Glastonbury - A "Tor" Guide...

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you!

Sorry it's been so long. I had been planning to write another entry about the town of Glastonbury describing some of the characters we observed. Indeed, I have written it. Several times - that's what too k the time. It's just that every time I read it back it comes over as either patronising or snarky or both. Since I don't want to be either of those things it would appear that the second instalment of our excursion down Glastonbury High Street will have to be postponed indefinately.

A little bit of Hobbiton.

Instead, let me take you on a walk up Glastonbury Tor, that iconic hill that rises from the flat plain around the town and dominates the skyline for miles around.

The Tor is, without question, beautiful. Green and lush, with an enigmatic tower at its peak. You can, should you be feeling energetic, walk up from the town - there are signs and everything. Alternatively you can do what I did and catch the "Tor Bus", operated by Mendip Community Transport from its stop in the Abbey car-park. This little bus will take you most of the way up the hill, dropping you at the closest point the road gets to the summit for the modest sum of three quid - or a quid fifty if you're under sixteen or seven fifty if you're a family of two adults and two children. It saves a lot of time and even more effort. And I'm lazy.

Don't be fooled though. Even if you cheat and catch the bus you still have a steep climb ahead of you. regrettably if you have mobility problems or use a wheelchair this climb is probably not for you. Everybody else? Make sure you're wearing decent shoes and get yourself up there - trust me, the climb is worth it. Steep, yes. Utterly knackering, yes. But worth it.

This was quite late in the day -  just look how busy it is!

As you can see from the picture above, the side of the hill is terraced - a remnant of early farming - and the path to the summit winds its merry way along those terraces, Impatient walkers might be tempted to take a more direct route, but you really shouldn't. For a start - and I don't care how fit you think you are - the path is leg crampingly, energy sappingly steep. Eschewing the path and taking the direct route would be harder still. Seriously, you're on holiday.

Besides, the National Trust, who look after the site, implore you not to do so. Climbing the Tor is a hugely popular endeavour - it's something that the vast majority of tourists want to do. The damage that a few hundred thousand visiting feet could do in terms of erosion doesn't bear thinking about - and it should be remembered that this iconic little hill is more than just a tourist attraction. It is also an ancient site that probably still has a lot of archaeology to turn up. Having seen many ancient sites half destroyed by the gentle footsteps of over keen tourists, I was pleased to see most people did indeed stick to the path.

A tower of tourists on a Tor.

The pinnacle of the Tor is dominated by the restored fifteenth century grey stone ediface of St. Michael's Tower - the surviving remnant of the hill's long service as a site of Christian worship, a heritage which reaches back as far as medieval times.

The first church was destroyed by an earthquake in 1275 - which I guess can only be regarded as unfortunate - and it's replacement, of which the tower was a part, survived until the dissolution of the monastaries.

As ruined church towers go (there's no roof, doors or window panes) it's actually pretty unremarkable, although as a result of the significance of the location it does merit a Grade 1 listing - and there's no question that it adds a certain character tow what would otherwise be a small isolated hilltop with nothing to recommend it but the view. (About which, more later...)

The history of human occupation of this hill goes back much further though. The terracing may well be neolithic - neolithic stone tools have certainly been found there, and there is evidence that there was a late Roman fort in the fifth century.

It's plainer from the other side...

Everything else is pretty much speculation. There's no evidence that I'm aware of for any kind of pre-Christian ritual use, but as the only high point for literally miles around it makes sense to me that ancient peoples would have used it for something.

Perhaps it was agricultural - the terracing is certainly suggestive of that, just as it is reminiscent of the terracing of the hill forts that dot the South West. The hill would certainly have been a strong defensive position in the past, back when this region of he Somerset Levels - known as the "Somerset Meadows" - was significantly wetter and the Tor was more of an island than a hill.

Who knows? Perhaps they just went up to look at the view. Because the view is spectacular! This is, frankly somewhat unsurprising. We're from Yorkshire, a country with more than a few hills, so from our point of view the Tor isn't especially high.

It is however the only naturally sticky up thing in what is basically a pancake flat landscape. There is nothing at all to get in the way. The result is this:

The landscape just sort of rolls away forever...

Doesn't matter which direction...

It's just endless.

And it's beautiful.

Of course, from a "Tourist Attraction" perspective, it's a good job that the view is so spectacular because there's not a lot else to do once you've struggled up to the summit. Did I mention it was steep?

It's really steep.

I sat for some time drinking in the view, and then began to "people watch" a little bit. It seems to me that there were three categories of people on the summit of the Tor that day. The first, and by far the largest was the "general tourist". People like me who were in the area on holiday and had climbed the Tor primarily because they were interested in seeing the view and because it's one of the things you do when you're in Glastonbury. This group covered all ages, from little kids to senior citizens. We were mostly a relaxed crowd, some in shorts and sandals, some in wind proof jackets and walking boots. All reaching the top with comments along the lines of "Blimey, that was steep", "What a view!", and of course "I'm knackered!".

Then there were the quiet, contemplative types. Mostly in their twenties, mostly wearing nepalese shirts and baggy cotton trousers. All keeping themselves to themselves and either gazing out at the view or just sort of meditating. I remember in particular one guy sitting in a green sleeping bag in the shelter of one of the tower's buttresses. His hand rested on a gallon bottle of scrumpy, a (thankfully unplayed) digeridoo propped up beside him, calm grey eyes taking in everything around him. These were people who had made the ascent in search of something. Perhaps spiritual enlightenment, perhaps themselves. Who knows? Whatever it was, I hope they found it.

The final, and thankfully smallest, group was made up of people who would like to think of themselves as belonging to the quiet, contemplative types. Again, mostly twenty somethings they differed from the contemplatives in several ways. Most noticeably they were anything but quiet. At some point they'd read a book, or at least the blurb on the back of a book, with the word "spiritual" in the title and celtic knotwork on the cover, and they wanted everyone to know about it. They were embodied by a girl dressed in beige cotton trousers, strappy leather sandals and a cream granddad shirt that looked to be made of rough silk.

She ran a perfectly manicured hand through her long auburn hair, the many bangles adorning her wrist jangling like the shop bell at Harrods. "You see, the thing is," she fixed her slightly embarrassed friend with a serious stare, "I don't feel I really have to go to India now, because, it's like, in me." She gave those auburn curls a well practised toss. "I mean, I've just, like, absorbed so much spiritually," she paused and gazed sightlessly towards the horizon, an expression of studied serenity on her exquisitely made up visage, "I just feel I need to stay, y'know rooted".

