Left of Centre

I was predisposed to like Aberystwyth.  I used to work with a girl named Emma who'd both studied and met her husband there.  Consequently she had dozens of fond memories of the place which she was happy to share.  She made it sound like a great, jolly, pretty town.

She was right.  There was a laid back, fun atmosphere to the place.  From the wide sweep of the bay, with a pier and guest houses painted the colour of ice cream, into the clogged streets behind, there was an energy and a charm to it all.  The promenade was being washed down with jets of water as I walked along it, preparing for the summer season.

I turned inland by a small square.  There was an old-fashioned pub overlooking it, and a group of students congregated on the benches.  The University does of course explain a lot of the town's vibrancy.  Aberystwyth is the end of the line, hemmed in by the sea on one side and the mountains on the other; you need to make your own entertainment.  The far Western brim.  The students had taken the town and filled it with their youthful vigour.  We were out on the edge, away from the bright lights of the rest of the country; it was a place to create your own world.

It was weird being in a proper town again.  For the last few days Barmouth had been as exciting as it got, and after that, Aberystwyth felt like a throbbing metropolis.  There were pubs and clubs and shops everywhere.  Suddenly I could see familiar names like WH Smith and Boots again.

I walked through the town to the station, a white stone building that stood imposingly over the locals.  Its off-centre clock tower was designed to be seen from as far as possible, directly down Terrace Road; I imagined harassed families running down it from the beach, buckets and inflatables flying, watching the minutes to their train tick away.

All was not as it seemed.  The station was still there, but there wasn't the proud arms of a railway company up there, or the double-arrow BR logo.  The writing along the top was A Wetherspoon Free House.  The station building was a pub now - another boozer carved out of an old building by the corporate behemoth.  Meanwhile, to the side, a retail park had been constructed on the old railway sidings, replacing engines with a Lidl and a Great Outdoors.  It was disappointing, though at least they'd named the pub Y Hen Orsaf - The Old Station.  Directly opposite was a far more offensive pub name:

Having a pub called the Lord Beeching opposite a station is like putting a giant photo of the Pope opposite an abortion clinic.  It's just offensive.  Especially since Doctor B sliced two of the lines from Aberystwyth, cutting a five platform station down to one mainline and one heritage platform.

To give Wetherspoon's their due, the building has been extremely well-restored.  The narrow rooms and areas of the old station have been maintained, with the pub gubbins inserted carefully inside, and the mustering area at the head of the platforms has been converted into an open terrace area.  I got myself a pint and sat down out there to watch the station activity.

With the boozers annexing the main station building, all the facilities had to move somewhere, and so ticketing and so on are now located along the side of the platform.  It's still possible to walk through the grand archway directly from the street into the station, but you pass an Indian restaurant instead of a moustachioed porter these days.  Passengers are pushed off to one side, following the barely noticeable sign you can see above.

I finished my pint and sauntered onto the platform for the train.  It was filling up with students clutching rucksacks, holdalls, black bin bags; for the first time in ages, I wasn't the only one on the train who looked like they were moving house.  There was a toilet on the station, which made me smile.  Years ago, I'd read the novel Stripping Penguins Bare, in which Benson, the hero, is picked up by an enormous man in the station toilet and taken to a farmhouse for a thorough seeing to.  I'd recently revisited the whole Benson series - the story of a Catholic schoolboy growing up in New Brighton -  as I'd got the long-awaited fourth book as a gift a couple of months ago.  Sadly, the newest book was a major let down; the author had gone away and convinced himself that he was writing social commentary, instead of amusing character pieces, and so it's three times as long with a quarter of the jokes of any other book in the series.

I didn't venture into the toilet; it was unseemly, and I really didn't want to find an enormous sex-crazed farmer in there.  I had a train to catch after all.

Collecting Aberystwyth meant that every station to the west of Dovey Junction was mine.  I'd conquered both branches of the Cambrian Lines - Mainline and Coast.  I was tired but deeply happy.

Eagle eyed observers will have noted that the Cambrian Lines go all the way to Shrewsbury, so really, I should have got the stations in between Dovey Junction and there as well.  To which I say - piss off.  Yes, there were more stations en route; yes, there's a part of me that wishes I could have got them too; but the geography and timetabling of the line meant that I wouldn't get home until nearly ten o'clock in the evening as it was.  If I'd stopped for stations on the way, I'd have had to stay another night, and though it was tempting, I wanted to get home to my own bed and my own telly.

Instead, I made just one more stop - appropriately to the self-styled Gateway to the Cambrian Coast Line.

