Time to say goodbye.

So much has happened since the first book in the trilogy, Leap the Wild Water, was published in 2013. I remember how it felt when the book ‘went live’. It was like diving into deep water, not knowing what lay beneath the surface. It was both terrifying and exhilarating. I published it on a hope and a prayer that someone, somewhere, would think well of it. I never imagined just how many people would be carried away, as I was, by Megan’s story, or the praise my writing would receive.

I am truly and forever grateful to all those readers who let me know, in person or through their reviews, how much they enjoyed my books. It is readers who decide if writers sink or swim and I have been blessed by the encouragement my writing has received. I am not a person who has a great deal of self-confidence or self-belief, so without that encouragement, the second book in the trilogy, The Calling of the Raven, may never have seen the light of day.

Now, two eventful years since I published The Calling of the Raven, I’m finally publishing the last book in the Megan Jones trilogy. I came close to giving up on it. The loss of Morgan knocked me off my feet and for a while I couldn’t think about anything else. I miss him so much and preparing the book for this step to publication has given me a focus.

With the last book in the trilogy, it is time to say goodbye to Megan, et al. Saying goodbye isn’t easy as I’ve come to know these characters so well they are like old friends to me. They have carried me along on a breath-taking journey across the centuries and into the intimate details of their lives and struggles. Megan is a woman with courage, compassion, and a capacity for forgiveness which many of us can only aspire to. For me, she is what every heroine should be; portraying the possibilities lying within each of us.

From the very first, I have felt these stories were not being told by me so much as by the characters who ‘speak’ through me. My role has been merely to shape their experiences into the form of a novel. So I am grateful to them, too, for choosing me to tell their stories. I shall never forget them.

Which brings me to the last book in the Megan Jones trilogy, and to celebrate the launch of Anywhere the Wind Blows, the new updated kindle edition of Leap the Wild Water will be FREE for 5 days from August 1st 2016.

Jenny Lloyd is the Welsh author of The Megan Jones trilogy; historical suspense novels set in early, 19th century, rural Wales.

          

You can read about the books or purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/73tq302Ov71

You can also follow the author:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

Pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/jennyoldhouse

 

 

 

A writer’s country strife alias ‘clueless’ in Wales.

I’ve been revisiting blog posts I’ve written over the years. I’ve moved house since writing the following piece, so I am no longer the owner of the two darlings who are the subject of this post.

I’ve always approached anything mechanical with some trepidation. I generally distrust any machine, including my car, if I don’t know how it works. So it was with unusual recklessness that I decided to try a ride-on mower to keep down the grass in my half-acre paddock. It was a second-hand mower, hence it came without instructions. I assumed it would work like my car; turn the ignition, the engine will start; let your foot off the clutch and away to go. All of which happened, but it was only when I found myself hurtling towards a tree with no room for manoeuvre that I realised I didn’t know where the brakes were and didn’t have the luxury of time to find out. I leapt from the beast and hit the ground running. I’m guessing I’m not the first person to have abandoned ship in this way because someone invented a mechanism which automatically cuts out the engine when the seat is vacated; thus the mower was saved from being wrapped around said tree.

Following this experience, I decided what I needed to keep the grass down was a more manageable kind of beast, and I set about a quest to buy myself a couple of sheep. After all, I’d grown up on a farm, what could possibly go wrong? I asked one of my brothers, Phil, to come along with me to a forthcoming sheep sale, based on another wrong assumption; that he would have more idea than me. Off we went to the sale.  I’d set my heart on a couple of Welsh Black Mountain sheep, though heaven knows we had more than a couple of ‘black sheep’ in the family already, including me.

Into the ring they came, in groups of two or four, and the bidding began. With my heart pounding, I proceeded to wave my programme in the air at intervals, and got the winning bid on a lovely pair of six month old, Welsh black mountain lambs. Only when I went to pay did I realise the figure I had bid was not for the two but the price of each. I raise an eyebrow at Phil who avoids my gaze. He was obviously not as knowledgeable as I had hoped or he would have known this, wouldn’t he? At this point I should have had a sense of foreboding.

To be fair, since leaving the farm of our childhoods, neither of us had been involved in farming in any way. It’s astonishing how much one forgets over forty years. This lapse of memory was to become more evident over the coming hours.

With receipt of my payment in hand we go off in search of my lambs. They are not in a pen of their own, all ready and waiting for me as I’d expected. What we are faced with is a large pen of thirty black lambs all huddled together in a corner with their backs to us, and all seemingly identical.

“Which two are mine?” I ask Phil.

He gives a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, “I suppose you just take your pick?”

“Oh! Great! Those two look sweet, I’ll have those,” I say, pointing out two from the indistinguishable crowd.

Welsh Black Mountain lambs are WILD. They race, they kick, they bleat, and they buck like untamed horses. After chasing these beasts around the pen for some minutes, we decide to grab hold of whatever we can and hang on for dear life. They are strong; it takes all our strength to carry them, kicking and writhing, out of the pen and down into the waiting trailer.

“Phew! A bit wild, aren’t they?” Phil says, as we bolt the trailer gate behind them.

Job done. Off we now go to the supermarket because Phil needs to do a bit of shopping. All the while, the lambs are trying to kick and buck their way out of the trailer. On returning with his shopping, Phil takes a peek inside.

“Oh! Come and see this!” He says. “Look! They’ve got numbers on them.”

So they have. Buried in the wool under their chins are paper tags with numbers penned on them; eight and twelve. The penny drops. Phil looks at me. I look at Phil. We hadn’t seen the numbers earlier because while we were chasing and catching the beasts, they were naturally facing the other way.

“Oops,” Phil says.

The two lambs I should have taken were the third and fourth of the group of thirty that were brought into the ring, and so would have had the numbers 3 and 4 attached to them. It was obvious now we see they are numbered.

“What a stupid idea. They could at least have put the numbers where we would have seen them,” says Phil.

No doubt the auctioneers weren’t expecting two complete novices to turn up or they’d have stuck the numbers on their backsides.

“I thought you said you’ve done this before,” I say to him with an accusing glare.

“Oh, well, we can’t take them back now. It won’t make no odds, anyway, they all look the same,” he says.

We head for home, accompanied by the loud bangs of our wild companions trying to kick their way out of the trailer. Perhaps they sensed they had been wrongly abducted.

By the time we get to my place, some two hours or more have passed since we had abducted those lambs. We back the trailer up to the open gate leading into my paddock and unleash the beasts. They race across the paddock and do something I’ve never seen lambs do before. They hop, skip, jump, then take a flying leap over the stone wall boundary, straight onto my neighbour’s hill.

“Well! Ruddy hell!” Phil says in his most infuriating laid-back style, while I am wringing my hands with angst.

“You’ll never catch ‘em now, they’ll be gone,” says he, stating the bleeding obvious.

I go indoors to make a cup of tea; the only thing to do when you don’t know what to do next. A light is flashing on my answerphone. While we wait for the kettle to boil, I play back the message. It is a woman’s voice and she sounds furious.

“Please phone the auctioneers immediately you get this message.”

“She doesn’t sound very happy,” Phil says with a hearty chuckle and I give him ‘The Look’ that tells him this is not in the least bit funny.

When I phone the auctioneers I discover the mayhem we have left in our wake.

“The sheep are numbered for a reason!” I am informed in an officious voice.

“So buyers get the sheep they have bid on, not someone else’s sheep!” The woman goes on, her voice rising higher with each word.

“You have caused a great deal of confusion and trouble!” She says, her voice rising to a crescendo.

“I’m ever so sorry,” I squeak.

“And so you should be! Well! Someone else now has your sheep!” she says with a note of triumph in her voice which makes me suspect the ones which have gone to someone else must have been the better pair.