The man in the green sleeping bag took a long,l slow swig of scrumpy and rolled his eyes before leaning back against the stonework of the tower and directing his thoughts to less irritating things.

I wandered out of earshot, gazed back out at the view and was rewarded with a flypast.

This was one of three Royal Navy Wildcat helicopters that spent rather a long time dancing around the hill. I presume that they were on a training sortie from the Royal Naval Airstation at Yeovilton about thirteen miles to the south. As I may have mentioned before I'm something of an aircraft enthusiast and random encounters with aircraft like this are one of the real joys of travelling for me.

This was a genuinely exciting encounter for me. At the time I was standing at the top of the Tor in the summer of 2015 the Wildcat had only just entered front line service with the Navy. Designed to operate from frigates and destroyers the Wildcat is a multi-role aircraft designed for troop transport, casualty evacuation, anti ship operations, anti submarine operations and frankly, whatever else needs to be done. Watching them was rather fun - and just for the record, we'll be visiting Yeovilton in a future post.

For me though, time was up.

The shadows were beginning to lengthen and I needed to get back to the 'van.

So, that's it from the Snail for 2015.

I hope you've had a good year, and that wherever your travels take you in 2016, the road is smooth and unfettered by jams.

It would be wrong of me to sign off, however, without mentioning the flooding in the North of England and in Scotland. Floods have hit many of the places we have visited with the Road Snail. Killin and Stonehaven in Scotland, and of course huge swathes of Cumbria - as well as Yorkshire, where the Snail is based.

If you're going away in a caravan or motorhome in 2016, go and visit some of these places. They're open for business, and frankly it's your business they need. The places that have been most seriously hit are largely tourist economies. Go and support them. We'll see you there.

Glastonbury High Street. Oh, wow. I mean, WOW!

So, there we were, parked up in the West Country, a couple of miles outside the little city of Wells. We arrived at the excellent Caravan Club Certificated Location on a Saturday afternoon, pitched up and then headed into Wells to grab some supplies from the perfectly located Waitrose supermarket on the edge of town. (There's also a Tesco store if you follow the road around, but we didn't find it until a couple of days later...)

That evening we were disturbed by loud music coming, so it seemed, from somewhere nearby. Was it one of the other units on site? Or one of the very few nearby houses? We couldn't tell. But we were tired and irritable after a long day's drive from Wales, and were therefore more than a little irked. After about an hour or so I realised that pretty much everything we heard had been a song by The Kinks.

"Can't be a party," said I, "Not unless they're all massive Kinks fans,"

"Could it," I suggested, "be a Kinks tribute band rehearsal?

Mrs Snail was unconvinced. The music ended about half past ten, followed by muffled bangs that could only be fireworks some indeterminate distance away.

The mystery was finally solved the following morning when - on the way to somewhere else - we drove through Glastonbury. On the hedge that surrounds the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey in the centre of town was a MASSIVE hoarding advertising that "The legendary Ray Davis and his band" had been playing there the night before.

So. Not the actual Kinks, but certainly the most authentic Kinks tribute band there ever was...

And what that  did was give me a huge amount of empathy for the people of this part of Somerset when the legendary festival takes place. Our little camp site** was seven miles or so away from the concert, and we could hear it pretty clearly. Now, add another three stages to that. For the festival revellers on site, I imagine the noise from the stage they're watching drowns out the noise from the nearby stages. Can you imagine the cacophony they must be able to hear from a distance though? And that goes on all day!

And suddenly I realise that I sound like a grumpy old git.

Not talking about the festival today though. Or the Abbey - that's getting it's own post. As is the magnificent Glastonbury Tor, No, today I want to talk about the town itself, which is unlike any place we have ever been before. Comedian Mark Steel, on visiting "Glasto"* for his Radio Four comedy show "Mark Steele's in town" remarked along the lines of "Glastonbury high street, eh? You want to re-align your chakras or pick up a dream catcher you're well in, but god help you if you only want a pint of milk!"

He was wrong, as it happens, there's a convenience store just over the road from the Abbey car park (OK, so that's not technically the High Street), and an "Organic Superstore" at the far end.

But he wasn't far wrong...

Now. Before we go any further, we need to get something clear. At no point in the rest of this post will I be deliberately mocking anyone for anything. Not their beliefs, not their dress sense, nothing. I will be pointing out things that seemed funny at the time. To be honest, the joke, if joke there is, is mostly on us. No disrespect is intended to anyone.*** That's not how we roll here at Snail Towers.

The High Street in Glastonbury runs, more or less, from the market place, up hill, ending outside the "Bag End Grow Shop" (which yes, sells all the things you're imagining it sells) where it forms a "T" junction with Wells Road (it goes to Wells, astonishingly enough) and Lambrook Street.

In some ways it's like any other High Street in the UK. There's a Post Office, a couple of pubs, some coffee shops, some restaurants, the usual smattering of charity shops, a church. Everything you'd expect really. But this is truly a High Street like no other. Having wandered up and down identikit main streets in towns across these Sceptred Isles past identikit chain stores and chain restaurants I have to say, Glastonbury was immensely refreshing.

So, let's start in the market place - which I have to say is pretty small. Indeed, used as we are to the kind of spacious market squares in Yorkshire market towns such as Ripon, Richmond and Masham (and of course personally I'm from Doncaster - a town which does an exceptional market) we didn't even notice that is was the market square - the only reason I know now is because I looked at a map before writing this up.

Still, the square (which was more of a triangle if I recall correctly)  marks the point where Magdalene Street bends around to the right to seamlessly become the High Street. To the left you will see the impressive stone facade of the George and Pilgrim which has sat, in some form or other, at "Number One, the High Street" since the fifteenth century. It is, in fact, the oldest working pub in the south west - and given that it's been trading for close on five hundred years must be a serious contender for one of the oldest businesses of any kind. These days it's part of a chain and, in addition to a bar and restaurant it offers fourteen rooms for guests. We didn't eat there on this occasion, and of course we didn't stay there, but it looks nice - suitably old and authentic - and the Trip Adviser Reviews are largely positive.

It adds a little obvious age to the start of this genuinely ancient street which now stretches out ahead of you, crammed with cafes, restaurants, little alternative clothes shops, book shops, places to buy occult paraphernalia, fancy soap, you name it.

