Escape from Shell Island

Unlike most of the other stations on the Cambrian Coast Line, Barmouth is a significant presence in the town.  Like most of them, however, very little of it is actually used for railway purposes.  The 19th century building on the southbound platform has been lovingly restored, but it's now used for a tourist information office.

The opposite platform - because this is another rare spot where there are two tracks - has a fairly recent redevelopment on it, "Cambrian Court" - an L-shaped building with shops and cafes and a public toilet.  (The food place next to the loos was called the WC Cafe; unsurprisingly it seemed to have gone bust).  Again though, there's nowhere you could, I don't know, buy a ticket, or ask about services elsewhere in the country, or anything else you might want to do in a railway station.  Sigh.

The station has been prettily enhanced by photographs of the town, supplied by a regeneration company, along with potted histories of important places.  It gives you something to read while you wait for your train, which I always appreciate.

It was half seven in the morning, and I thought that my train would be unoccupied; most holidaymakers stay in bed until gone nine, after all, and this isn't exactly prime commuter land.  I hadn't realised that the 07:51 service was a school train.  Slowly the platform filled up with hyper teenagers, bouncing around with far too much energy for that time of the morning, getting it out of their system before they reached school.  It was fascinating watching the hierarchy of the station, the way the smaller, younger boys moved to the far end, while the sixth formers noisily occupied the centre.  I imagined the excitement every September when you moved up a spot.

It seemed that I had unknowingly occupied the territory of some 14 year old girls by sitting on a bench. They strode in confidently then did a double take at me, their faces assuming that look of disgust that only teenage girls can adequately convey.  They were forced to stand a couple of feet away from me, throwing me evil glances now and then, teetering on vertiginous heels they hadn't really planned on standing on.

The train arrived and the schoolkids swarm all over it, annexing the table seats and throwing down bags of Haribo for the journey.  I was inwardly tutting at their consumption of sweets at this time of the morning (child obesity crisis!)  until I remembered that I used to do the same thing myself.  I went through crazes - there was a time when it was all Trebor Softmints, then there was the XXX Extra Strong Mint phase (sadly not named after Major Amasova), and there was a whole term of watermelon Nerds.  I don't approve of Haribo though, largely because they have the worst commercials ever made.

The guard suddenly appeared, the nice jolly one who'd been on a few of my trips the day before, but who was in gruppenfuhrer mode.  "I don't want a mess like yesterday," she scolded.  "There are bins in this carriage - use them.  I won't open the doors at Harlech until you tidy up."

Fortunately I was only in this mobile Grange Hill for a short while, as I was getting off at the next station.  Llanaber felt like a world away from the relative buzz of Barmouth; a small platform set into a hillside, built on top of the sea wall.  The salt water spray was turning the metal shelter brown with rust.  I got off and a solitary schoolgirl got on; I felt sorry for her, waiting alone on this platform every morning.  It must be awful in winter, when it's still dark and the wind whips across the Irish Sea.

My plan had been to walk to the next station, Talybont, along the shore.  There was a slight problem with that.

The tide was in, meaning that the only way I could walk along the shore was if I had a scuba tank tucked in my back pack.  I did not.

I returned to the platform to get the station sign and to reconsider my options.  My OS map didn't seem to have much in the way of paths to Talybont, unless I was willing to go out of my way into the hills above the village.  I was afraid that would mean I'd end up missing my connection at the next station, so with a sigh, I realised it was time for another bus.  The Traveline Cymru app I'd downloaded said there was a bus from the stop outside the station, so I pushed up the rough track to the main road.

After an hour of sitting on a wall, the bus arrived.  The driver was mad, of course, silently resentful that I'd interrupted his slalom around the mountain roads by becoming his first passenger of the day.  I took a place on the empty bus so I could experience life as it is lived by a pair of underpants in the rinse cycle of a washing machine.  I was hurled left and right, almost toppling out of my seat, until I was able to get out at Talybont and experience the pleasure of stillness again.

The village was pleasing and well-kept, with a post office, hairdresser and a little village green with a public toilet tucked behind the bus shelter.  It was all very ordinary, with only an Italian restaurant called "Tony's" hinting that there might be more to it that just another farming community.

This is prime caravan park territory.  I shouldn't sneer, because my parent's first home after they married was a mobile home, and so the first eleven months of my life were spent in one (yep, I really am trailer trash).  I just don't get them.  I don't get why people drive a couple of hundred miles to spend their weekends in a tin box listening to next door's stereo.

They talk about getting away from it all, enjoying the peace and quiet, but these parks are just housing estates.  Your neighbours are always going to be the same, the staff are always the same, your caravan's in the same place.  It's just like that semi you left behind, except here you have to empty a chemical toilet every other week.  Caravans are such an odd halfway house.  You're not getting back to nature, as you can in a tent, because you've got a roof and a telly; but at the same time, it's still cold in winter and hot in summer, and you have to shower in a block along with everyone else on site.

I pictured an evening at the Sands Leisure Complex, sitting in the corner of the bar where the same faces are singing the same songs on the karaoke while you tuck into your burger and chips.  It'd be the same on the fiftieth visit as it was on the first, only without the element of novelty.  Perhaps some people like that.  Perhaps some people like the reassurance, the saminess, the idea that you know exactly what you're getting.  No surprises.