“We’ll never be able to go there again,” Phil says, when I put down the phone.

A neighbour and his dog eventually found my two on the top of the hill, a couple of days later, and brought them home to me after I’d erected a fence above the wall to keep them in.

Not surprisingly, it took them some time to settle in and grow to trust me. They were the best of friends, their relationship cemented during their shared trauma of being abducted by a couple of ne’er-do-wells. At first, their capacity for jumping walls and fences knew no bounds. They had a few adventures over the following months until I made all the fences high enough to restrain llamas. On one of their adventures they ended up a mile away after taking a trip down the country lanes. I suspect they were going in search of their rightful owner.

Jenny Lloyd is the Welsh author of The Megan Jones trilogy, historical suspense novels set in early, 19th century, rural Wales.

          

You can read about the books and purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

Follow me:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

Pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/jennyoldhouse

 

 

A ghostly encounter on a journey into the past…..

I have never been afraid of ghosts, not even as a child growing up in a reputedly haunted house. In fact, I was thrilled and fascinated by the stories of an older sister who told of her too-close encounters with our resident ghost. The living have often scared me, but not the dead. My lack of fear is just as well, given what happened to me when I went in search of a house where my ancestors once lived, an experience which is the subject of this post.

My journey to find my Welsh ancestors spanned two and half years, hundreds of hours of research, and culminated in the writing of three historical novels. When I began the journey, I never imagined what it would lead to. Of all the journeys I have made, it was the most moving, surprising, and inspiring of all.

Along the way, I had experiences which reignited my faith in there being more to our existence than can be explained away and diminished by science. The experience I shall write about here is an extract from the notebooks I kept at the time.

It was a journey in search of the place where my great-great grandmother had her illegitimate child taken from her to be boarded with a woman who took in these poor children for a living. When this great-great grandmother got married some years later, her daughter was brought home by her uncle Morgan to live with him and his housekeeper.

This story was to spark my imagination and lead to my writing historical fiction. The great-great grandmother, her brother Morgan, and her daughter, were immortalised as Megan, Morgan and Fortune in Leap the Wild Water, The Calling of the Raven and Anywhere the Wind Blows.

My journey to find the place where they’d lived, Caegwyn, was possibly both the eeriest and strangest of all. Its location on the old map showed it to be as remote as any place can be, high up on the top of the central hills of Abergwesyn. The modern map showed it to have been swallowed up by the dark, lifeless and ever-growing forests of the Forestry Commission. So I set out on the journey with little hope of finding much more than rubble. It seemed to me that ‘progress’ had wiped out all before it in its march, including the homes of my ancestors.

I park the car by Beulah Church, don waterproofs and walking boots, and hoist my rucksack on my back. It’s a blustery day, patches of blue sky disappearing and reappearing between threatening, pregnant clouds.

I take the track that goes past Caemawr and past the ruins of what was once Cefngardis farmhouse. Just above the ruins, this track joins the ancient, green ridge-road that comes up from Aberannell farm and over the hills of Abergwesyn, and goes all the way to Cardigan. It was the old drover’s route in the days before the railways came. Thousands of Welsh cattle and geese trod this route, over hundreds of years, to be sold in the markets of England.

I walk up this track under a canopy of trees which border the track on both sides. Then the avenue of trees comes to an end and the track goes over open hill before skirting craggy rocks. The hill falls away steeply on my right, smothered with ancient oak trees. I walk until I reach a summit on the track and stop to look down the valley that opens up below me. Way down at the foot of the hill, nestles the old farmstead of Tycwm. Up the valley sits Lloftybardd and further still, in the distance, the little chapel of Pantycelin where many of my ancestors are buried. From up here on this mountain, the shiny, black gravestones in the modern part of the graveyard resemble rows of black-clothed mourners at a funeral.

I sit on a crag of rock looking down on this vista that my ancestors had looked down on before me, though there was no forestry then to blacken the hills and pollute the waters. From the buzzard’s-view on my perch, I see the mansion of Llwynmadoc in the direction from which I’ve come. The sun breaks through the clouds and a rainbow appears behind Llwynmadoc, over the beautiful hill of Garnwen, flooded with colour and sunlight.

The dark clouds, which have been threatening over the horizon for the past half hour, choose to burst as they arrive over my head. I sit on my perch, eating my lunch, while being battered by rain and buffeted by the wind.

I don’t know how much further I have to walk, so set off briskly. In the distance ahead, the edges of the great forestry loom, and in front of me the track forks indecisively. The clouds pass away leaving a brilliant blue sky in their wake. A flock of twittering, chattering birds come flying from behind me, passing me by with a whoosh, and dipping and darting along the path ahead. The birds follow the left hand fork in the track and pause to perch on a little gate in the fence. Then off they go again. I follow their lead and head towards the forest.

On the other side of the gate, the track winds through pale, rough grass, rosebay-willow-herbs and purple heather before entering the deep, dark forest. The track through the forest is straight and wide and stretches far ahead. Overhead, there is a long strip of blue sky between the avenues of plantation but no light shines on the path; only here and there a small pool of sunlight breaks through the thick canopy, illuminating small areas of undergrowth of long-undisturbed moss. The air is drenched with the aromas of pine needles, fungi and mould; the only sounds are the screeching and creaking of branches rubbing together in the wind. The atmosphere is chilling and eerie.

I scan the plantation on my left for signs of a ruin. This is where Caegwyn seems to be marked on the map. The dank avenue appears to go on forever before finally opening onto a sun-drenched crossroads at its summit. I venture for a little way down a couple of these tracks although fearing that my search is futile. I decide if there is anything left of Caegwyn at all, it must be back in the direction I’ve come.

So I head back down the forestry track, scanning the forest floor again for signs of a ruin, feeling very tired and dispirited by now. I had come in search of Morgan’s land and the place where my great-grandmother grew up. As I reach the end of the plantation, I feel I have somehow failed them.

Then, as I step out of the forestry and into the sunlight, I feel overwhelmed by a strange and strong sensation; I am being not so much pulled but led, and I am compelled to follow, downwards away from the track. Over rows of concealed tree stumps I stumble, my ankles snarled by brambles which threaten to trip me up and send me flying with every step. I am going further and further from the track home and feeling exhausted. I stop and wonder where on earth I am going and why. This is ridiculous, I think to myself, I’m not going any further, I have to head home.

It is then that I see it.

The ruins of Caegwyn have appeared, as if from nowhere before me, smothered and strangled under mounds of black-berried brambles. My breath catches in my throat and I gasp, my scalp tingling. Later, returning home and looking back towards the site of the well-concealed ruin, I am convinced I would never have found it if I had not been ‘led’ towards it by some unseen, spiritual force.

There is little left of the old Caegwyn to see, but from what remains of its outer walls, reduced to some four to six feet in height, one can see that it was once a traditional, Welsh stone long-house. At first sight, it seems precariously perched on the edge of the gorge beyond it, but in fact there is a distance of some tens of yards between what was once its front door and the edge of the ravine it lies parallel to.

It must once have been the most remote and romantic of settings, before the forestry came. The gorge carries the mountain stream down to the lake of Cefn-gardis below. When I lived in the village of Beulah, and my daughter was a little girl, I used to bring her and her friends up to this lake for picnics. I used to sit there by the tranquil lake, looking up at the hills beyond, and it astonishes me now to think I had no idea that my great-great grandmother and many of her relations had lived up there. This lake existed in their time, having been built by Henry Thomas of Llwynmadoc, sometime before his death in 1863. It is said that he employed the striking miners of South Wales to build it.

The aspect looking south from Caegwyn is breathtaking.

