Singing in the Valleys; E-Book

Geoffrey Peyton

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A walk about Porthcawl and the towns environs during the middle of Spring 2013, The journey takes me through a lot of disappointment, but thankfully through lot of the more beauty spots that are further afield from a quite sorrowful town. I am accompanied by Mike Thomas, an old friend who is of Welsh origin and knows the better parts of this majestic country.

Leseprobe

Geoffrey Peyton

Singing in the Valleys;

and then into a town that died

Thanks to Mike Thomas for taking me to the more scenic of places in the South of Wales. It truly is a majestic country.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

We’ll be singing in the valleys

The common theme for my first getaway of the year 2013 is to take a vacation in late March around my birthday, and alone. The previous two years had seen me venture onto the East Coast of Lincolnshire and hiking the flatter plains, therefore weaning myself into easier walking so that I can prepare myself for the tougher gradient of adverse walks later in the year, courtesy of the Western Fells in the Lake District. And with the previous two March’s blessing the nation with souring temperatures that are mostly unfamiliar with a British spring, one would think that it would be pretty obvious to go with the flow and persist with that mode.

So in January when the Sun tabloid began to print their generous offers of the £9.50 Spring & Summer short breaks, it naturally wetted my appetite for my birthday getaway treat. But for some unknown reason, I decided to put it back another month and set off in mid to late April instead. So once I had booked and paid for a weekend break, I had therefore committed myself to that later time, and there was no turning back. I had also ditched Cleethorpes as the usual starting point of my holidays, electing instead to visit the land of my great grandfathers, that being Wales. I must admit that that decision haunted me for a short time afterwards as soon as I pressed the enter button on the online booking form. I was already twiddling my fingers in anticipation for a break from city life, and to wait another month would be traumatic on my already dwindling patience, but sometimes mistakes can work in your favour, and by golly this one certainly did.

The date that I would have normally left would have been the 22nd March. Birmingham was covered in a foot of snow, with other parts of Britain seeing twice as much as that, not to mention drifts of between four and twelve feet high. So you can imagine how relieved I was when I looked out of the window on the date and gasped, 'What a lucky git you are Geoffrey'. I of course was referring to the fact of my inadvertent changing of estimated time of arrival at whatever destination that I would be entering at this point (wherever that was). Wherever I would have travelled to in Britain was sure to contain enough snow to make an Inuit jealous. Okay, and as sad as I am, I actually do enjoy walking in the snow. But to attempt untrodden fields of Lincolnshire in such conditions would have been treacherous to say the least, as well as utterly stupid. So the mistake of booking later was a mistake that wasn’t one, if you get my drift.

I booked a weekend in Porthcawl, an old coal mining village on the South Coast of Wales, and roughly 10 miles west of Bridgend. If you are not as ignorant as I am as to what Porthcawl has to offer in the way of panoramic scenery, then you yourself would possibly Google a few bits and pieces about the town; notably pictures. I myself decided to book the holiday first and then Google a few images of a beach that contained about as much sand as a very, very small builders yard. It had instead, a lot of rocks and larger pebbles that were scattered very generously by the coasts edge where flip-flops were and definite no go. But I was determined to at least find historical pleasantries about the town whilst Googling but came up short, apart from it being an old mining village on the South Coast of Wales, but you already knew that. But look, I only had a quick gander on the internet and I was on my third can of Budweiser at the time, so I was a little drowsy. But I do promise to enlighten the reader with updated bullshit as soon as I am down in the Welsh valleys.