I am sunburnt, and footsore, and it’s because of Wales.
We stayed at the Three Counties Motel in Hereford, which was uneventful (except for some sort of school ball, which we successfully avoided, and me locking us out of our room within 10 minutes of checking in). The rooms were in the process of being upgraded, which was why we were able to get a pretty good deal staying there; even so, it was a little annoying to traipse all the way into reception to use the slightly flaky wifi. (I know, I know, First World Problems.) But it made a good base to start exploring Hereford from, and the next day we started at the Cider Museum.
The Cider Museum was quite well done, in that I feel I have a much better understanding of how both still and champagne-style cider was made. One of the things it brought back to me was how much work went into a bottle of cider (or any other food), and how much mechanization has sped things up and made them easier/cheaper; and it made me wonder how much will have to change when petrol becomes super-expensive. Not that this was a focus of the museum; instead, I learned all about how you turn bottle-fermented champagne-style cider upside down and let the yeast sediment settle in the neck, and then freeze the neck, making a plug of ice that you pull out and replace with either syrup or cider. (I hadn’t ever really thought about the mechanics of how you’d get the yeast out.)
I was hoping for some sort of “comparative cider tasting” at the end, contrasting the sharp and sweet ciders, and maybe a few perries; but the only tastings they had were the products they made on-site, at the King Offa Distillery. Still, those were quite nice, and I was going to purchase a small bottle of cider liqueur, but our Customs officer reminded me that the limit is three bottles of up to 1.125 litres each, and I couldn’t get a 2 litre bottle if one of the bottles I took was 300ml. So I got a slightly bigger bottle.
We arrived at Hereford cathedral just in time for the daily tour, and I’m glad we did; I really enjoy hearing knowledgeable people talking about these places, and explaining why the different parts of the church look the way they do. (They also mentioned that the Cathedral was twinned with Canterbury Cathedral in Christchurch, and they had been sending money to support it.) And then we went and looked at the Mapa Mundi, the medieval map of the world that was part geography, part history, part bestiary and part philosophy. I think that it might be available to view online, but it was kind of cool to look at the actual treated calf hide in person. There was also a chained library, where the books were chained to the shelves to stop people stealing them; they had recently moved the library, and had found a bunch of medieval paintings untouched by the Reformation, which they had restored to their former glory.
We dropped Margie back at the motel to relax and edit photos, and then went off ruin-hunting; we found, more or less by accident, the site of an important castle and market town (abandoned during the Black Death and reduced to earthworks and a few walls); and then a much more complete castle, with a bunch of local kids running around in the grassy courtyard shouting, “Irontail! Pikachu is the best ever! Thunderbolt, blindey-blindey!”
The idea of having a ruined castle as your playground seems inexpressibly cool, but I guess it all depends on what you’ve grown up with… nah, I think that, no matter what, it would probably be pretty darn cool.
After poking around and taking a few pictures, we picked Margie up and returned to Hereford proper, and then ended up at a pub called the Spread Eagle for dinner. It was just outside the cathedral, and was excellent; if we had been staying longer, we would happily have gone again.
The next day we headed out to Wales. We stopped at the happiest place on Earth, Hay-on-Wye, and enjoyed getting our bearings, looking through the Castle bookshop, and finding out that elderflower sorbet is delicious. Then it was on to St Fagan’s, the Museum of Welsh Life – they have taken historic buildings from all over Wales and carefully put them back together in their original form, as well as adding some reconstructions (like an Iron Age village). There were some really interesting exhibits, like the row of four workers houses furnished as they would have been in the 1830s, 1880s, 1930s and 1980s, and there was a refurbished tearooms, where I might have accidentally ordered a cream tea that I didn’t really need.
Then we got to meet Meredith’s aunt, Sue, who had cooked us spag. bol. on her Aga, which she described as her pride and joy. (I think it would be a bit of a learning curve to cook on it, but she used it with practised ease.) We also met her old black lab, Nell, who didn’t take to me at all (she apparently has a grudge against males); and then it was off to the caravan.
To me, “caravan” conveys something slightly smaller than what we stayed in – two toilets, a master bedroom, shower, and a seating area separate from the kitchen and dining area. It was all compact, but it was closer to a small bach than a caravan, and we were very comfortable.
The next day got off to a slow start, but we managed to go for a drive on the moor (which involved waiting for large numbers of wild horses and semi-domesticated sheep and cows to get out of our way), and then to a very complete castle, Carreg Cennen, which had only been demolished in the 17th century (after a band of brigands had occupied the fort). There was still plenty to see — it had towers, a quarry where they had mined the limestone for mortar, a kiln where they’d fired the limestone, and a tunnel that turned into a limestone cave that wormed its way into the darkness. It was pretty neat, and at least two of my siblings will be getting related postcards.
We drove around a bit more, visiting the site of an Iron Age fort, and then we took Sue to a local pub, The Greyhound, as a bit of a thank-you for all she was doing. It was there, thanks to Margie’s apparently incomprehensible accent, that we accidentally discovered the idea of a cider shandy, which was actually very tasty indeed in the hot weather.
The next day, I made the mistake of taking up the challenge to walk out to Worm’s Head with Meredith. This was rather more rigorous than I was anticipating, with 20 minutes solid clambering over rocky-shore terrain before we arrived at the first island in the chain, not realising there was another scramble still to come. By the time we got back, I was in dire need of an ice-cream, which the National Trust shop was happy to provide. (I also leaned there that the opening scene of the second-season Dr Who episode with the cat-sisters tending a hospital had been filmed out there, and a chase scene from a recent Torchwood episode was filmed at the beach.)
We then went back to the caravan for lunch, and then decided to do something very local – we went to a village garden tour in Llanmadoc… which would have been easier if I hadn’t already exhausted myself on Worm’s Head. Still, it was very nice, and interesting hearing people talk about beekeeping and the like, as well as having a bit of a nosy. Then we went out to another Authur’s stone (which was apparently a pebble that he flicked out of his show which grew, and goes down to the sea to drink every midsummer night), and then back to the caravan for dinner.
Which brings us up to today, where we’re heading for Bath.
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