The lake shimmers below, and beyond the lake one can see the old village of Beulah and its chapel framed between the slopes of the hills. Beyond Beulah chapel lies Garth bank and the long stretch of the Eppynt mountain. I stood and gazed at the view for a long while, thinking how privileged I was to have been led to find this place where my great grandmother grew up with her uncle Morgan; how lucky I was to have begun this journey in search of my grandmother, Annie, and her family; but sad too that such a place was now in ruins and beyond salvation. For this is a short-lived opportunity to go there, because although the forestry in which Caegwyn was buried has been cleared, it has been replanted. Soon, Caegwyn will be buried again, and even if I were not long gone by then, there will be little, if anything, left to see by the time the trees are harvested again.

Jenny Lloyd is the Welsh author of the Megan Jones trilogy of novels, historical suspense set in early 19th century, rural Wales.

           

You can read about the books and purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

Follow me:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

Pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/jennyoldhouse

I suffer an intermittent fault with my bullshit detector.

It was a funny old week. My travels around the Llyn Peninsula began near Black Rock sands and the most extortionately priced campsite I’ve yet encountered. Twenty-five pounds per night is the charge for the dubious pleasure of being able to park your outfit on a potholed field backing onto the dunes. For your money you get a pitch with electric and use of the toilet and shower block which are converted porta-cabins.

Black Rock sands is a vast stretch of flat, sandy beach which also serves as a car-park for anyone wanting to spend the day there. From your car you can watch and listen to the senses-assaulting scream of the water-scooters (what are they called?) motoring up and down the bay the whole day long. We head inland for a walk along the pretty country lanes, instead.

On Saturday night, whichever council employee is responsible for locking the barriers at 8pm forgets to do so. The result is a bunch of lads arrive in their cars for high-speed races up and down the beach (which has a 10mph limit), keeping everyone awake. Those not racing their cars light bonfires dangerously close to the dunes, ignoring the risk of setting the bone-dry marran grass alight.

On Sunday morning, I decide one night on this site is too much, in every sense, and take a walk through the dunes down to the beach before we leave. Those who kept us awake half the night have left the smouldering remains of bonfires, barbecues, and strewn litter in their wake; carrier bags, food wrappers, beer cans, etc. are blowing about the sands. This beach is very popular and I can’t think why, for the life of me.

I make an early start and head for the ‘chin’ of the Llyn Peninsula, beyond the trendy town of Abersoch, and soon we are pootling along country lanes which branch off in all directions, hemmed with wild-flower strewn stone walls.

I come across a sign for a campsite that is two empty fields mown to putting green standard.

“You’ve arrived at the right time,” the owner says, “we were chock-a-block at the weekend.”

Sadly, there is only one electric hook-up, which is attached to the owner’s house. I dither about whether to park here, where there would be no views or privacy at all, or to forego the electric. I dither because, as yet, I haven’t been able to get the fridge to work off the gas, despite repeated attempts according to the instructions of the chap that sold the camper to me.

“I’ll take a look at the fridge, if you want,” says the owner, “see if we can get it working.”

I’m thinking I’ve landed on my feet and park the van at the far side of the field where I can see the views. Then me and the dogs go for a walk along the lanes.

Back at the campsite, the owner comes over, saying he will take a look at my fridge – later. He talks and talks about everything and nothing before finally returning to his house.

I go to the toilet and shower block. Here, I discover, too late, there is no loo roll in the toilet cubicle. On exiting, I see a notice on the wall; loo rolls 80 pence each, available from the house. Now, wouldn’t it have been nice to know I needed to bring my own loo roll or purchase one from the house, before I’d used the loo?

Some other notices catch my eye, one of which says that campers will get no refund if they are asked to leave, or if they choose to leave earlier than the amount of days they are booked in for.  Later, I go to use the shower and find it is a coin-operated shower which will only devour a minimum of 5 x 10 pence pieces at a time. I get dressed again, go over to the van in the vain hope I may have some in my purse. I have only four, so trudge over to the house but there is nobody about so I don’t get my shower until the owner comes back.

Over the next few hours, I lose count of the number of times the owner strolls over, hands jammed into his pockets and shoulders hunched up to just below his ears, until it gets to the point where my heart sinks at the sight of him.

“Alright? Not bothering you, am I?” he asks before continuing his chatter, this time to tell me how all the people around here are nutters. He tells me how he came from up Lancashire way to buy this place and the trouble he had from the council when he wanted to put a campsite here. He tells me he is a qualified such-and-such and all his customers are millionaires because everyone around here is a millionaire; it’s the millionaire belt of Wales. Again, he leaves, promising again to take a look at my fridge – later. It’s probably just a bit of dust on the pilot-light, he says, or the pipe may be blocked; easily fixed. Meanwhile, my icebox is melting.

Half an hour later, back he comes for another chat which again begins with the same question. “Not bothering you, am I?”

By now, he is really beginning to bother me but I am far too polite to say so and I’m hoping that, on this occasion, he has come to do what he’s been promising to do since I got here, i.e. fix the darned fridge.

He asks me what I’m doing. I tell him I was writing. He peers around me, where I am standing inside my doorway, and he sees my laptop. He wants to know how I’m charging it. I tell him I use the invertor, or whatever it’s called.

“You can’t do that! You’ll drain your engine battery if you do that!”

I tell him it isn’t running off the engine battery; it runs off the leisure batteries which are charged by the solar panels on the roof. He exhales a breath.

“Well, I’m telling you now, you’ll knacker those batteries if you go doing that. Have you any idea how much it costs to replace them?”

I’m not one for being rude to people, so I don’t tell him it isn’t actually any of his business. Instead, I politely tell him I need to crack on with what I was doing.

“I was going to have a look at that fridge for you, wasn’t I?” he says.

I answer in the affirmative.

“I’ll just take that grill off the vent and have a look inside.”

At last! I am so longing to get that fridge to work! He takes off the grill and says he will need a screw driver.

“Don’t suppose you’d have thought to pack something like that, would you, eh?”

“Well, actually…” I say, and nip inside and come back with my multi-headed ratchet screwdriver (no less) and present it to him with a smile.

He gives it a scathing glance and asks haven’t I got something a bit smaller than that. I point out the multitude of screw-heads he has to choose from, one for every size of screw.

He heaves a sigh and unscrews a metal plate.

“Look at this! This is wired all wrong, this is. No wonder it isn’t working. These wires shouldn’t be where they are,” he says, wiggling the wires about. I reckon someone has been tampering with this. No wonder it isn’t working.”

There is an intermittent fault with my bullshit detector but when it is working I tend to trust what it tells me and right now it was detecting a very suspicious smell. I nip inside to get the manual in which I recall seeing diagrams of the wirings. As I come back down the van steps, he has his hands jammed back into his jeans pockets.

“Can’t help you, I’m afraid,” he says, with a jerk of his head in the direction of the vent grill. “Those wires have been tampered with. Didn’t you check if the fridge was working before you bought it? You women! You haven’t got a clue, have you?”

More of a clue than you could ever imagine, matey.

I’m no longer surprised that I am the only one here. I don’t respond to his comment but show him the diagram in the manual which proves that the fridge is, in fact, wired up as it should be. (Incidentally, since my accident, I’ve had an engineer to come out and look at the fridge. The problem was the gas valve which had ceased up – apparently can happen if not used for a length of time.)

He shrugs and fixes me with a cold stare. “It’s not working though, is it? All your stuffs going to go off! It’s only a few extra quid a night if you want to plug into the hook-up at the end of my house.

I say thanks but no thanks, I’ve got a cool box; I’ve put what I can in there for now.  I’m thinking; across this field has become a lot too close to this nutter and I’m going to get out of here as soon as possible.