For once, the station wasn't the main attraction.  I was here to meet the closest I have to a showbiz pal - Mike Parker.  Mike's the author of the absolutely fantastic book Map Addict, the story of his obsession with the Ordnance Survey.  It's always great to read a book that makes you think, "it's not just me then".  He writes lovingly and generously about his affection for the mapping giants, covering its history and infusing it with personal stories.  I enjoyed it so much, I did something I have never done before - I sent him a fan letter (well, a fan e-mail).  We struck up a correspondence and, when he was in Liverpool with his partner before Christmas last year, we met up and had a few pints in the Ship & Mitre.

Now I was in his neck of the woods, so he offered to return the favour.  He met me on the platform and immediately offered to take the obligatory sign shot.  We picked a heritage sign round the side, for a bit of variety.

As I write this, Machynlleth is underwater; terrible floods have swept through the town, driving people out of their homes and closing businesses.  (I have checked that Mike is okay; he lives outside the town, so all he's lost is some foxgloves).  Back in May though, it seemed to be yet another pretty Welsh town.  Mike filled me in on its history and sights; he's from the Midlands originally, but has turned native, learning the language and writing extensively about the country and its people.  He's even written about Dovey Junction in his book Real Powys.  He pointed out the town clock, for example, erected in the 19th Century by an unloved English landowner and now damaged.  Unfortunately, the builder was so unloved, they've had problems raising the money to refurbish it...

Our first port of call was Y Plas Machynlleth, the local civic centre, where Mike had to prepare his AV equipment (not a euphemism).  It was the Machynlleth Comedy Festival, and he was performing a standup routine later.  Through trial and error we set up his laptop, then headed back out into town for a pint.

It became clear that Machynlleth wasn't like other Welsh towns I'd been to.  Criccieth doesn't have a comedy festival; Tonfanau can only dream of an arts centre.  Machynlleth attracts thinkers, liberals, frontiersmen and women; it's a town that embraces life at a slight angle.  On the outskirts is the Centre for Alternative Technology, promoting eco-friendly developments and innovations, as well as researching new ones.  The people who waved hello to Mike (and he was very popular in town; we couldn't turn a street corner without him bumping into someone he knew.  It was like walking down the road with Sean Connery) were all a little different - a bit rough round the edges, a bit more easy going.  It's a town that's got its feet firmly planted in an organic compost heap.

(It does also have an Aga Shop, the only one I've ever seen outside of Chester; I guffawed, only for Mike to confess his devotion to his recently purchased Aga.  I don't think they're ovens, I think they're gateways to a cult, like those tests the Scientologists perform on people to get them through the door.  I suspect if I'd gone inside I'd have emerged with a five burner cooker and a strange devotion to Xenu).

We chatted over a couple of pints, before Mike had to go and give an interview to Radio 4.  Told you he was a glamorous showbiz person.  I tottered in the opposite direction, back to the station.  Outside I took an up the nose shot, just for completion - every other station got a photo with my nose hairs in it; why should Machynlleth be left out?

The station building, incidentally, is a lovely little thing.  Like much else in the town, you can feel the respect and care the residents have for their environment; they have put some effort into preserving their locale.

Trains for both branches of the Cambrian Line meet and part at Machynlleth.  The trains to England from both ends join up here (ignoring poor old Dovey Junction in the process), making an extra-long train to cross the border.  I clambered on board and chose a quiet seat for my journey home.

P.S.  Mike was worried I wouldn't know how to pronounce Machynlleth, so he sent me a handy pronunciation guide:

Thanks Mike!

The High Walk

There's a railway museum at Borth.  The station's been cleaned up, restored, and volunteers now run an exhibition inside.  It's free to visit, though of course donations are welcome.

Not that I went in.  I'd been looking forward to visiting the museum throughout my trip, but my train was also carrying about 4000 screaming, mewling, overexcited young schoolchildren, barely being kept in check by already weary teachers.  They catapulted off the train onto the platform and I realised with horror that they were all headed to the museum.  I left the station quickly.  There was no way I was going to try and take in historic exhibits while little Chelsea and little Jade tried to pick the plaque off the wall with a compass.

Plus - and I'm sorry for being indiscreet - I needed a pee.  I headed down to the seafront, following the public toilet signs.  I'd noticed throughout my trip that North Wales is seemingly overflowing with loos; almost every village seemed to have one.  I'm not an aficionado by any chalk but it was nice to see that the council was still providing some public services, unlike back home, where the question "is there a public toilet near here?" is generally answered with "it was closed in 1988, but there's a shop doorway over there".

I hadn't actually used any of the loos, until now, which meant that the discovery that Borth's public toilets were closed carried with it a sort of two-fingered irony.  I crossed my legs and pushed on into the town.

It was a weird little place.  Nothing seemed to fit right.  The buildings went from 18th Century cottage to 19th century chapel to 20th century terrace without pause or logic.  They didn't match in any way.  The residents were also committed to making their homes as tacky as possible.  When they weren't painting them pink or red or clashing shades of yellow and orange, they decorated them with seashells and butterflies and gave them awful names.  Perhaps there was a contest I was missing.