And you won't recognise any of them.

It's an absolute joy.

Crossing the street we ducked into a little shop selling crystals and stones. As we entered, a pair of middle-aged women dressed as if for a WI meeting were leaving, a random snatch of their conversation hanging in the air behind them:

"...I really must go and have a coffee and something to eat - I'm just resonating with everything in here..."

Mrs Snail and I smiled wryly to each other - what else would you expect in Glastonbury after all?

We explored the shop, which appeared, entirely predictably, to be much bigger on the inside, with back rooms appearing apparently from nowhere, crammed full of beautiful crystals and polished stones. Some are clearly for mere decorative purposes but others labelled with detailed instructions regarding their use to cure any number of ailments and ills. I don't believe in crystal healing - although quartz does excellent things inside a watch - but I do believe in really beautiful things, and that little shop was crammed full of so many of them. I could have stayed in there, entranced by the pretty things all day.

It was, however, lunch o'clock and we were keen to find somewhere to eat.

We might have gone back across the road to the George and Pilgrim, but however hungry we were, we have a strict policy of never going straight into the first place we see. Which is how we found ourselves half way up the street outside the impossibly groovy Hundred Monkeys Cafe. With massive plate glass windows looking out onto the street and a small queue made up of people in hemp trousers and dreadlocks alongside a terribly well spoken family in designer jackets suggesting that the place was popular with a wide spectrum of society, we investigated the menu, before joining the queue and being ushered to a table for two in the window.

The thing about this excellent eatery - which is clearly something of a local institution and was so full that it was turning people away within minutes of our arrival - is that it completely understands and reflects the diverse culinary preferences of its clientele. If, like myself, you have a carniverous nature there is an excellent range of meaty and fishy dishes on the menu. If, like Mrs Snail you increasingly eschew meat, there's an equally impressive selection of meat free dishes. If you're a vegan, that most ignored and despised group of diners in the eyes of your average chef? No problem. There's a good range of options for you too.

Because the Hundred Monkeys has a menu that does not descriminate. The bill of fayre is not divided into "sections" based on food preference. Nothing is presented as a vegetarian or vegan "option". Some of the dishes on the menu happen to contain no meat. Some happen to contain no animal products at all. And those latter two options? They're dishes in their own right, not meat free imitations of meals that usually contain meat. It was refreshing.

You're not going to be surprised that I had a burger, made as you might expect from locally sourced organic meat. It was sublime. Mrs Snail was much more original and opted for a "Roasted Peach and Goat's Cheese salad". That was also beyond brilliant.

I love Goat's Cheese, but I confess I was a little suspicious of roasted peaches in a savoury salad. Oh my goodness, but it worked! The peach and the cheese complimented each other beautifully, just the right balance of acidity and mid lactic notes against a well thought out mix of leaves, some fresh, some bitter, some peppery. It was an absolute triumph! There was also loads of it,which is how I know this, because Mrs Snail couldn't finish it all so I got to try!

The real star, however was the Cola.

The Hundred Monkeys is an ethical establishment. As such it has no truck with the evil multinational purveyor of sugar laden fizzy vegetable extract beverage that is the Coca-Cola Company. Which was potentially an issue for me because pretty much the only soft drink I consume is that self same sugar laden fizzy vegetable extract beverage.

With the same sigh that usually accompanies the enforced order of Pepsi I have to make in Pizza Hut**** I opted for the Hundred Monkeys' ethical alternative - "Whole Earth Organic Cola". I didn't have high hopes, expecting something that would taste off, in a "knit your own broccolli" kind of way.

I was wrong.

Very wrong.

It was a revelation.

This was the first non Coca-Cola cola I have ever enjoyed. So much nicer than Coke.

Wasn't kidding about the queue. And of course there's a VW camper outside...

So there we sat, by the window, looking out at the comings and goings on one of the most interesting high streets in England.

Come back next time, and I'll tell you what we saw.



*This, I have been informed by some of the hipper young people of my acquaintance is what all the bright young things call the town. Although they seemed unable to distinguish the town from the festival, so what do they know?

**About which more in a later post... (Probably...)

***In a later post however, I'm going to be incredibly rude about a young woman I met at the top of Glastonbury Tor, because while I have infinite respect for the beliefs of others, I have neither respect nor patience for their pretentions. You'll see what I mean when we get to it...

****Which is owned in part by Pepsico, and so does not offer "The Real Thing".

Go West, young man. Or woman. Or older person. Look, just go, it's great there!

Scotland may well be our favourite place in the world*, but that collection of counties known by tourist guides and travel writers as "The West Country" comes a close second. Cornwall, with it's golden ribbons of beach, high cliffs and epic waves is beautiful, if outrageously hard to get to by road. Or any other way except air, really.

The road and rail connections, particularly to the far end of the Cornish Peninsula are laughably inadequate and I'm in complete agreement with Cornish friends who lament the lack of attention that has been paid to their infrastructure over the years. "If this was the South East we'd have high speed rail and a bloody motorway by now..." is a comment I've heard a lot. Although to be fair, I have some Cornish friends who rather like their county's relative inaccessibility and take the view that they have quite enough "grockles"** to contend with as it is...

The North East section of the West Country (if that makes sense) also has rather a lot to offer. The maritime city of Bristol, with it's rich engineering and sea-faring heritage is both beautiful and enthralling, claiming attractions like Brunel's SS Great Britain (literally about a hundred yards from the Caravan Club's site in Bristol - I know because the first time I went there I overshot the site's gate and had to use the SS Great Britain's car park to turn around in) and indeed his Clifton Suspension Bridge. Also, although we didn't visit on our most recent West Country outing, the "Baltic Wharf" Caravan Club site in Bristol is amazing!

It doesn't look like much to write home about as you arrive - as mentioned above, the first time I took the 'van there I missed the entrance completely, and the site is entirely enclosed by walls which I presume once surrounded some kind of industrial compound. But once you're pitched up you can step through a little door in the surrounding wall straight through to the dockside, and from there you can walk into the centre along the water's edge in no more than a few minutes, or even better, grab one of the water taxis that ply their trade around the city's rivers and docks. Highly recommended.