“I’m off into town, now, to get a few things,” I call out as he saunters away.

I drive away and don’t look back. I recall the notice in the toilet block about not getting a refund if you decide to leave early. How many people before me have stopped here and soon wanted to leave? I can only guess. I’m beginning to fear I have become a magnet for interfering gits and/or lunatics. ( This fear becomes a reality on the journey home following my accident!)

I find another site a mile or so away and love, love, love this part of the beautiful Llyn. The dogs and me take off down the flower- bejewelled lanes and go along a footpath which takes us down to Porth Ceiriad.

I am so pleased I chose to come to this part of the Llyn for it exceeds all my expectations. What a landscape of contrasts this is; cosy, sleepy, little lanes lead to open headland where the trees grow sideways; away from the blast of the prevailing winter winds.

We walk from one end of the beach of Porth Neigwl to the other, marvelling at the myriad of colourful pebbles along the beach. I find a small shard of blue and white china amongst the pebbles; another treasure to add to the trove.

Porth Neigwl’s other name is Hell’s Mouth, and if you look at its position on the map, you can see that Hell’s Mouth is between the ‘chin’ of the Llyn (where I’m camped) and the ‘nose’ at Mynydd Mawr. Hell’s Mouth is a massive open jaw between the two.

On my last day in this region of the Llyn, I meet a couple along the lane who have lost their way along the Llyn coastal path. I point them in the direction where they will pick up the coastal path again. That evening, I pop into Abersoch to get something to eat. I’m in the local shop and who should I see at the counter but the couple I saw on the lane. They are asking the girl behind the counter how best to get to back to Hell’s Mouth. I tell them I’m going in that direction and can give them a lift if they’d like.

I am then apologising for the mess; I’d have had a bit of a tidy if I’d known I was having guests! On the way, they tell me they are camped on a site at Mynydd Mawr (the tip of the ‘nose’ of the Llyn), and describe how beautiful it is there. I’d been planning to go in that direction next and think perhaps I will go there.

After dropping them off, I discover the lady has left her walking stick in my camper. There is no ‘perhaps’ about going to Mynydd Mawr, now; and so it was that this chance encounter led me on the next leg of my journey. The next morning, I headed for the area that is known as the ‘Land’s End’ of North Wales; to reunite a lovely lady with her walking stick and discover the most awesome part of the Welsh coastline I have yet encountered……

Jenny Lloyd is the Welsh author of The Megan Jones trilogy, historical suspense novels set in early, 19th century, rural Wales.

          

You can read about the books and purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

Follow me:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

Pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/jennyoldhouse

 

The day disaster struck.

On Sunday, I was driving from Mynydd Mawr to camp further up the North coast of the Llyn. Having got somewhat lost along the myriad of little lanes, I ended up somewhere I hadn’t intended to be at all. When I saw a parking and picnic area, I decided to pull in and consult my maps in the hope of discovering my location. A notice board at the picnic site told me this was the carpark for Penllech Beach. From here, there was a footpath leading across some fields, past waterfalls and down to the beach. It was early in the day and I was in no hurry, so we headed off to the beach. I had no idea that I would not be returning to that car park in the manner in which I left it.

Some rough steps led down to the beach and this walkway ended in smooth rocks on which I almost slipped. There wasn’t another soul on the beach at that time of the morning. As I walked along the shoreline, I experienced a fleeting moment of apprehension, and the thought occurred to me that perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to be here alone. I should have heeded my instincts and those of my dogs. I sat on a rock to watch the waves breaking on the sand. Jessie dog came to sit beside me and huddled in to my side, making me wonder if she wasn’t feeling well as she would usually be avidly sniffing along the beach.

Penllech beach

I got up and began walking back to the other end of the beach, and passed the steps we had come down. As we passed the steps, Morgan dog ran up them and sat waiting at the top. I tell him we are not going back up yet, we haven’t been here long. I continue along and look back to see Morgan is still sat at the top of the steps, as if he wants to go. I wonder if he, too, isn’t feeling well as he doesn’t seem to be as keen as usual, either. I call to him several times and finally he is persuaded to come down and follow.

Jessie dog then begins to play fight with him, trying to get him to play chase. He takes off, with her in hot pursuit. I’m looking up at the gorge where the waterfalls down to the beach are just out of sight, wondering how I can get across the stream to take a photograph. Too late, I turn to see Morgan hurtling towards me, not looking at where he is going but looking over his shoulder at Jessie chasing him. I don’t have time to get out of the way. Twenty-eight kilos of dog slam in to the side of my knee. I scream and hit the sand like a sack of spuds. The pain in my leg is excruciating, radiating from my kneecap down to my foot. I lie there in shock and pain, with the two dogs sat beside me. I fear my leg may be broken. I am on the edge of the water, with the waves of the sea seeping into my clothing and soaking my shoes. I tell myself I must get up, I must get out of the water. I try to turn over to get to my knees but I can’t move the injured leg. I pull myself into a sitting position in the water, wondering what on earth I’m going to do. I manage to pull my rucksack off my back to get to my mobile phone which is inside. No signal.

I look around me and see a couple walking along the coastal path. They come down the steps toward me and ask if I am alright; they had heard my scream and seen the whole thing. They lift me to my feet and I try to walk but each time I try to put weight on my left leg it gives way beneath me. It feels like my knee is folding inwards and I’m beginning to feel really scared.

The realisation that I may be seriously injured throws me into a panic. Maybe it was shock, I don’t know, but all I can think is that if I can just get back to my camper and lie down, I will be alright. Another lady comes along at that moment and asks if she can help. Her name is Liz, she’s from New Zealand, and she’s staying at a place on top of the cliffs. Between them they managed to help me to the bottom of the steps.

I have a brainwave born of fear and desperation. If I could just brace my knee, and with the aid of my walking stick (which is in the van), I am certain I can walk back to the van. Liz goes off to see if she can find something to bandage my knee. Jacqui, the lady who found me, takes my keys to go and get my stick. Twenty minutes or so later, my knee is bandaged up, I have my stick and a lady on each side of me. I take one step and my knee gives way again with an excruciating bolt of pain.

Another lady, Jo, arrives and says she is going to call for air ambulance, at which point I dig my stubborn heels further into the sand. No, no, no, that is not going to happen, I tell her. I just need to get my dogs and myself back to the van and rest up and then I will be fine. She says, okay, she is just going to go and ask a local farmer if he can get his quad-bike down here to get me back to the van.

When she comes back it is to tell me she has called for an ambulance. I tell her I am not going in any ambulance, I will not leave my dogs. My dogs have been huddled up to me all the time I’ve been sat on the steps. Honey, she says, you are not going to get off this beach without a stretcher, you can’t walk. You need to get that leg seen to. Listen, she adds, they’ll probably just stretcher you back to your van, check you over and say everything’s fine, so don’t worry, okay?

This reassures me. I now think this is what will happen. As we sit and wait and the kind ladies are chatting, I am formulating a plan. When me and the dogs are back in the camper, I will stay parked up in there in the camper until my knee is feeling better. I tell myself it will be better by tomorrow. I know now that due to shock, or panic, I wasn’t thinking straight at all, but at the time it all seemed perfectly plausible to me.

Then half a dozen people turn up in red overalls; they are a marine rescue team who had been on a training exercise up on the headland somewhere and had picked up the emergency call. They say the ambulance is on its way but has been held up by a trailer of silage along the lane. A short while later, half a dozen ambulance crew arrive. They ask me lots of questions like ‘can I feel my toes’, etc. I apologise profusely for the trouble I’ve put them to but say I’ll be okay if they can just get me back to my camper so I can lie down, I’ll be right as rain in no time. I am not leaving my dogs, I tell them.