Most heinous of all, Borth Zoo had been rebranded as the Animalarium, which is a nuclear strike on the English language.  I would happily have burnt down every single sign carrying that nonsensical phrase, before rounding up whatever marketing "expert" conceived it and dropping him into the leopard pen.

Yet here and there were proper gems.  A row of low, crowded cottages provided an atmospheric glimpse into the past, to when this was just a tiny shipping village.  The occasional gap between houses revealed a backdrop of green fields ramping up to suddenly-steep hills.  It just didn't work as a whole.

Down by the harbour, some bright spark had decided that Borth needed a new, glamorous, exciting building.  I imagined the quotes in the local press, the talk of a new "landmark", the plugging and pomp.  What they ended up with was a cylinder with a Nisa in it, which is, let's face it, just one step up from a Happy Shopper.

In a way it was right that in the 21st century, Borth was continuing its tradition of chucking up random buildings wherever there was a spare bit of land.  To me, it just seemed hopelessly over designed.  The only good part was directly opposite was an open public convenience, so I was finally able to relax again.

One thing Borth did get right was its war memorial.  Most towns placed their tribute to the fallen in a prominent square, or by a church.  Borth took full advantage of its position, however, and put the memorial on top of a cliff overlooking the town.  Instead of it being lost, it draws your eye upwards, proud against the horizon.  I headed up to have a look and was impressed by the way a simple stone pillar became epic when placed in the right spot.

Instead of going back down the cliff, I carried on.  There's a coastal path here which takes you from Borth to Aberystwyth, and I thought this would make a more interesting walk than staying inland.  I'd never followed a clifftop path before, so I thought it would make a decent change.

I'd failed to understand that clifftop paths are, well, on top of the cliffs.  I mean right on the edge.  I was constantly about a metre away from plummeting to my death on the rocky beaches below.  Worse, there were fences on my left the whole time, with the drop on my right.  It seemed to be a deliberately provocative statement from the farmers.  You lot can fall off wherever you like, it said, but there's no way I'm letting one of my sheep come to harm.

The path rose and fell, dropping down via rough steps to almost sea level, before steeply climbing again.  Stone slabs bridged tiny cascades of water, plummeting down the cliff side from mountain sources, and giving me a vertiginous head rush as I walked across.

Then I saw a bird, and another, and another, and I realised that the cliffside was swarming with finches.  They nest in the cliffside and they were suddenly everywhere, dive bombing for food, pirouetting through the air and then plunging downwards.  I watched them speed back and forth, tried to capture them with my camera, but all it got were black flecks and streaks as they zoomed by.

My legs started to tire with the constant changes in gradient.  The path was also muddy and hard going in places after a night of rain, sloshing against my boots and splashing my ankles.  The occasional slip and loss of footing just added to the feeling that I could crash off a cliff edge any moment.  I wondered how long it would take to find my corpse.  I'd encountered only a couple of dog walkers, plus a troupe of hardy pensioners in buttoned up anoraks, but that had been back towards Borth.  I was more than halfway to Aberystwyth now, and my only companions were livestock.  I guessed that I'd be well dead with no chance of rescue before anyone even raised the alarm.  I didn't even have a signal on my phone, so any hopes of a GPS assisted location were fantasies.

At Wallog, the view opens out.  A heavy waterfall's been bridged with a bit more sturdiness than the crossings I'd become used to, and a lovely farmhouse keeps guard.  Built on a stone-walled outcrop, it seemed like a fortress more than a home.

Perhaps it was built to protect us from what ever is at the other end of Sarn Cynfelyn.  This is a glacial moraine, a long straight ridge made up of boulders, pebbles and other rocks and only exposed at low tide.  It heads out into the sea like a road, going for kilometres and ending at a reef out to sea.  The unnatural look of this natural feature lead to local legends that it was a road to Wales' own version of Atlantis, a land that was swallowed by the sea.  There is something unnerving about it.  A slight otherworldliness.

There was a different kind of spooky experience further on.  My stomach was starting to rumble - I hadn't eaten all morning, as I'd left Pwhlleli long before breakfast was available - and now it was nearly lunch.  The map showed a caravan park directly on top of the path, so I guessed they would have a shop.  Maybe even a cafe.  I began to structure a fantasy where I bought a hot dog and chips, garlanded with soft onions and a yellow stripe of strong mustard.

It stayed a fantasy.  The caravan park was determinedly empty.  Catering outlets were shuttered, bars locked up, shops closed.  The little funfair for the kids looked like it should have been in Scooby-Doo.  This wasn't just a low season; this was a potential murder site.  I shuffled through, and was nearly out the other side of the park before I saw a sign of life - a teenage girl, wearing too-small hotpants, her hair like a raggedy Amy Winehouse and her eyes coated with thick paint.  She was criminally underdressed for the windy day, and I guessed that she was just finishing up the night before, taking the walk of shame to the bus stop.

