I was just searching for a blog post that I'm sure I wrote, but can't immediately locate, when I came across this one that I wrote contemporaneously last November, but apparently forgot to post.
I set myself a target to get to 600 Marilyns by the end of the year – a target that was somewhat derailed by Erica being off the road for so long. With her back in action (although not entirely well), I set about planning a trip to Wales, which I then decided (given the time of year) was probably best split into two trips. This was the first.
Thursday 13 November – Cemmaes
An early start would have been good, but it turned out that my willingness to get out of bed before 0730 wasn’t equal to my desire to get up four hills today. We were, however, away by around 0830, and three hills were successfully visited on our way to Cemmaes.
As marvellous as Erica is as a campervan, with Mick joining me on this trip, but not on the hills, it would have been a bit much for him to be holed up in Erica for five days straight. Moreover, the days are short and the nights long at this time of year, Erica is small, and we had failed to pack light. Erica was thus to behave as a day-van, and I had booked accommodation.
That’s how we came to be staying in Cemmaes. It’s not an obvious tourist destination, but with a whole one-bedroom house on a farm available via AirBnB for £59 per night (bear in mind that last month we were looking at a minimum price of £42 for a night on a campsite near Pitlochry), it made it worth a bit of to-ing and fro-ing.
The house was beyond expectations. Neither pristine nor modern, but clean, warm and comfortable, with big rooms (except the tiny kitchen) and high ceilings. There were even scones and Welshcakes, with jam and butter left out for us.
Friday 14 November – Cemmaes
The weather forecast for Friday was pretty dire, with Storm Claudia passing across the UK, but at the end of Thursday I saw that we were sitting in a very narrow gap in between a weather warning for strong winds to the west of us and heavy rain to the east. We were still forecast rain the whole day through, and winds gusting between 40 and 55mph (lower early in the day, over 50 from 11am).
Waking early and finding that there was nothing extraordinary going on with the weather, we made haste to get out reasonably early, being slightly waylaid by our host who popped around to bring us a vase of flowers, a multi-pack of cereal and some milk – well above and beyond the service expected at such a cheap self-catering accommodation.
Mick could, of course, have stayed behind, but he kindly offered to drive me and I graciously accepted (it makes life easier if there’s an issue with parking). Two hills were successfully visited, and whilst I got wet and it was decidedly breezy, it was far from the strongest winds I’ve experienced on hills this year.
There’s a coffee shop in Cemmaes, so we popped in on our way back. A strange place – an olde-worlde grocery store with wooden shelving around the perimeter and fresh veg in the middle, with a bizarrely diverse array of wares. In amongst all this were a couple of tables that served as the coffee shop element of the establishment.
Coffee/tea and cake was all they sold – a disappointment for Mick who was starving and hankering after an all day breakfast.
Back at the farmhouse, we were happy to be indoors for the rest of the day. As forecast, it did rain all day, but the wind didn’t get up to any remarkable extent until around 10pm, after which it howled and battered for a few hours.
Saturday 15 November – Abergynolwyn & Aberdyfi
We’d asked our host whether we could stay an extra night, but she very apologetically told us that she already had another booking. I’d thus booked us alternative accommodation (in Tywyn) for Saturday night – a small double room, with private bathroom albeit on a different floor, and with use of a shared kitchen and dining room.
However, I woke on Saturday morning feeling rather poorly (again!), and decided that I would do that day’s hills then we would go home. I thus cancelled our accommodation. My intended 2 hills for this day would have been a hard outing, so at the cost of extra driving, I opted for three little hills by Abergynolwyn. Mick got to spend the day in a café with various items of food and drink justifying him sitting there working, whilst I nipped up and down the nearest two hills, before he drove me out to the third.
By the time I was down from the second I was feeling well again, and it would be a shame to go home early, particularly when I had another two hills just across the valley, so after the third hill I looked at what accommodation was available nearby. Our originally booked place had now gone (possibly because many places don’t take last-minute online bookings; on reflection maybe I should have searched for a phone number and called them), so we ended up at the Dovey Inn in Aberdyfi – right on the seafront…which would have been nice if our room had faced forward!
The room was modern, although not entirely well maintained, and the shower was excellent. With the Inn not being self-catering, I used Erica’s kitchen facilities to cook tea, then after a beer in the bar, we retired to the room to watch Strictly, hoping that the music from the bar below would stop at a reasonable hour (incidentally, ‘the bar below’ was not part of the Dovey Inn. There’s another bar next door, and our room was over it. I had regrets at booking the family room, rather than the twin (the only two available), as if we’d been over the Dovey Inn’s bar, it would have been quiet.)
As it went, the music stopped at 11pm on the dot. The people in the room above us then returned to their room and we discovered that there really is no soundproofing between floors. They were mainly just walking around and talking at normal volume, but with the creaking floorboards, it wasn’t a recipe for a good night’s sleep.
Sunday 16 November – Cemmaes
I’d thought that with the people in the room above not getting back until 11pm and not settling down until midnight, they might have a lie in, but no, we were woken by them moving around at 6am. In fact, the mind boggles as to how anyone can do that much walking back and forth in a hotel room for that long. I began to wonder whether it was staff accommodation.
With another two hills successfully completed, I suggested that maybe we should revert to Plan A, which was to stay in Wales until Monday. We thus needed more accommodation, and it was a good surprise to find that the Cemmaes farmhouse was available again (no wonder the host had been so apologetic that she already had a booking for Saturday night – with it only being a one-night booking she clearly would have preferred us to stay!). I booked it, only to get a response from AirBnB saying that it would be confirmed within 24 hours. Given that it was now 1430 and the booking was for that night, 24 hours wasn’t much use to us. With little else to do, we drove over to Machynlleth and sat in their car park (which would have been our overnight fallback). A couple of attempted phone calls to the host went unanswered, but within the hour we got a message back confirming our booking.
A quick trip to the Co-op for a few supplies then back to Cemmaes we went.
Monday 17 November – Hills & Home
As we’d arrived back at the farm on Sunday afternoon, there had been a truck with a livestock trailer attached in the yard. “Something’s off to market!” I predicted. It turned out that the trailer was loaded at 3.30am. I’d woken up and couldn’t work out what it was I could hear (the farm house, being a bit out in the sticks, is quiet). After listening for a while, I got out of the bed to look out of the window. All of the lights were on in the cowshed, and when we got up, the truck and trailer had gone, so I’m guessing the noise was livestock being loaded. The farmer is obviously better at early starts than I am at this time of year!
Driving in to my first hill of the day, I pointed out to Mick that there was a café in the nearby village. Thus as soon as I’d set out, and knowing that he had around 2 hours available, Mick headed down there. I got a message a short while later to say that their only chairs and tables were outside and they were all wet (not to mention that it was 4 degrees out), so he was back in the layby. He had, however, bought himself a coffee … which turned out to be full of coffee grounds.
His wait at my second hill was less satisfactory – he dropped me at one side of the hill, picked me up on the other, and there was no café in between.
And then, per the original plan, we went home.
No comments:
Post a Comment