The kind ladies say I must not worry about the dogs, they will look after the dogs for me until I get back. Jo owns a camp site over the hill. She’s going to drive my van back to her site for me and look after my dogs until I return. There won’t be any need to look after my dogs, I’m thinking, because I’m only going as far as my van.

An ambulance man explains how they’re going to carry me out on a stretcher back to the car park. They put my leg in a brace. They have to carry me across fields and across a stream, poor things. Back at the car park, they have me inside that ambulance before I have time to blink, and we’re on our way to the nearest hospital with x-rays facilities. The ride seems to go on for ever; as well it might because they’re taking me to Bangor. Then begins an interminable wait as I sit in a wheel chair, in my still damp clothing and shoes, staring at the walls, waiting to be seen. It is five hours later when I am finally discharged with a pair of crutches and my leg in splints (with no idea that I would be in those splints for months).

I ask the nurse for the number of a taxi cab to take me back down the coast. She tells me I don’t want to do that, it will cost me an arm and a leg if I hire one from Bangor and that I would be better off getting one to come up from Porth Colmon. I am at my wits end, now. I tell her that would mean waiting an extra hour and a half before they got here. I tell her I’m exhausted, I haven’t eaten for over eight hours, and I don’t care how much it costs, I want to leave now. If able, I would have stamped my foot, I’m sure. I can become as cantankerous and grumpy as the next person, when sorely pressed.

You have had a day of it, haven’t you, the nurse says, and comes back with a sandwich, a cup of tea, and the number of the cab. Seventy pounds it will cost to get me back to my camper and it is worth every penny. One and a half hours later, I am reunited with my dogs, and Liz and her friend, Lynn, make me a cup of tea. I sit on the step of my camper to drink it because I don’t feel strong enough yet to hoist myself up the steps, bum first.

As I’m sat there and Liz is making up a bed for me in the camper, I begin to feel very ill indeed. Lights are flashing in front of my eyes. I am sweating profusely and begin to feel sick. I tell Liz I’m not feeling well. She gets a cloth and drapes it over the back of my neck and tells me to breathe. I start throwing up. I can’t sit up any longer, I have to lie down or I’m going to collapse. The sky is full of flashing lights and I hear Liz say ‘we need to get her in the recovery position’. Then my hearing goes and all I can hear is the pounding of waves inside my ears. Next thing I know, I’m on the ground with a pillow under my head.

Next day, I am laid up in the camper. Jo, the campsite owner, tells me I am welcome to stay as long as I like and they will help me as long as needed. I decide it is time to get back to family, and so my daughter tries to arrange some way of getting me and my camper back to her place in Shropshire. Meanwhile, Liz and Jo have walked the dogs for me, fetched water for me, and gone out to buy some provisions for me.

It was an unlucky accident, but I consider myself incredibly fortunate because I can’t help but think of the ‘what if’s’.  What if the tide had been coming in and not out? What if no one had come by? What if my injuries had been life-threatening?

I shall never forget how I was blessed by the kindness and help of strangers; and the efficiency of the marine rescue and ambulance teams was second to none.

Jacqui from the Yorkshire Dales, Liz and Lynn from New Zealand, and Jo from the Moel-y-berth campsite at Porth Colmon; I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. I shall never forget your help and kindness.

Jenny Lloyd is the Welsh author of The Megan Jones trilogy; historical suspense novels set in early, 19th century, rural Wales.

            

You can read about the books or purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

You can also follow the author:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

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Oh, the times we had! Disgraced in Barmouth but I found paradise at Shell Island.

I’ve been looking back over the blogs I wrote of my travels with Morgan and Jess around Wales and thought they were worth sharing again….

Barmouth is but a stone’s throw from Dogellau. It has a back drop of beautiful mountains and its beaches are sublime…..

……miles of sand and occasional sand dunes and, when the sea goes out, warm pools are left along the undulating beach, deep enough for the doggies to swim in. Back and forth they paddle, in a blissful world of their own. It is worth coming here just to see them so enjoy themselves. In the evening we walk along the north end of the promenade just to hear and watch the thundering boom of the waves as they crash against the harbour walls…

…but Barmouth is a victim of its beauty for every other shop caters for the massive invasion of holiday-makers which arrive in summer-time, with buckets and spades and wind-breaks for sale in every colour under the sun; a fairground; and donkeys on the beach.

It was quiet while I was there, in the middle of the week in June, but I’m reliably informed that when the schools break up for the summer holidays you will struggle to find a parking space anywhere along the miles of promenade after 9 a.m. in the morning.So, I’m glad we came when we did.

It was a twenty minute walk to the beach from where the camper van was hooked up. I carried a large cool bag slung over my shoulder, to carry water for the dogs and some lunch for me. On our last morning, I decide we’ll explore the town before going to the beach. I’m walking along with the dogs, hunting in vain for an interesting shop that doesn’t sell buckets and spades, when I am tapped on my shoulder from behind.

” I hope you don’t mind me telling you, love, ” says the woman, “but I thought you should know. Your bag has rucked up your skirt at the back. I can see your knickers!”

I wish for the sands of Barmouth to bury me. I never want to know how long I had been walking those streets with my nether regions exposed to all and sundry.  With my street cred in tatters, I go in search of somewhere a little less ‘touristy’ and closer to a beach, and so make my way up the coast to Shell Island.

Shell Island is not really an island anymore because the massive sand dunes have filled the space which once separated it from the mainland, though it still can only be reached across the causeway at low tide. The ‘island’ takes its name from the abundance of shells which get washed up on its shores. From January to June, just about every shell you can name is to be found here in such abundance it is impossible to walk along the  north shore of the island without crunching through stacks of them….

Walking along this part of the beach is a treasure hunt, while on the southern part of the island the dunes are massive, and the sandy beaches stretch all the way back down to Barmouth….

Shell Island is reputed to be one of, if not the, largest campsite in Europe. It covers hundreds of acres. But it is the views across to the Lleyn Peninsula in the west, and Snowdon in the north, which make this one of the most stunning camping locations I have been to.  I take photographs but none do justice to the extraordinary and unspoilt beauty of this place. I arrived here as soon as the tide allowed on Saturday. Not the best time to arrive. Not the best of first impressions. I now know that what happens here on a Friday evening is that the whole of Birmingham and Liverpool (okay, this may be a slight exaggeration) descend upon Shell Island, with English flags fluttering on their wing mirrors, hoping to party through to Sunday morning. Luckily, the warden doesn’t like loud music, and especially doesn’t like it after 11 p.m.

One of the ingenious camp rules (along with No Caravans Allowed, snigger) is you can camp anywhere on the island as long as you allow 20 metres space between yourself and another camper; absolutely wonderful on a Sunday evening or weekday out of season but not so good on a Saturday with previously mentioned invasion, if you’re hoping for a pitch with views or that is anywhere near level. After driving around for a while, I soon realise that all the prime pitches have been taken and grab what I can.

I can’t see the sea or Snowdon from my van but I’m near the dunes and the beach. I park up, level up with the chocks as best I can, open the door and… groan… on one side of me is a bunch of lads, necking the lager, kicking the footie, and playing booming music from their car with the boot and doors open. Not far away from them is another group, screaming and shouting, English flags flying and radio blaring from one of their cars. Another rule of this campsite, in addition to ‘no loud radios’, is ‘no groups’. Obviously, these lads slipped through the net because they didn’t arrive in one vehicle; I counted four surrounding their tent.

I go for a walk with Morgan and Jess. We explore the fabulous dunes, which they love, and go and sit on the lovely beach where we can hear the sea and ache over the views.