The clifftops here were different to the ones to the south.  Instead of being open, they'd been planted with high pine trees, turning the walk into a woodland stroll.  I could still see and hear the water below, but now there was the coolness of the trees, the smell of the forest.  They'd been cut back severely in places, leaving scarred splinters behind.

As I climbed over each hillock, I'd thought, this has to be it.  I'd seen a tongue of Aberystwyth poking into the bay a long time ago, but every time I'd clambered over a rise in the cliffs, the town had remained tucked away.  It was somewhere in the distance, but it seemed to want to stay hidden from me.  Finally I staggered up a path and heard voices round the corner; a group of middle aged tourists, talking about the Queen's Jubilee.  I'd reached Constitution Hill, which forms Aberystwyth's southern border and which was one of the sites of the Jubilee beacons.  The group were just admiring it when I lurched off the side path, startling all of them, not least because after six hours of walking I must have looked like a recently revived zombie.

I mumbled an apology for making them jump and blustered past.  Constitution Hill is a long established pleasure ground, the kind of place that Victorians visited so they could promenade and have illicit rendezvous.  The world's largest camera obscura sits on its peak, while a variety of lesser amusements - crazy golf and the like - have been built in bright coloured sheds around it.  The most important attraction, as far as I was concerned, was a cafe.  I treated myself to a hot chocolate with gooey marshmallows and a pepperoni pizza.

When I was little, and my mum was baking, she would let me gather up all the offcuts to make "biscuits".  After she'd sliced out the jam tarts or the pie crust, I would get all the pieces left over and squish them into a ball.  I'd knead it, stretch it, roll it out with a rolling pin, then do it all again, because let's be honest, it was just edible Play-doh to me.  I'd cut it into tiny shapes with a pastry cutter and then stick them on the edge of the baking tray, where they'd harden into dry, crunchy, occasionally blackened fragments of unpleasantness.  A dob of jam on each one and voila!  I'd made a tray of biscuits for my dad to "enjoy" when he got home from work.  Bless him, he'd labour through them all, while I watched happily as he snapped them in two with his teeth and forced down lump after lump of grey misery.

The reason I am sharing this childhood vignette with you is because I am sure that there's a similar cooking process involved in that cafe's pizza dough.  It was a dry hardened base that shattered when I put the fork into it.  Each mouthful of stodge clung to the back of my throat, while almost rare onion brought tears to my eyes.  The pepperoni was cold, the tomato sauce almost certainly Tesco Value, and I frankly doubt the cheese had ever come from a cow.  It was what pizzas were like thirty years ago, when we were so pleased to be trying something different we weren't bothered if it actually tasted nice or not.  I was so hungry, I forced my way through every claggy piece, pausing only to pull the odd unwilling bite away from my gums with a finger.

With my stomach, if not satisfied, then at least full, I left the cafe and made my way to the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway.  I was spared the walk down the hill to the town thanks to Victorian engineers, who built a funicular to take people to and from the top.  They carved a channel into the rock and laid two tracks into it.

A train had just come in, disgorging a Brummie mum and her three sons.  She was clearly shaken by the experience.  "I'm not doing that again," she huffed.  "We're bloody walking back down."

I'm not sure what terrified her so much.  Perhaps it's the sixty-degree fall down the hillside, a fall so deep the carriage is basically just a series of steps.  I'm a well-known wuss when it comes to heights, but I didn't feel my usual dizziness as the train started its descent.

The funicular was originally powered hydraulically, but in the twenties it was converted to electricity, meaning your passage is silent and stately.  It's so smooth it almost feels as though the town is rising up to meet you, rather than you going down to Aberystwyth.

The second carriage passed just as I was thinking what a great locale for an episode of Casualty this would make.  They've done almost every other kind of disaster; surely there hasn't been a funicular train full of tourists careening off the tracks and smashing into the station.  You could fit a dozen people in the train - enough to ensure a high body count, while leaving plenty of survivors who can reconcile with estranged family members in cubicle four.  Perhaps it's been done.  I'll send my proposal to BBC Wales just in case.

The station at the foot's like a nice Victorian villa, rather than a tourist hub; you get the feeling that the upstairs apartment was occupied by a lady adjusting her crinoline.  The train gently sidles into place at the bottom of the hill, and you let yourself out through the picket fence.  It was a pleasing way to enter Aberystwyth, one that was almost grand; I hadn't just walked into town, or jumped off a dull Sprinter.  I'd been conveyed, elegantly lowered into the streets as though descending from the Gods.  A good start, you have to admit.