I have just visited the Menywod which is
Welsh for Ladies. We are in
Tesco’s in Pembroke before setting off for Ireland. It’s a four hour journey so I pray for a fair wind.
Yesterday was the summer solstice and the
longest day, which was just as well because we had the longest journey from The
Scillies. It began rather
thrillingly with a fifteen minute helicopter ride back to Lands End. We were the only passengers and felt
like royalty. We gazed out of the huge windows on to all the little Scillies
inhabited and not inhabited and I tried to take a photo or two but they had the
zebra syndrome of being exactly what you’d expect so I snapped my I pad shut and just enjoyed the dark sea
surface with its puffs of white and thought I wouldn’t last long in that,
lifejacket notwithstanding. Then I
whipped the I pad open again because I saw the helicopter’s shadow on the sea
which seemed bold and a little bit mysterious.
We landed gently and all too soon and were
shuttled back to our car. I tripped and fell on the way out and G said “Fuck”
sympathetically as I lay like a drunken old biddy in the gutter and the driver
offered to get his first aid box out. I tentatively rose and breathed “No need”
thanking my stars for good bones and vowing to get lighter before coming
another cropper.
The drive was long and tedious. We had to get to Pembroke Dock where we
were overnighting. Some kind of
pop festival had choked all the lanes on the motorway and there was a lot of
stop starting. With the help of
the satnav I gave G progress reports.
ETA was 8pm but gradually deteriorated. We got sick of the motorway and decided to go to Cheddar – G
for the cheese and me for the Gorge.
Both lived up to expectations and we obediently followed the Satnav as
it took us from there down winding roads through farming country. Our ETA was now 9.30 and we rang our B
and B which went by the alarming name of High Noon. A kind and slightly
accented voice was sympathetic and said it was OK.
The Welsh houses round here have a
secretive look. Little windows and flat inexpressive facades, but High Noon was
quite different and did look a bit like the wild west with coloured bulbs
hanging from the eves and our anxious landlady waving from the front. (We were getting tired and had made a
few false turns – one of which entailed removing sandbags to get through) It
was ten o’clock by then but the gentle Israeli couple who ran the place made us
a cup of tea and the bed we slept in was the best I’ve ever known. In the morning we had a middle Eastern
breakfast with pita bread and luscious eggs in cumin and tomato sauce.
There remained the mystery of why High
Noon? “It was the previous owners”,
said Neri. “There was a big
picture of Gary Cooper but
we took that down.” Instead they
have an enormous fishtank full of little tropical fish and one big one which
kisses the glass from time to time like it's posing for a selfie “What’s that one called?” I ask. “Oh it’s a cleaner fish” said Neri’s
husband, a nut brown, kind man .
“We must probably pay him”
I felt sad leaving High Noon with its Picasso prints and merry
lights. It had seemed very
unWelsh.
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