Why do some people think they can’t enjoy anywhere unless they are playing loud music and getting plastered? And why assume the rest of the world is going to enjoy their choice of music? And why come to such a stunningly beautiful place as this only to do exactly what they would have been doing if they’d stayed at home? Maybe I’m just getting old.

On our return from our walk, the volume of the music has been toned down by several notches. By 8 p.m., silence reigns. My guess is the group are either unconscious or the warden had a word. I’m told by people who come here often that it’s best to avoid coming here altogether once the schools break up and especially on bank holiday weekends.

But in between times, during the week, I am regularly pinching myself because it seems almost too good to be true.

Guess what happens Sunday morning? The groups of lads and the noisy, squabbling families pack up their tents and start to leave! By lunchtime, most of them are gone and it is bliss. I spot a prime pitch that has been vacated and I bag it. I now have the most spectacular view out of my doorway, of Snowdon, from where I sit to write; a view out over the ocean and Lleyn peninsula from my cab window; and a view out over the sand dunes from my side window. If it wasn’t for the weekend crowds, I would want to stay here forever. We go and sit outside, Morgan, Jess, and me, and enjoy the sounds of the waves lapping the shoreline just below us, and gazing out over the Snowdonia range and the view of Harlech castle across the bay….

Walking along the beach here at 9 p.m. in the evening, we are sometimes the only people here; not a soul to be seen in either direction for as far as the eye can see. At this time of day, the Lleyn Peninsula and Snowdon et al are silhouettes cast in varying shades of blue against a pale blue sky, and the sea is deep turquoise. By 9.30, the sun is going down and the sky above the Lleyn turns peach, then deep shades of deep orange and pink, while the mountains behind us to the east are rendered purple.

After dark, parts of the shoreline of the peninsula glitter with the lights of its harbours. Like a child, I don’t want to sleep; I want to lie there gazing out of the little window over my bed the whole night long.

Every morning, we go for a lovely walk from the south beach to the harbour in the north. I tell myself I will not look at the shells, I will not look at the shells, but I can’t help myself; I’m like a kiddy in a sweet shop. There are stacks of them left behind by the tide every morning. Then we sit for a while and watch Snowdon swathing herself in mantles of cloud and just as quickly throwing them off again.

When we get up in the morning, Snowdon and her sisters are rendered pale-blue, ghostly peaks emerging from the mists. The sky is blue. The sea is calm, ripples shimmering in the early morning sunshine. A solitary skylark warbles overhead. A wave laps the shoreline. All is right with the world.

Jenny Lloyd is the Welsh author of The Megan Jones trilogy, historical suspense novels set in early, 19th century, rural Wales.

          

You can read about the books and purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

Follow me:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

Pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/jennyoldhouse

 

 

 

The travelogues; I enter a time-warp near Llanbrynmair and cause a bit of a stir.

I didn’t think I was doing anything remarkable or that I would ever be the subject for conversation until I stopped off at a small campsite on my way to Dolgellau. On my arrival, a little chap wearing a tweed hat and pushing a wheelbarrow directed me to a pitch and told me not to worry about paying as the owner would be along later. Within an hour, I got a visit from one of the couples staying there.

“I hear you’re driving this thing on your own. How are you managing it?” asks Mr.

The little chap with the wheelbarrow must have duly noted my singledom and passed on the word. I tell Mr I’d found the camper’s size a bit intimidating at first but I’m used to it now.

Following much shaking of his head, Mr says, “Well, I take my hat off to you but you do know you have to have a special license to drive one of these, don’t you?”

Gulp. What? Where? Who? Why? “Eh?”

“Oh, yes! You have to have a medical to get the license – camera oop the bum, the whole works. I know ‘cos I thought of getting one of these big motor-homes.”

“Then, after all that, he goes and gets a caravan instead!” says Mrs, laughing indulgently.

“I’m sure that can’t be right,” say I, hoping to god it isn’t. “No one said anything to me about needing a special license.”

“It’s true. Anything over 3.5 ton and you have to have a medical!”

“Ah, well, I don’t think it’s as big as that!” I say, not actually having a clue how much the damned thing weighs.

“Surely is!” he says.

I decide I’m bored with this conversation now and want to retire to my van and hold my head in my hands but Mr is not to be deterred.

“Look here! It’ll tell you somewhere in the cab,” he says, opening my cab door. “Here you are!” he says wiping the dust and dog hair off the said information label.

I hold my breath as he hunkers down and pushes his glasses up his nose and peers; then he rubs the label and squints at it again, as though he can’t quite believe what it says.

“Ah! Well, it’s a 3.1, so you’re alright,” he says, avoiding my cool gaze and not apologising for causing me unnecessary anxiety.

“Anyway, what’s the height of it, eh? The width? Do you know? You need to know these things or else you’ll find yourself without a roof when you go driving under a low bridge. See?” His questions come at me like bullets from a machine gun.

“Yes, of course. I know,” blag I, making a mental note to look up the dimensions again in the manual as soon as he’s gone, and praying he won’t put me to the test because they’ve gone clean out of my head.

No sooner has Mr departed than the owner stops by.

“I hear you’re driving this on your own!”

I bristle slightly and brace myself. I don’t think they can get much passing-through trade here.

“Um, well, yes.”

“Jolly good for you! I think it’s marvellous!” he says, beaming with bonhomie.

As the owner walks away, I feel a momentary glow of pride; thinking ‘gosh, aren’t I the one’. Then my feminist brain kicks into gear and I think how sexist the whole thing is. A man on his own, doing what I am, would never illicit such remarks or get a lecture about things he may not know, or congratulations upon his ability to do it. I feel like I’ve entered a time warp.

I know Mr know-it-all probably meant well. He belongs to that generation of older men who think women are delicate creatures who need to be looked after and aren’t capable of doing the things men do. I’m hoping I’ve disabused him of some of his illusions; though, in all fairness, he did give me a timely reminder to memorise those dimensions, but don’t tell him I said so.

Then, uppity and independent old thing that I am, I’m off to Dolgellau and driving past the mountain of Cader Idris in all its brooding, massive majesty. I used to gaze at this fabulous landmark of a mountain, over on the distant horizon, when I lived in the east of Wales. Up close, it fills me with awe.

I fall in love with Dolgellau, where at last I feel I have entered a proper Welsh town. Here, you will be reminded that Wales is indeed another country. You will hear the lovely, lilting, Welsh language spoken all around you and all the shops have Welsh names.

In the region of Wales I come from you don’t hear so much Welsh being spoken. Welsh was my mother’s first language but she never spoke it to her children. At school, she was punished for speaking her own language and taught she must speak English or not speak at all. Thus, my generation were robbed of their heritage, language and culture via parents who had been brainwashed from childhood that Welsh was inferior. So I have a deep and abiding gratitude to those who held tight to their language and didn’t let anyone persuade them not to, and passed on their language to their children with pride. If not for them, the Welsh language would not now exist.

I buy real bread and a heavenly home-made Bara-brith in the bakery, and am offered a cup of tea while browsing in the inspiring little wool shop. Here I meet two lovely ladies who are fellow (what is the female equivalent?) spinners and we spend a half hour enthusing over hand-spun yarns. They tell me that Dolgellau once had a thriving woollen industry, and that at least one house in Dolgellau still has a weavers shed at the top reached by a spiral stone stairway which the weavers used to use so as not to disturb their employer when going to and from their work. Before the decline of the woollen industry, which occurred in the first half of the 19th century due to the introduction of mechanical looms, annual output was said to be worth between £50,000 and £100,000.

