perfection.
We'll be back home tomorrow and who knows when Bertie's tyres will next hit the road?
(*Maybe I just like seaside resorts that are oft perceived to be tacky? We went to Blackpool around this time last year and to Benidorm earlier this year and on both occasions I opined that I wouldn't baulk at a cheap and cheerful holiday in either location.)
Weather: Yesterday fine and warm, today a showery start, but dry from just after 9am.
Back in the middle of March Bertie made the monster drive home from the south of Spain over the course of four days, since when he has, bar a one-hour interlude, sat patiently waiting to go somewhere else. At the end of March we SORNed him, but at the end of July we'd been without a car for a couple of weeks, and had an empty fridge and pantry, but supermarket delivery slots were still almost as rare as hen's teeth. So we re-taxed him and on 1 August we drove him to the supermarket. We also had optimism at that point that we would be taking him on a trip somewhere before the month was out.
By Saturday evening just gone there were just four days left in the month, Bertie still hadn't been anywhere and it had become clear that our intended month-long trip in October was going to have to be postponed. Having forked out for two months road tax already, there was a sudden imperative to get something for our money, before SORNing him again on Wednesday.
"Let's go to the seaside!" I said. A quick think about the nearest bit of seaside that's easy to reach via good roads, and I suggested Rhyl as a destination. We've only been there once before, when we stayed on a campsite for a couple of nights in Colin (Bertie's predecessor) when I was walking the Wales Coast Path. Whilst my experience of the town only extended to walking the seafront (at around 7am, I would guess, which perhaps didn't give a true representation), I didn't find the place as tacky or offensive as its 1980s reputation suggested I might*.
The fact that the campsite we'd previously stayed on was charging £25 per night to rent a small patch of grass didn't put us off entirely, after all, we were only going to be there for 2 nights and this year has been easy on almost all categories of our household budget. It was only as we were in Wales, proceeding along the A55 westwards yesterday (Monday) morning, that I asked Google Maps how far it was from the campsite into Rhyl itself and discovered that my memory had significantly shortened the distance. Why pay £25 to stay 2 miles away from town, when we could come to Prestatyn and pay £10 to be a 5-minute walk from the beach in one direction and town in the other?
There are possibly good answers to that last question. I wouldn't want to offend anyone who likes holidaying in Prestatyn, but I also haven't yet come to understand why anyone chooses to come here on holiday ... and I do appreciate that I'm saying that as someone who chose to come here on holiday. It's an odd place is Prestatyn; not like most seaside resorts I've visited in the past.
It's of no matter for our current purposes. Our objectives for this trip were:
- to have a few days break from Project Erica;
- to sit around reading a lot;
- to go out for breakfast;
and we've been doing a good job of achieving those aims. That also means there's not much to report as to our activities; we've mainly been sitting in the front garden of a bungalow on Marine Road (which, objectively, could come across as a strange way to choose to spend a couple of days!).
There have been a couple of walks, and one run along the seafront (I nearly went to Rhyl this morning, but turned back just a couple of hundred metres short, at the point where the promenade was closed for engineering works), books have been read and we did indeed enjoy breakfast (brunch really; it was gone 11) out. The latter was an unexpectedly relaxing activity once we'd checked in, having chosen, entirely by chance, an establishment with good social distancing in place (although the 'order over the internet from your table' arrangement was a tiny bit stressful, particularly when I accidentally hit 'back' at an inopportune moment).
We'll be back home tomorrow and who knows when Bertie's tyres will next hit the road?
(*Maybe I just like seaside resorts that are oft perceived to be tacky? We went to Blackpool around this time last year and to Benidorm earlier this year and on both occasions I opined that I wouldn't baulk at a cheap and cheerful holiday in either location.)
I passed through Prestatyn in May 2011 and apart from listing it I made no comment but I reckon I saved up my collective thoughts for the Welsh seaside holiday towns in my comment on Rhyll a bit further north:
ReplyDelete"The front at Rhyl was dreadful. Blaring amusement arcades and the sickly overpowering stench of food deep fried in rancid oil which seemed to hit you in warm wafts. I couldn't, bear to go into any of the cafes." My brother commenter RR took me to task about suggesting the oil was rancid. Perhaps he was justified but it is a splendid word.
I spent seven years working all of my school/university holidays, and many weekends, in a Welsh seaside resort. Days were worked in a shop right opposite a funfair and amusement arcade from which music constantly blared (sometimes just one album on repeat the whole day through) and evenings in a snack kiosk that sold doughnuts cooked in one of those oil-filled doughnut machines (the smell of which would stick to a set of clean clothing within minutes). I reckon that accounts for part of the reason why I'm partial to such resorts, although having visited Rhyl again today, I've maintained a 100% record of only having seen the place when it's quiet and without any notable smells of cooking (in rancid oil or otherwise).
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