As is the city of Bath. Famed for the Roman and Georgian baths that give the place its name, its honey yellow stone houses, its stunning Georgian architecture and of course a certain Miss Jane Austen. Since I'm singing the city's praises, and as a member in good standing of the Northen Branch of the Jane Austen Society, I should perhaps gloss over the fact that Miss Austen really didn't like Bath all that much...  We did. The Roman Baths in particular are an absolute must see. The plumbing is more than fifteen hundred years old, and it still works!

Fine as they are though, we didn't visit either of these excellent West Country cities on our most recent foray to that neck of the woods, choosing instead to head to pastures new and the excellent little city of Wells.

Wells is the smallest city in the UK, or so they say. The city of Ripon in North Yorkshire feels smaller to me, but according to the latest census Ripon has a population of nearly seventeen thousand while Wells can boast barely eleven thousand people among its citizenry.

Small it may be, but it is absolutely perfectly formed.

An amazing structure - probably even better when it isn't raining. Summer 2015, eh?

Like many of England's ancient cities Wells is centred around its Cathedral, which is amazing. Work on the present structure began in 1175, and it is the oldest example of English Gothic architecture - although construction took a little over three hundred years to complete.*** Somehow the magnificent West Front escaped the puritan excesses of Cromwell and his merry crew and it retains the statues - about three hundred of them -  which decorate the exterior and tell bible stories to anyone who happens to be passing.

The interior is equally impressive. I very much regret not forking out the four quid they charge for a photography permit, because I would have loved to be able to share some pictures of the various tombs and memorials (which again, seem to have avoided the pious vandalism of Cromwell and his cronies). But most of all, I wish I'd taken pictures of the clock.

Because it is, beyond all doubt, one of the most wonderful things we've seen on our travels. Since I can't show you a picture of it, I'll just have to describe the thing instead...

First of all, you have to understand that the clock is old. Really old. Old enough that we can't be absolutely sure when it was installed, but we know that a "Keeper of the Clock" was being paid from around 1392, so it's reasonable to presume that it was put in place around about that time. Obviously there's been some restoration over the years, and the original mechanism was replaced in the nineteenth century - but the original (as we were informed by the very nice man in ecclesiastical garb who told the little crowd of visitors we were part of all about it) is still functional and can be seen at the Science Museum in London. Essentially this thing has been marking time since the end of the fourteenth century - and that's not bad going!

The mechanism actually controls two faces - one inside the Cathedral, which as I said I didn't get a picture of because I'm too tight to pay the four quid for a photo permit, and one external which I meant to photograph, but forgot. Sorry. Never mind though, because the external face just looks like a regular clock. It's the internal face that warrants the attention.

Rather than the more familiar hands, this clock face sports a twenty four hour dial around its circumference. A little sun makes the trip around the edge once each day, giving the viewer a pretty accurate idea of the current hour and minute. At the centre of the clock is the Earth, with the moon revolving around it, showing the current phase. This geocentric view of the universe, with Earth at the centre and the Sun and Moon revolving around it was well accepted at the time of the clock's manufacture - and before we laugh too hard at our primitive ancestors, if you're working from naked eye observations it does actually makes sense.

However, this mechanical marvel is so old it is thought to be the only working automaton to present this pre-Copernican view. By the time clock making of this sort really took off, astronomy had matured a bit.

The face is a thing of beauty, exquisitely painted and gilded like only a medieval craftsman could. If that were all there was, that would be sufficient. If that were all there was, it would still be my very favourite clock. But this thing has another trick up its sleeve. Because every quarter hour, a group of jousting Knights go careering around the top of the clock face, and every quarter hour, one of them gets knocked from his horse. And I mean, not just once, they go around a few times, and it's always the same Knight who gets knocked off, sits back up and then gets knocked down again.

Think about that.

Every fifteen minutes since around 1392 this poor little bugger has been knocked off his horse a couple of times. And every time he gets back up again.

There's a Chumbawumba  song in there somewhere. And perhaps a lesson for us all...

Even if there isn't, this clock does, I think, have a very important lesson in and of itself. At the time of its creation this was pretty much the state of the engineering art. Nothing, anywhere was more complicated or cleverer than this. But its creators were not content to just deliver a box full of cog wheels and gears and dials and levers. They added art. A blazing gilded sun, intricate painting, a whole bloody jousting tournament.

It wasn't enough to be cutting edge. They wanted it to be beautiful too.

We should take that lesson, we really should.

*Outside Yorkshire, obviously. I tend not to include Yorkshire when contemplating how much I like places, it's not fair to everywhere else.

**Tourists.

***I know - getting a reliable builder can be difficult. Apparently it would only have taken two hundred years but the builders had another job...

Shakespeare in the Dog House!

Sorry. I just can't resist a punning title. In fact, this has little to do with Shakespeare, and nothing  to do with dog houses - real or metaphorical.

In fact, what I want to talk about this time is the visit we made to St. Dogmael's Abbey during our recent foray into South Wales. Sorry it's taken so long to post - six weeks or so since the last instalment - but for some reason I found this difficult to write. It was such an unusual place I found it hard to commit the experience to words with any kind of accuracy. I'm still not sure I've done it justice, but there's a limit to how long you can spend on something, even in the persuit of perfection!

The wonderful hidden gem of a place sits about a mile to the west of Cardigan, on the opposite side of the river Teifi (it's a Welsh name, and so is pronounced Tey-vi). It's one of those places, not hard to find, but easy enough to miss if you don't know it's there. Don't make that mistake. If your travels take you to the Cardigan area this is one little gem you absolutely don't want to miss!

The Abbey whose ruins can be seen today has Norman foundations, but just how long the site had been a place of Christian Worship at that point is unclear. Certainly there is a charter from the twelfth century which refers to "the ancient church of St Dogfael", suggesting that it had been used by Christians for some considerable time before the conquest.

St Dogmael - or "Dogfael", medievel spelling seems to have been more or less optional - himself is believed to have been doing his thing in the sixth century. That of course puts him in that portion of history after the departure of the Romans from these shores that some are pleased to call the "dark ages". Modern archaeologists and historians will tell you that the dark ages were in fact anything but dark, the problem is the scarcity of any kind of documentation from the period. We know very little for certain about what went on in the  sixth century, and St Dogmael is no exception.

The guide book* tells us that the saint was the son of a man called "Ithel ap Ceredig ap Cunedda Weledig". Apparently this would mean he was descended from the founder of the royal family of Gwynned. It is also claimed that he was the cousin of St. David - which in Wales is a pretty good claim to fame! Anyway - suffice to say there's deep history there, but as I said, the ruins you can see today are Norman in origin, and a fine set of ruins they are.

