A car crash in a remote, forgotten part of Europe that probably happened three and a half years ago seems an adequate metaphor for the way things panned out today. This is a good sixty feet below the road. Maybe the occupants got out, but I actually suspect not.
As I type this there are 23 minutes left of voting in the third General Election day to feature on this blog. On all of them I have been away from home — I was in Dundee in May 2015 and Siberia just over two years later in June 2017. I had to get out from the conference venue today, there was no way I could stay in the antiseptic air-con of the Celtic Manor all day. But the prospects offered by Newport and the River Usk were grim. A dark day. If you see anything about today as heralding a bright shining future of some kind, I admire your optimism.
2019 has had a number of interesting work trips, at least, but this is the last of the year; my second visit to the Society for Research into Higher Education (SRHE) conference, which as it always is, is being held in the highly corporate Celtic Manor Hotel in Newport, south Wales. This hefty dragon sculpture stands somewhere in the complex, looking out over the M4, in case any passing motorists were tempted to wonder what country they were in. A sensation I am starting to sympathise with, in fact.
24 hours in Holyhead, Anglesey, planned around the enjoyment of two of my principal leisure pursuits. The footie was yesterday, the walk today. As you can see, the weather was… pretty decent. I seem not to be able to resist the temptation to collect places, and for a while have been preparing to set out to bag the highest points in all the counties of Great Britain, and with Holyhead Mountain, this, almost accidentally, kicks it off… so out spurts another blog, which you may or may not like to check out. While you’re here though, is it me or does that trig point look like the robot from The Day the Earth Stood Still?
People have been very much in the background of the blog in the last three weeks, if they appear at all. There have been glimpses of a foot here and there, the back of a head.
Football has also been absent from the blog over the last three weeks, but hey, all close seasons must end, mine as soon as possible. The women seen here are the from Isle of Man team and are celebrating their win in the 2019 Island Games tournament final, 2-1 over Ynys Môn, also known as Anglesey.
The connection between these two absences may be coincidental, but I like it.
This monument stands on the north Wales coast, at Prestatyn, and marks one end of the Offa’s Dyke Path, which goes from here all the way down the Welsh/English border to Chepstow on the Severn Estuary, 180 or so miles away. Not that I came here to do any walking, but it is a reasonable spot to while away a bit of time.
One can expect many of the small seaside towns of Britain to look fairly desolate on, say, a wet Tuesday in February. But Rhyl, North Wales, where I happened to find myself this evening, manages to look like this in mid-July at the end of the sunniest period in a couple of decades. It’s quite an achievement.
Ieuan Hewitt, full-back for Flint Town United, is consoled after visitors Newtown won 4-3 in the penalty shootout at the end of their 2-2 draw in the Welsh Cup. Hewitt saw his kick saved as the shootout progressed under skies that looked like they were rough sketches for Dante’s Inferno.
POSTSCRIPT: After I tweeted this picture it was then used as the lead back page photo in the Flintshire Chronicle‘s report on the match. Which was flattering…
After spending the last four days almost entirely at home, claustrophobia was definitively overcome by having a day out here. Looking rather different from its last appearance on the blog in August 2016, Llandudno was all built in the 1850s and 1860s as a massive piece of real estate speculation by landowner Lord Mostyn and architect Owen Williams. And I have to say, you can see their point.
The Great Orme (or Y Gogarth in Welsh) is the limestone headland which rises to the north of Llandudno and was the destination of our visit today, our last day of this mini-break. There are a few candidate photos — the view of the mountains of Snowdonia from the summit was excellent — but while this chosen one isn’t so panoramic, this represents the most interesting element of the day, our visit to the prehistoric copper mines. These were only rediscovered in 1987, at which time it was believed that no metalworking had taken place in Britain until the arrival of the Romans. Archaeologists here proved that not only was copper being smelted at the Great Orme before then — 2,000 years before in fact (4,000 years before the present) — but that this may well have been the biggest industrial complex in the whole Bronze Age world. There are miles of tunnels; our ancestors weren’t sitting in caves eating weeds, these people were engineers, they learned how to do things…. Make metal from rock? Why not?
Being 42 