A drive across the country

Some observations:

The government's cut-backs are presumably responsible for a cut-back in cutting back the trees, hedges, shrubs etc which like to grow up beside roads. As a result, right across the country, road signs which are placed for our information and safety are - at present - very often hidden inside a crazy kind of Burnham Wood. This is both irritating and dangerous. Not everyone has satnav, and these indicator boards are essential. But they don't move and they are silent. Hard-pressed councils have put their maintenance and visibility right down at the end of the list of priorities.

Petrol stations are quietly transforming themselves into grocery shops. People are eating on the move. All the food and goods are wrapped in plastic.  Not all garages have the facilities we used to rely on, air-pressure fillers for example.  And none of them sell large road-maps any more.  

They do sometimes sell small local car maps, smaller page size than A4. But these are not much more use than satnavs which give you such limited information. Our old car maps are so beaten up and out of date, and I failed to notice they were hard to renew nowadays. But only a large map covering a wide area and filled with proper details can show you your alternative routes, or interesting places to go and explore, or what the local place-names tell you.  I feel bereft.   (Also, as it comes to mind, I can tell you that shops no longer sell packets of ordinary house-hold candles. You can only buy tea-lights now, unless you revert to the internet.)  Maybe this blog will become a litany of loss, recording the multitude of tiny changes which are sweeping the old ways away, and creating new ones which are not always welcome.  So.....

Travelling across Britain by car these days is quite difficult. You can join the motorways where the traffic is frequently crowded or jammed or stationary, with bumpy noisy road surfaces due to age and method of construction, or the motorways are restricted by speed limits for long distances, and they are nearly always, and mostly, in any case, boring.   I find I have a yearning to go by the old roads, because there I learn about the landscape, the history and community of the country. But it's no use being in a hurry.  I think I shall add 'travel in England in the Middle Ages' to my list of subjects to explore.  

Yesterday leaving Faversham at 9am we arrived in Llandudno at about 4.30pm. One of the greatest moments was a sudden brilliant glimpse down into the huge glowing estuary of the River Dee, with the tide out, and the swirling pinks and greens and golds of the water and mud stretching out into the soft light. Nowhere to stop and take a breathe. I wish our road system had 'aires' as they do in France, where you can stop and recover your spiritual equilibrium by just looking.    

And I had another vision, as we saw various real or Victorian castles dotted about in the hills, that I need to think about the landscape as women and men see it... a male landscape, and a female.  What items would we place in the masculine map?  Castles, courtrooms and canals, bridges, railways, etc.  Mines and quarries. Battle fields.    And which would go in the feminine landscape? Not so easy to list!  But wells and springs, cottages and gardens, herbal beds, the addresses of midwives....

The process of booking into a self-catering flat has become entirely automated these days. They send messages with entry codes and details of where to find a key, all that.  Fine, as long as the messages arrive. 

Montague House, (sp. var. Montegue) conceals itself at the end of a row of splendid early-mid Victorian holiday hotels and b&bs by hiding its name behind a built-on ice-cream booth. There are few if any house numbers to be seen anywhere… everyone is revelling in the Belmont, Merrion, Lauriston and Lawton, Milverton, Wildings, Tyndale, Annan, Whitemoor, Grand, Brigstock and St Davids……We were lucky that the ice-cream booth was open as the helpful boys working there found us someone who knew someone who could telephone someone who knew the owner of our apartments.  A few calls were made. The owner (‘host’) sounded plaintive that his messaged instructions had not reached us….. But we did eventually get in.

The photos which ‘sell’ these little apartment contracts do not, of course, contain information about noise or smell. This apartment which is otherwise almost quite sweet, is directly above the loudly-powered ventilation units clearing frying smells from two restaurant kitchens, so it is not the lack of sea view which depresses, or the proximity of the rear walls of the adjacent buildings, but the smell and roar of these fans.   Alas.  

But - it’s home for the next two nights.  We went out to explore. 

The broad streets of Lllandudno are very pretty. There was a building regulation or formula 150 years ago that ensured the houses were no higher than the width of the streets, which gives a very open and pleasing tone to the town.  The huge wide bay sweeps round between the Great Orme and the Little Orme, and in the modestly warm air, children were scampering and families strolling along the distant water’s edge. Very pretty.  The Ormes are two huge blobs of rock - baby mountains - which lurch out from the land towards the sea, and are thought to have been named by the Norsemen who thought of them as dragons, or worms……  (geddit?)

We perambulated, found that restaurant prices are quite high especially in the evenings (main meal ranging from £15-33), and eventually chose a Bengali place - mostly on the basis of price.  Vegetable dhansak or biriani £9. There was a brief moment (as we climbed the stairs to the dining room) that we fancied we would be gracing them with our custom… (the arrogance of holiday-makers bestowing choice and money on a business!)… but when we go there it was crowded out, utterly heaving. We were lucky to get a table, and had a pleasant meal surrounded by happy families and chuckling groups of businessmen.  And so home to bed.  The noise and smell of the ventilators had died down. Hoorah! Sweet dreams.