Not perhaps as big and imposing as the famed ruins at Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, but still an interesting example of a smaller monastic house.

Looking through this window you can see the churchyard of the adjacent parish church - which of course means that a part of the site at least is still in use for its original purpose after at least 1,400 years. That's rather impressive when you think about it...

Enough of the walls and foundations are visible for you to get a sense of what the abbey would have been like in its heyday, before Henry VIII's break from Rome and subsequent dissolution of the monastaries pretty much brought an end to the monastic way of life not just here, but more or less everywhere else on this sceptered isle.

Since then the Abbey buildings have served the local community in the way ruins and disused buildings have always done - as an aesthetic feature and a handy quarry. I'd be highly surprised if several of the local houses didn't contain stone originally cut and dressed for the abbey. It's fitting really. Monastic houses were supposed to serve the community** so it seems reasonable that the place continued to do so long after the monks were gone.

These days the ruins are a picturesque place to visit, but also a pleasant backdrop. The day we were there was intended to be the opening night of an outdoor production of Shakespeare's last play, The Tempest. 

This is why there were folding seats under a blue tarpaulin and a bunch of pretend masts and sails about the place when we were there.

Of course, we were there during the diluvian summer of 2015, so the little tents housing the production's technical equipment were filled with people looking at weather reports and trying to decide whether they'd need to cancel the performance. So far as recall the skies remained clear, so I presume the performances went ahead, although I haven't been able to find a single review online, so I can't be sure...

There is more to this little gem than just the Abbey, however. Pulling in to the little car park our attention was first taken by the old mill pond which sits adjacent. It's not very big, surrounded by large trees which offered some dappled shade against the surprisingly strong sun - this being one of the few days on our Welsh trip we'd actually seen the thing. It was very pretty indeed, and offered a home to some of the most remarkable ducks we've ever seen.

I'm no poultry expert, and have no idea what breed they might have been, but they were much bigger than your average millpond mallard, and the same sort of iridescent rainbow of "black" plumage one might normally associate with a starling's wing.

They were quite the attraction, with many other visitors pausing to watch them waddle lazily about before settling down on the sparse grass verge between the road and the water.

We watched them for a while, before making our way into The Coach House Visitor Centre. In many ways this is a hidden gem attached to the hidden gem. You can actually get to the Abbey without going through The Coach House, but I can't imagine why you would.

Partly housed in (astonishingly enough) an old coach house, and partially in a modern extension, the Coach House Visitor Centre is part cafe, part information centre, part art gallery, part museum, part craft shop, you might expect the whole to become a disorganised mishmash. But far from it.

The cafe section occupies the new extension, with the art gracing the walls. A neat little information section takes up a corner at one end of the extension, with a museum featuring ancient stones from the Abbey in the ground floor of the old coach house.

Given that we left the Abbey ruins at around lunch o'clock, we decided to try the cafe out for size. It's fully licensed, and although I was driving Mrs Snail very much enjoyed a bottle of the locally brewed lager. Indeed, she enjoyed it so much that I bought a few bottles of the various local brews to take away - because I hate being left out!

The food was simple - it's a cafe, not a restaurant, after all - but well presented. We both opted for cheese and ham panninis, which were served with a salad garnish and were pretty good. The service was swift and pleasant and the atmosphere was laid back and convivial. We very much enjoyed the place and should we ever be in the area again (and given that it's not that far from Grandma Snail's*** house, we will be) we'll certainly be popping in for coffee and a bite to eat.

It's a fascinating little corner of Cardigan, and I'd argue strongly that no visit to South Wales would be complete without dropping in.



*A very reasonably priced publication I should say - for a mere £2.95 it gives detailed information about the Abbey and it's history, as well as the Pentre Ifan Burial Chamber we explored in the last post and Cilgerran Castle, about which more next week. Back over the border English Heritage would have made three separate guidebooks and charged four quid for each of them! Just another brilliant thing about Wales...

** They often didn't - quite the opposite in fact, but that was the original intention...

***Yes, I know I said I wouldn't call her that, but right now I'm in Yorkshire and she's in Wales. Besides, she is a Grandma, so I figure I'll risk it...

Ironing a few things out.

Here at Snail Towers we love a bit of history - and we particularly love the older stuff - the Mesolithic through to the Iron Age. One of the first things we did on arriving in South Wales was head off to discover what the area had to offer. There was a pretty obvious first port of call - the famed Pentre Ifan burial chamber which sits atop a hill in the heart of the Pembrokeshire National Park. Of course, we did have to find it first - and that was not an entirely stright forward proposition.  

You see, our Neolithic ancestors were pretty sophisticated whne it came to balancing rocks on top of each other - as anyone who has ever seen Stone Henge will happily attest. They were, however, less than thoughtful in their choice of location for their stone circles and burial chambers. For every Stonehenge and Silbury Hill (handily located by the side of the A303 and A4 respectively) there's a Twelve Apostles, a hefty walk from the road across Ilkley Moor, or Pentre Ifan - which is, I grant you, only a very short walk from the road, but finding the right bit of the road or even finding right road, well. That was more difficult...

I'm sure there is a perfectly straightforward route from the main road, through the series of single track lanes that take you up to the top of the hill to the monument. It's probably beautifully signposted.

All I'm saying is that we didn't find it - and I have to say we weren't the only ones. Having failed to find a brown sign pointing us off the main road, we struck off in what we hoped was the right direction armed with a map and Mrs Snail's famed sense of direction. On reflection, the map was a mistake. Mrs Snail's sense of direction is legendary - which is a good job, because I could get lost in my own living room. She can direct us to a place we've never been before without ever looking at a map - honestly, it's practically a super-power.

On reflection therefore, letting her have the map might have been a mistake. Mrs Snail is not good with maps.

I have to say, the fashion in Wales  - which is also big in the West Country - for having twisty turny single track roads with mahoosive hedges towering up on either side preventing you from getting your bearings doesn't help much. Frankly it's a pain in the arse, and it makes it really really hard to get your bearings.

As a result we found ourselves driving along seemingly endless corridors of green leaved walls with almost no reference points.