The other thing Dolgellau was once famous for was its large community of Quakers. Apparently, following a visit from George Fox in 1657, many inhabitants of Dolgellau converted to Quakerism. Many emigrated to Pennsylvania in 1686, led by Rowland Ellis, a local gentleman-farmer, because of the persecution they suffered (persecution was suffered by all dissenting religions in Wales). The Pennsylvanian town of Bryn Mawr was named after Rowland Ellis’s farm near Dolgellau. So now you know.

Dolgellau is possibly one of the least spoiled towns I’ve encountered and I love that it has preserved its Welsh identity and language. But oh, how I would have loved to have been a passenger in the motor-car of H. V. Morton in 1932, for while I, in 2014, celebrate how comparatively unspoiled it is, he was lamenting the changes which had led to the exchange of pony for local omnibus as a mode of transport for the locals. He describes the market square crowded with farmers and their labourers on a Saturday afternoon;

They wear breeches and leggings, caps or bowler hats. Most of them are shaggy as mountain ponies; some fair, some small and dark as Spaniards, some tall and fair, rawboned as Highlanders. Now and again local girls, walking two by two, pass and re-pass among the herd of men, and occasionally they turn to smile back at some chance remark in Welsh which is flung at them……I look at them and miss the ponies on which I feel they should have ridden to market. But they have come in from miles around on motor-omnibuses. It is a grotesque thought.

The descendants of those farmers of which he spoke now each own their own motor car, of course, and land-rovers, all of which are crammed into the parking spaces on the square or in the car park – an unimaginable thing in H.V. Morton’s time.

I can only imagine what thoughts he may have had should he have seen women driving around the country alone in motorised homes on wheels, let alone driving buses, trains, lorries….

From Dolgellau I’m off to Barmouth ….see you there.

Jenny Lloyd is the Welsh author of The Megan Jones trilogy; historical suspense novels set in early, 19th century, rural Wales.

            

You can read about the books or purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

You can also follow the author:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

Pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/jennyoldhouse

 

I went in search of some souls and found my self again.

One thing I hoped to see less of when I came inland from the coast was static caravans. But, somehow, I’ve ended up on a site that has regimented rows of them along with seasonally pitched touring caravans. So packed is this site that I feel I am the filling in a caravan sandwich. Worst of all, 90% of all these caravans were empty, on my arrival. Now it is Sunday evening, and the few people that were staying here have left and it is like a ghost town. Once upon a time, apparently, this site was lauded in one of those ‘top campsite’ camping guides. Times have changed, the statics have taken over along with seasonal pitches and the place has lost its soul. It’s a shame because the location is stunning; you just can’t see much of it for the caravans all around you, packed together so tight that if I put up my awning (not that I will be doing that again for a while) it would be right up against the caravan alongside me.

The site is run by a woman with military zeal. Every half hour, she marches up and down between the rows, scowling and frowning at each caravan she passes, looking for some breach of caravan site rules. When not on parade, she is in and out of the utility block, checking to see if anyone has done something unspeakable in there in her brief absence.

She stops by my camper van and asks if I’m planning any trips out during my stay. She returns half an hour later to say that her husband says I can’t possibly drive my vehicle to see the waterfalls because the road is too narrow; and as for the mountain road to Bala, well, her husband would never allow her to drive that road alone. Obviously, neither she or her husband know that I’ve cut my camper-van driving teeth on the road to hell. The other thing they don’t know about me is that if I hear anyone tell me I can’t do something, I get all uppity and narky. I guess I’ve been told ‘you can’t do that’ one time too many in my life.

The sun appeared this morning for what must be the first time in over a week, and I woke up in a ‘we SHALL go to the waterfall, SO!’ kind of mood. I started out early, in the hope of beating the crowds. I stayed so long that by the time I left in the afternoon, the car-park had overflowed and there was a steady stream of new arrivals every minute. Needless to say, I gathered a good deal more vegetation on my hub-caps along the 5 miles of narrow lane to the nearest village.

The waterfall at Pistyll Rhaedr is sublime. 

There is a path which goes up beyond the falls and into the Berwyn mountains beyond. This is the land of Arthurian legend and Celtic myth and it transcends any mountain landscape I’ve hitherto been…

…this little footbridge crossed a tumbling mountain stream where the dogs took a swim in a rocky pool…

 

…we sat for a long time gazing at the views down to the valley below the falls and up toward the mountains…

    

… hunger took me back down to the falls and the tearooms in the little house there. I ordered a pot of tea and a slice of Bara Brith and was filled with wonder as a little green finch hopped up onto the table and took crumbs from my hand. A nuthatch then darted up and peered at me from the post beside my seat.

I talked for a time with the charismatic custodian of this magical place and he informed me of this site’s significance to the early druids. There is a small and exclusive campsite here, for the spiritually minded only, and a spiritual retreat for those who are feeling lost and adrift and needing to reconnect with themselves.

There is a special atmosphere to this place, something beyond the ordinary, something magical and mystical.

If you want to read a fascinating account of the myths and legends which surround this fabulous and remote part of Wales, follow this link;

http://www.pistyllrhaeadr.co.uk/berwyns.html

Jenny Lloyd is the author of the Megan Jones trilogy of novels, historical suspense set in early 19th century, rural Wales.

            

You can read about the books and purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

Follow me:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

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Snakes in the grass, the journey from hell, and a host of hungry blood-suckers!

I went to a little beach at Tresaith to see the waterfall spouting out of the cliffs. There, I met a couple from the valleys, Eira and Jim, who were watching as I maneuvered ‘the beast’ into a tight spot in the car-park. We got chatting, as you do.

“Ooh, I think you’re very brave going it on your own!” says Eira. “You be careful, now, and don’t go talking to any strange men!”

I explained I had done that already, and told her about the man who was anticipating my arrival somewhere in the south of France. He used to be a coach driver and had driven all over Europe. Now he was retired but went abroad in his camper as often as he could.

“You come down to the south of France and we’ll have some fun!” he said to me. “The last woman I took up with drank vodka from the bottle and chain-smoked, and I thought to myself, I can’t be doing with this so I told her goodbye. It’s a while now since I ventured with a woman but I’m up for it if you are.”

“Well, um, er…”

While I am stuttering at the brazenness of his approach, he continues.

“How old do you think I am? Go on, guess!”

Too old even for me, is what I am thinking. I hazard a guess that he is in his late seventies but tell him I think he is 67 because I have a kind heart.

“Eighty-two!” he says, triumphantly.

He proceeds to give me directions to a place in the south of France that I have already forgotten the name of.

“How big was his camper van?” Eira asks me, with a shrewd stare, when I relate this meeting to her.

I tell her it was not very big and a bit of a rust bucket, to be honest; thirty years old, at least.

Eira sucks air between her teeth. “Ew! He was after your camper van, the old devil! You mind, in future, if you meet another like him, you say to him; never mind your bank balance, how big is your camper van, eh?”

So there we are. In this nomadic world I have entered, men shall henceforth be measured and judged by the size of their camper vans.

Oh, but I haven’t told you about the less than fond farewell I received before I left for Tresaith. I was bitten while taking the chocks from beneath my wheels.  It hurt like hell, at the time, and my middle finger swelled up and turned blue-back. I didn’t see the varmint that bit me but now wonder if it could have been a snake. I had seen a dead one run over on the lane above the campsite, so know there are snakes in that area; also, I could see two small puncture wounds, after the swelling and bruising have gone away. It can’t have been  venomous, whatever it was, because I didn’t feel ill.

I left Tresaith on the coastal road north to Aberystwyth, collecting profuse amounts of cow-parsley on my hub-caps as I meandered along the narrow lanes. I stopped for some provisions in Aberystwyth, before starting out on a drive which tested my nerves to the utmost degree. As I drove through the biblically named villages of Moriah, Pisgah, and Zion (the names of chapels where I come from), I was about to discover why the need for God was so strong in this part of the world. I called upon him a few times, myself, on the next leg of my journey.

