George Costanza said that while describing how he came to pull a golf ball out of the blow-hole of a whale (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHF7EWCJqQI), and I thought it on the journey by ferry from Dublin to Wales. It was a little rough and I got a little queasy, but arrived in Holyhead, Wales not feeling too bad, but having missed my connecting train. I had to wait about half an hour for the next one, and then catch another one going back in the direction I had come, because the town I was going to is so small, you can't get there from here, if here is the train station at the ferry dock. So one train forward, another one (which was almost two hours late) back, and I finally arrived in Penmaenmawr (pron: "Pen-men-" then make a sound like an angry cat), on the Welsh coastline. It is a gorgeous little town, snug against a hillside and on the edge of the Atlantic. Hilary, whose house I'm staying in, met me at the train station and we walked up the hill less than ten minutes to her place. The entrance to the house is a little odd, it's nothing much to look at, but it's homey and comfy inside.
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| Hilary's house on the left |
After I got settled, I went for a walk around the village - it's like something out of a fairy tale, or a romantic comedy, or a grisly British murder-mystery, if that's the way your mind works, with a few antique shops, a used bookstore, some restaurants, and a couple of boutiques. I walked through the town, all two blocks of it, along the main street and then saw a sign for a footpath that took me through a gate, through a pasture, past two ponies, and up behind some houses. After walking for a bit, I went back to the house and Hilary's daughter Zoe and her friend Emma who is visiting from England came in a couple hours later, and the four of us had dinner at the house and drove up to a path up on the hillside for a walk. It was stunning. It was just before twilight and the lights in the town below were twinkling, the coast was visible, and the purple heather which covered the hills looked like a carpet of amethysts. I'm here for three days and at first I wasn't sure what I was going to do with myself, but now I don't care. I could do that walk every day for three days and not get tired of it.
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| Penmaenmawr |