Eventually we came to a "T" junction. There were no signs to tell us which way to go but Mrs Snail had put down the map and was reasonably sure that we needed to go left. Just as we were about to another car approached from the right and screeched to a halt in the middle of the road. They paused for a moment looking at their map, and when we pulled out to the left, they followed us.

Eventually, after a couple of miles we finally hit on the smallest brown tourist sign we have ever seen which pointed us to the monument. Picking our way down the single track road, cautiously overtaking the horses from the stealth riding school that almost literally appeared from nowhere* until we reached a bit of road where an assortment of cars and camper vans had pulled into the narrow strip of verge that serves as the Pentre Ifan parking area.

Our ancestors just loved stacking rocks on rocks...

At first glance, Pentre Ifan looks like a strange sort of burial chamber. Mostly because it's clearly not a chamber at all, but a large slab of rock supported on three rough stone uprights, with a couple more slabs of rock sort of loitering around.

The truth is that Pentre Ifan is a mere skeleton of its former self. Back in the day there would have been more massive stones involved in this structure, and the whole thing would have been turfed over, making the structure effectively subterrainian. Over the years the turfs have eroded away and stones have been taken by local people with enough sense to realise that nicking stones that somebody has thoughtfully stacked up near where you want them is a damn sight easier than digging a quarry.

What you see is what remains, and it's still pretty spectacular. From the site there is a beautiful view down to the coast, which may have been a factor - the chamber's builders may have wanted their dead to have a decent view. Mind you, if that's the case they fluffed it slightly because the door of the chamber would have been facing inland, not out to the sea...

After spending some time exploring the site (this doesn't take long - everything there is to see is in these pictures), soak in the atmosphere (not quite as ethereal as Stonehenge, but you do get a sense of history and age) and admire the view we headed back down the hill to the coast road.

Not far from Pentre Ifan along that road is the Iron Age Hill Fort known as Castell Henllys. It's not the biggest Iron Age Hill Fort you'll ever see - you'd lose it at one end of Dorset's Maiden Castle, for example, but size isn't everything, and Castell Henllys is probably the most interesting hill fort in the British Isles.

You see they've been excavating this site since the early eighties, and at some point early in the history of that excavation somebody had a stroke of genius. (Bear with me, there's a longish explanation coming up - if you want to skip past it, just scroll down to the paragraph that starts with "Oi!").

The thing about archaeology is that it's pretty much a destructive process. You find your site, you dig it up and expose stuff which was previously buried. This is good, because it means we learn about the past, but it is also bad, because being buried is what protected the site from the elements. Now, if you have a big stone building you can leave it exposed and maintain it. If you're only left with fancy mosaic floors and whatnot you can either re-bury them or put a roof over the top.

But if you're digging the Iron Age, what you basically find is evidence of things that aren't there any more and so cannot be preserved. Iron age villages were made of wood. So what you find is evidence of where the wooden posts that supported the round houses were, the "drip circles" caused by rain dripping off the roof, evidence of burning where the hearth was and, depending on the geology of the site, possibly the ditch dug beneath the floor so that it didn't get damp (in the way there's usually a gap beneath the foolrboards of a modern house.

Once you've dug those out all you're left with is the site map you made to record where things were. Because you have to backfill the holes, or people fall down them and sue your university. Besides, if you leave a bunch of holes in a field they'll eventually end up collapsing and filling in by themselves, and what use is a bunch of holes anyway?

And that's where the stroke of genius comes in. Oh, hang on, well get the skippers back first, shall we?

Oi! If you skipped the expanitary bit you can come back now! "Hang on," said somebody, "let's re-create the place as it would have been, to better understand Iron Age life and put theories about how our Iron Age ancestors did things to the test!"

I may not be quoting directly, but you get the general idea...

And that, basically is what they did.  Beginning with the rather unromantically named "Roundhouse One" in 1982, archaeologists have painstakingly reconstructed three roundhouses, including the blacksmith's forge, and a raised grain store. Unlike other "Iron Age Villages" dotted around Britain, Castell Henllys's houses are built exactly on the sites of the originals. Rather than backfilling post holes with soil, they back filled them with, well, posts. These are buildings that have, genuinely been rebuilt.

The roped off areas of posts are where other houses would have stood.

We arrived in the visitor centre car park in the mid afternoon of a bleak, rain sodden August day. This should come as no surprise, the summer of 2015 was, after all, relentlessly wet.

Shrouded in Gore-Tex we squelched our way across muddy car park - Mrs Snail wisely chose to don her wellies, I stuck with my sandals on the grounds that they'd dry quick and my feet couldn't get any wetter - and into the attactive wooden building that houses the cafe, museum, gift shop and ticket office.

As you might expect on a day like this, the place was crowded with people who were less than keen to venture out in the rain. For this reason, I could forgive the lady behind the ticket counter for being a little flustered. However, I always find it very difficult to forgive customer facing staff in any business - but especially one that exists to serve tourists - where staff are straighforwardly rude and/or inattentive. This staff member was both.

There was no queue when we arrived at the desk, but we still stood, unacknowledged for several minutes while the woman faffed about writing something in a book. It might well have been important, and honestly I wouldn't have minded waiting if she'd just given us a brief smile and a "Be with you in a tick." but now. She just ignored us with the self satisfied air of somebody who is secure in the knowledge that whatever they're doing is far more important than you are. When she eventually deigned to recognise our presence she sold us our tickets** as though she were doing us a favour with an expression that made it abundently clear that we were lower than something she might have stepped in in a cow field.

I confess, I was tempted to explain, loudly and at length, exactly how unsatisfactory her level of service was, but then thought, "we're on holiday - I'm not wasting time on negativity". So I took the proffered tickets and we ventured out into the rain and began to climb the hill that put the hill in "hill fort".

If you're not good with walking, or very, very unfit, there's no disguising the fact that it's a bit of a trek to the top. There are, I am told, numerous woodland walks and trails. However, as the rain continued to plummet from a sky as grey as Gandalf's hat we paid them no mind and chose to head directly up the wide path which spirals around the hill to the little settlement.

As we approached the entrance we were struck by the earthwork defences that surrounded the fort. I confess that me and Mrs Snail are not the fittest specimens of humanity, but we were more than a little out of breath merely from a leisurely stroll up the hill. If we'd had to do it at a run, carrying an iron sword, and then had to negotiate the eathern ramparts while people behind a wooden stockade were firing arrows and chucking rocks at us?

Not an enticing prospect.

Fortunately, these days the locals are friendly***.