You are a madwoman, Jenny Lloyd, I tell myself as the road climbs ever upwards, twisting and turning through cloud shrouded mountains. Falling away to the side of me, at every bend, I glimpse the looming precipitous fall down to the valleys far below. This terrifying ordeal goes on for miles and miles and miles. I know that I am missing spectacular views but I dare not take my eyes from the road for more than a second at a time. There is only one sensible way to travel such a road, in my opinion, and that is with two feet planted firmly on the ground.

This was the road to Devil’s Bridge. Or was it after? I cannot remember, now. I recall it as one does a nightmare; in snatches of terrifying clarity, the rest is rendered in a traumatized haze.

Eventually, the ordeal ends and I enter the stunning Ystwyth valley, along a narrow mountain road rated by the AA as one of the most beautiful in the world. Was the journey worth the destination? Here is the view from my camper van door;

In every direction the views are achingly beautiful.

This rural idyll was marred by just one thing. Across the road, at the farmhouse, a builder is building a stone wall around a concrete building. He has the boot of his car open, the better to hear the booming blare of his radio. You can hear it all the way down this remote and otherwise peaceful valley.

There is only one other vehicle on the camp site and it is parked as far away from the din as possible. I go and park beside them, feeling like a heel; until I came along, they had the entire campsite to themselves. I am dismayed to discover that I can still hear the radio booming unless I close all the doors and windows.

The builder is dishearteningly conscientious. At five ‘o’ clock, when I am thinking he will surely now call it a day, my heart sinks when I see him mixing another load of cement. At six, he turns off the radio, but carries on working until eight, just as the rain arrives.

This morning, it is still raining and the thermometer tells me it is eight degrees outside my cosy, heated van. I open the door to admire what must be one of the most beautiful campsite views in the country, and am greeted by a swarm of midges that have obviously been waiting for this moment for some time. An alarming number rush inside before I have time to slam the door on them. I don’t know what my camping neighbours must have thought as I hopped around inside the van, clapping my hands in the air, determined to kill every last one of the blighters.

They are out there now, swarms of them, head-banging at the windows, hungry as hell for the blood of a Welsh woman. I’m praying they will go away, and that the rain will stop. If only I could remember the directions to that place in the south of France…..

Jenny Lloyd is the author of the Megan Jones trilogy of novels, historical suspense set in early 19th century, rural Wales.

        

You can read about the books and purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

Follow me:

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No sense of direction, no Satnav, I’m the lost and clueless sort.

I was chatting to a man in Aberaeron and he asked where I was headed from there. I’m off to a place called Mwnt, I said, where there is a remote little church upon the cliffs above Cardigan. I got married in that little church, he said, surprising me. It was a long time ago, mind, there was nothing else there back then. No caravans, no National Trust shop selling ice cream. I’m making a detour first, I said, to the National Wool museum. What a detour that turned out to be!

I have a reputation for having no sense of direction and hence, for getting lost. I missed a few turns I should have taken but got to my destination, eventually. Along the way, I passed through some beautiful scenery and there was one stretch of the road which for miles was edged on either side with hedgerows bedecked with flowering laburnums. It was a breathtakingly beautiful stretch of road but sadly I couldn’t find a safe place to pull over to take photographs.

The museum was interesting, filled with old machinery which took the processing of wool from fleece to finished cloth. It was on leaving here that I took a major wrong turn and ended up at a crossroads on the top of some remote hill. Not one of the remote places on the finger-posts could I find on my map so I turned around and headed back to the museum. Now back on the right road, I passed through Cenarth, over a narrow, humped back bridge which traversed the river Teifi. The view upstream was spectacular with the river tumbling down over falls where salmon can be seen leaping in the season.

As I headed north out of Cardigan, I stopped at a petrol station and asked the genial, young man at the till if I was very far from my destination of Mwnt.

“Ah, well, now then, that depends!” says he.

“On what?”

“On how far you want to go. If you carry up to Aberporth then double back, now, that is the long way round and will take about half an hour. But if you take the right turn just as you go out of here, then you’ll be there in five minutes.”

I begin to wonder if he is slightly unhinged because it seems like a no-brainer to me and I tell him I will take the short route.

“Ah, but, you see, if you go that way, well, it’s a bit tricky, see. It’s a very narrow lane, like, and you might come upon a tractor and then where will you be? Which one of you is going to reverse, isn’t it? There aren’t many passing places, see?”

Indeed, I did see, and ask what he would do if he were me, given that I am driving a large motor home.

“I’d give it a go, isn’t it? It’s raining, see, so you should be alright. If it was sunny, though, well there’d be tractors all up and down that lane, see, cutting the silage, isn’t it?”

He shows me in a map book; which turns to take, and where, along this little lane. I thank him, explaining I have already got lost once today. “Perhaps I should get myself a Satnav!” I exclaim, thinking I certainly should.

“Oh, dear,  no, you don’t want to be using one of those around here, it’ll likely lead you over the nearest cliff!” he says, with manic glee.

I buy his map book. It is a Navigator map book and shows all the little lanes I might get lost in. Just the thing I need.

I thank him again and make to leave.

“No worries! We get lots of your sort around here!” he says.

I assume that by ‘my sort’, he means clueless and lost. He then begins to relate a tale about a man who staggered into his garage, one evening, eyelids drooping with fatigue, and asking if, pray to God, he was anywhere near Swansea.

“And I broke it to him gently, like, isn’t it? I said, well, no, not exactly. You have a while to go, yet. I didn’t have the heart to tell him he had another hour and a half to go! He’d been up over some mountains, somewhere, after taking a wrong turn off the motorway. Pitiful sight, he was.”

Duly warned of the dangers of taking wrong turns, I follow his directions to Mwnt along a web of narrow criss-crossing lanes to a farm overlooking the sea. Not that I could see the sea as it was shrouded behind a veil of torrential rain. I arrived here at 3pm and it was still raining seven hours later. A strong wind picked up, too, towards night. I know this because I made the mistake of unwinding the awning so my route in and out of the door would be sheltered from the rain. Having unwound it, I was unable to reel it in again when the wind picked up. So, I went to bed to the sound of the thwack and slam of the awning knocking against its supports. I was surprised to find it still there in the morning, and a little brute force from the helpful proprietor got it reeled in again.

As the rain had passed, I sat on my step to eat my breakfast toast and these beady-eyed little chaps turned up to share it with me;

Today, we climbed to the top of the conical hill of Mwnt; a precarious climb for one such as me, as I have a dizzy head for heights. It was worth the effort and the terror, though. The slopes were smothered in wild flowers…

and the whitewashed church was beautiful in its simplicity…

… the view from the coastal path across the bay was lovely…

…if you use binoculars, you might just see the little church perched above the cliffs!

Mwnt was invaded, unsuccessfully, by the Flemings in 1155. It is said that the site of the church dates to the Age of the Saints, though the present church is possibly 14th century. It has a font cut from the stone of the Preseli mountains (as is Stone Henge).

Jenny Lloyd is the author of the Megan Jones trilogy of novels, historical suspense set in early 19th century, rural Wales.

          

 

You can read about the books and purchase them by clicking on the links below.

Leap the Wild Water: http://ow.ly/jEoi302jXkd

The Calling of the Raven: http://ow.ly/4uRO302jXmd

Anywhere the Wind Blows: http://ow.ly/i1sy302jXXK

Follow me:

Twitter; https://twitter.com/jennyoldhouse

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/jennylloydauthor

Pinterest; http://www.pinterest.com/jennyoldhouse