The Chief's House.

We made our way through the gates to the settlement  - past the rather imposing wicker man guarding the right hand side of the entrance and made our way to the closest Round House (don't call them huts), ducking in through the surprisingly low entrance of the "Chief's House". It was truly a revelation, and it made me glad for the deluvian weather.

You see, had we visited on a warm, sunny day, we would probably have had a look around the thatched round house with its low walls of mud, straw, horse hair and dung and thought something along the lines of "well, it seems comfy enough but I wouldn't want to be here when the weather was manky". Visiting on a day of such damp and chilly weather we got a real sense of how effective the round house design actually was - they might look primitive, but they're not.

That squat little doorway was like a portal between the world of cold and wet and the world of the warm and dry. In my ignorance I had always assumed that your average round house was a damp little place. The Chief's house was anything but. Although the walls themselves were low, the conical roof gave the space a real sense of height and space.

Following the standard round house format the centre of the space held the hearth - literally the heart of the house - providing heating, cooking and a little light, although not much, because embers, not flames were the order of the day. Around the fire four low benches carved from whole logs were arranged to allow people to sit around the glowing coals. The woodsmoke from the fire scented the air and rose up into the thatch. Roundhouses have no chimney, the smoke simply rises up throug hthe pourous thatching of the roof, helping to keep the thick layer of straw vermin free.

At the back (if a round building can be said to have a "back" - it was opposite the doorway. You know what I mean) there were a few private "rooms" separated from the main space by textile hangings and animal hides which would have served as sleeping quarters for the Chief and his family. To the left hand side of the doorway was a low table affair, at which crouched a woman in iron-age dress teaching three small tourist children how to make bread iron-age style.

"Now," she said, as she handed them wooden bowls of dough, "you've seen how I kneeded it. The bad news is you have to do that two thousand times..." She went to tend the fire, blowing the embers up into a low flame, while the children kneeded, counting "1,2,3,80,200,500,1500,2000 - 'scuse me, I've finished!"

With a wry grin which most definately said "Kids today, what can you do eh?" the iron age lady collected up the barely kneeded dough and took it to the fire, placing it on a hot slab of rock to cook. Mrs Snail and I ventured off to the next hut, smaller than the Chief's hut, but build to essentially the same design. This time there was a full ring of log seating around the hearth and these were full of people listening to stories around the fire.

The final of the three roundhouses was smaller still. In this one the hearth was slightly off centre, and there was no log benching or curtained off private space, just a low plank bed. By the fire sat a man in iron-age dress who ushered us in and bid us sit at the back of the roundhouse.

Proudly he showed us a pair of smith's tongs that had been made in that very smithy - for this roundhouse was endeed built on the site of the settlement's original smithy and forge. They had been made, he explained, by a graduate student from the University of Aberystwyth who had spent some months working at the forge working out some of the secrets of iron-age metal working.The student had also begun work on a sword, which I held in my hand. It was horribly unbalanced, and cracked down the middle but it may have been representetive of the kind of weapon your average iron-age foot soldier might have wielded.

Back in the Chief's house there was a much finer sword which I was also privillaged to hold (in that I regard holding it as a privillage - they'll let anyone have a go with it). This was shiney and balanced and pretty damn sharp. When you consider that most people in the iron-age didn't know the secret of working metal, those men that did, who could turn black, soft raw iron into hard, deadly, shiney blades must have seemed like wizards. Given the variable quality of swords you can see why the good ones, the ones that caught the sunlight, didn't bend and kept an edge, must have seemed magical. The origins of stories about legendary weapons like Excalibur are all too easy to see.

By now the weather was closing in, and closing time was approaching. Iron-age residents of the settlement were beginning to pack things away, squelching across the muddy grass in animal hide sandals which somehow seemed far more efficient on the slippery surface than my own twentyfirst century "all-terrain" pair. Had the weather been less driech we might perhaps have explored the woodland walks and herb gardens.

But we didn't. Because we were wet enough already.

Time then to head back to modern Wales, which I'll tell you about next time.


*Seriously, nothing for ages, and then suddenly horses all over the place...

** Summer prices:
Adult £5.00
Child £3.50
Concession £4.25
Family £13.50
Young Archaeologist Club members go free when accompanied by a paying adult.

***If you discount the unrepresentetive misery on the ticket desk - and who knows, when you visit she might be in a better mood - or even on her day off!

Things to do in New Quay when it's raining.

The rain was relentless - fine, even gentle, but utterly unstoppable. A never ending cascade from a sullen battleship sky devoid of all mirth, all hope and any prospect of ever changing. 

And yet we were not alone as we stood, huddled in sodden waterproofs on the rain slicked stones at the end of the harbour wall. There must have been what? Forty? Maybe fifty of us all staring fixedly out over the churning unkempt waves. Someone pointed out over the water and a score of camera lenses and binoculars swiveled to follow their finger. Sure enough, maybe a hundred yards from the harbour mouth there was a splash that had nothing to do with wind or wave - the briefest glimpse of a fluked tail and a rakish dorsal fin sliding gracefully beneath the brine revealed the splash to be the work of a bottle nosed dolphin, a member of Cardigan Bay's resident community - one of only two permanent communities of bottle nosed dolphins in the UK.* 

Somewhere in this picture there is a dolphin. Trust me.

"There's another one!" We turn, the air vibrating with the clicking of cameras and the delighted gasps of the crowd as the dorsal finned back of another dolphin slides gracefully above the surface for the briefest of moments and then slips silently into the depths once more. They were clearly having a camera-shy day, because the shot above is the best image I managed to capture.

There is just something about dolphins. Perhaps it's the fact that they always seem so cheerful. Perphaps it's just that they seem to like us that makes them so attractive. Who knows? Whatever magic they weave around us it is, I can attest, powerful enough to make a large numbers of people stand in the rain at the end of a harbour wall in a tiny seaside town in South Wales at the southern end of Cardigan Bay.

We were in New Quay. Note the space, it's quite important. As we did our research in preparation for this trip entering "New Quay" into Google elicited the inquiry "Did you mean Newquay?" along with a couple of million hits for the larger but similarly named seaside town in Cornwall.

This New Quay is smaller. Much smaller. But while it's also not as good for surfing (although you can catch the odd wave there) it most certainly is a better place to see dolphins. Indeed, between June and October they can be seen pretty much every day from the harbour wall - which is why the marine biologists who study them carry out their surveys from there. At the landward end of the harbour wall there's even a little office which keeps a record of how many dolphins, porpoises etc have been seen that day, and keeps a selection of telescopes of binoculars by the windows to help you get a close up view - and the views are clearly there to be had.

Take a stroll around the gift shops in the town and you'll see any number of framed photos showing these magnificent mammals leaping from azure waters mere inches from the stone of the harbour wall, their silver grey bodies glistening in the summer sun beneath saphire skies.

If you go and visit New Quay - and you really should - those pictures were not taken on the day we were there. We got nothing more than the odd dorsal fin and splash from a tail. Personally I reckon the beasts had seen the weather and decided they'd be drier beneath the waves...

On a nice day the harbour is lovely...

In the sunshine, as we were to discover later in the week, the place is as pretty as a picture of a really pretty thing. In the pouring rain under clouds as grey as an accountants suit? Not so much. When the dolphins eventually decided that human watching was getting boring and swam away to deeper water, we decided to head off in search of lunch.

In a place this small you wouldn't imagine finding a half way decent eaterie would be difficult. To be fair, there would be no reason for it to be - we just managed to make it so.

New Quay's "tourist quarter" is essentially a horseshoe shaped road which loops from the main road at the top of the hill, down to the sea and then back up the hill again. Starting as we were in the harbour at the bottom of the loop, we headed off along the seafront checking out the various cafes and restaurants that the little town has to offer.

As regular readers will know, we take lunch very seriously so we weren't about to just go for the first place we saw. So we trekked off, along the front and up the hill, dilligently reading menus and peeking through windows to check whether places "looked right". And all the time, the rain kept falling. Our gore-tex jackets clung to us, waterlogged and clammy. Every place we looked at we thought "Hmmmm' looks OK, but what else is there? Is there somewhere even better up the hill?"

Turned out there was a limited time we could stand to squelch through the rain sodden steets before our patience ran out. By the time we were completing the circle and trudging back down the hill towards the harbour again we'd had enough. Looking into  a bar/restaurant with an old fashioned exterior, but with a cool, contemporary interior decor and a simple but appetizing menu we considered our wet feet and calculated how far back we'd have to walk to get to some of the other places we'd liked and thought "Sod it. This'll do."

We were greeted by a very nice chap who turned out to be the co-owner. He sat us down and  talked us through the menu, brought us drinks  and was, essentially, the perfect host. He took our order of a cheese burger (me) and pate and toast (Mrs Snail) and then vanished, presumably to do the cooking, because we didn't see him again.

He was replaced, however, by his wife and co-owner, who as also lovely, chatting cheerfully about where she was from, how the business was new but beginning to take off, how proud she was of her staff, how much she loved New Quay. about our holiday and our plans for the rest of our time in Wales - we could not have asked for a bettr host or for better service. We were impressed. We really, really liked the place.

And yet I haven't given you the name of this wonderful establishment, nor the names of the wonderful proprietors. 

Well, there's a reason for that.

Because then the "food" arrived.

Oh dear. Oh dear oh dear oh dear.

"Bad" doesn't even begin to cover it. 

Mrs Snail's pate was clearly the cheapest of the cheap shop bought offerings. It had an unpleasant waxy yet grainy consistency, as though it were made of crayola. I'll happily take the menu's word that chicken livers were involved in its creation, but it was nothing like any chicken liver pate I've ever eaten before. The toast was definitely toasted bread, but it too was nothing to write home about - just two slices of cheap white "Mother's Pride" style white sliced.

My cheese burger was no better. The bun was fine, what back in Yorkshire I'd have called a "bap" - squishy, moist and airy. Browned on top with  light dusting of flour. So far, so good. The chips were OK - no more than that, but fair enough. They were perfectly inoffensive.**

It was very much all downhill from there.

The meal was accompanied by peas - which has a bit of the ring of the children's menu about it now I think about it, which would have been bad enough. These peas however were not the bright, vibrant green of fresh (or frozen) garden peas. No. These peas wore the grim khaki of the tin.

Now. I quite like tinned peas. 

But I do not expect to be served them when I'm in an establisment that bills itself as a "Restaurant and Bar". For a start, they go cold very quickly and by the time they reached our table they were already approaching tepid. And then there was the beef patty itself. It was not good. At all.

In all fairness it was not the worst beef burger I've ever been served. That distinction belongs to a lunch in a hotel-that-shall-not-be-named*** in Scotland, where I actually saw them take the burger out of a can. This was not that bad. It was however, the next best (or worst, I suppose) thing.

The exterior of the patty looked OK - it was the appropriaqte shade of charred dark brown you'd expect. For a moment, in spite of the khaki peas, I allowed myself to hope. This was a mistake, because I was disappointed.

The interior of the patty was an odd shade of reddish pink - not the pink of the "meduim rare" that is so popular in restaurant burgers these days, but the sort of unnatural "whatever this is it only has a tangential relationship with actual meat" pink you get in the cheapest of processed foods. It certainly didn't taste of beef.  It was unpleasant. We were in an establishment that claimed to be a reastaurant. McDonalds would have been 1000% better. I have no criticism more damning.

And yet, I have not named this eaterie. I have avoided holding it up for riducule and approbation.

Why? 

Because we really liked the place. I really don't want to give the owners and their restaurant a bad review. When we ate there they'd been open a month. They had clearly put a lot of thought into the decor - lots of clean white walls with pebble grey wood panneling and the legend "Life is better when you're laughing" emblazoned on the wall in cursive script. The service was attentive, friendly and personable - I have never felt more welcome anywhere. Every single thing about the place was perfect, if you ignore the fact that the food was terrible. Now I grant you, having terrible food is a bit of a drawback for a retaurant, but I really really want this place to succeed. If this place finds a decent chef who cares about ingredients it will rise to astonishing heights. I hope it does. If it doesn't, I can't imagine it will survive all that long. But if it dies, I won't contrubute to its destruction by writing a bad review.

What can I say? I like to support new enterprise. Also - and rather terrfyingly - this wasn't even the worst meal we ate while we were in South Wales.

Next time, we'll have a look at something better...

*The other is in Moray.

**And when "inoffensive" is the best thing you can say about any aspect of a meal you know there's a problem.

***At least not for now. The hotel in question has changed hands since we ate there. At some point we'll go back and try it again - there may be a report at that point...