I walked past a field of lambs; the charming pastoral scene was slightly ruined by the smashed bottles of  blue WKD and Carlsberg in the grass.  The station's tucked under a bridge at the head of the parks, and had just recently had a new coat of paint, ready for the summer season.  They hadn't bothered wiping the bird shit off the perspex roof of the shelter, but nice effort anyway.

The bus trip meant I had a while to wait for my train.  I leaned back on the seat and let myself relax, as best as you can relax in a turquoise box with metal seats.  Some of the stations didn't even have a seat, just a metal bar, which is only any good if you want to do a particularly low rent production of Sweet Charity.

Suddenly the payphone started ringing.  I never know what to do in these circumstances; it's not going to be for me, is it, so what's the point in answering?  It seemed particularly insistent though, so I finally picked it up and said "Hello..?"

It carried on ringing.  I was stood with the receiver in my hand but the phone was still clanging away.  Memories of Acorn Antiques came rushing back; I felt like I should be wearing a jersey two piece.  Before I could ask them if they had Leonardo da Lisa's Mona Vinci at a very reasonable price, the phone stopped.  Whoever it was, they didn't call back.

Two of us got off the train at Dyffryn Ardudwy; me and a young pretty girl.  While I stopped on the platform to take a picture of the old station building (now a house of course), she crossed the tracks to hug a girl who looked exactly the same.  Either they were sisters or there's a sinister cloning facility hidden inside one of those mountains.  Frankly either explanation could be valid.

The station's on a very minor road in the middle of fields and dunes; it probably would have closed years ago if it weren't for the presence of another holiday park down the road.  It was one of those days where the clouds would dearly love to rain, but can't quite manage the effort; instead the grey skies just sat there, casting a pall over me.  It certainly wasn't a day for the beach, but that was where I was headed.

I had to actually walk through the holiday park, past what I suppose would be called "chalets" in the brochure, but just looked like double glazed sheds to me.  It was deserted, unsurprisingly, with just a tractor slowly tugging a new caravan into place providing any excitement.  There was a minor pleasure in a K8 phone box, the none-more-sixties updating of the classic red booth.  It's a very rare sight these days, and I was pleased to see it still in service - though it also had the effect of underlining just how dated the holiday park felt.  I wouldn't have been surprised if the manager was Peter Butterworth.

Out the other side, and soon I was clambering over the high dunes of the Morfa Dyffryn Nature Reserve.  The dunes here are shaped entirely by the wind, and are constantly shifting; signs warned you to stick to the paths, as there were fences buried beneath the sands.

The expanse of sand seemed hopelessly huge; a flat plain of yellow, rubbing up against the clear blue Cardigan Bay.  I was completely alone in every direction.  There weren't even birds, just me and the empty shore.  It felt exhilarating and, at the same time, humbling; I was a tiny pin prick in the mass of nature.

Morfa Dyffryn is famous for something else beside its stunning natural beauty; gratuitous nudity.  A stretch of the sands form Wales's only naturist beach.  They're very keen to "warn" you that, yes, there may be naked bodies in view.  Personally, I think the signs are too polite; they should just have "Look out!  Minge!" in big neon letters.  Do people have to be warned about nudity, anyway?  I've been to parks in Berlin where there are testicles everywhere you look, and it didn't cause me lifelong psychological damage.  Not even the man just wearing a pair of chaps.

Apparently wardens have to regularly drive men out of the dune area; there's a proportion of gentlemen who stand up there and, ahem, "enjoy" the view a bit too much.

Being entirely alone, you'd think it was ideal for me to drop my pants, but it's actually more intimidating to take your clothes off when there's no-one else around.  A group of naked people makes a naturist beach; one naked man on his own is just a pervert.  Did I take all my clothes off?  No.  I left my boots on.

Not the first dose of crabs to be on that beach, etc.

The wind whipped across the sand with increasing ferocity as I rounded the headland; I was getting a facial scrub I really didn't want.  Thankfully my glasses protected me from the worst of it, but it still started getting distinctly boring.  I turned inland, back into the dunes, and walked towards my next station, Llanbedr.

The dunes seemed to go on forever, one difficult to climb hill after another.  I thought I must have reached the end, only to crest a mound and find a view of more sand ahead of me.  Finally I scrambled down to a well-made road, and I realised I was on Shell Island.

This is one of the largest camp sites in Europe, though it's rather more back to basics than you might expect.  Shell Island is laid out in such a way that it discourages tents from being too close to one another, and has few facilities.  This is a place for wild camping, a chance to experience a more rough and untempered world of canvas.

I was surprised to find there were actually people there, bravely pitching up in the little copses, the flaps whistling in the strong winds.  It can be hard on you here - I passed a giant wheely bin with a torn tent poking out the top.  I imagined an Oxo dad shoving it in exasperatedly with a "sod it - we're going to Majorca next year."

There's an old air force base at the island's eastern perimeter, which restricts your access, but I'd seen a pathway that circled it and would get me to the station in plenty of time.  Except... it was closed.  The council had blocked it off for refurbishment works.  It meant I had to double back, through the way I came, and onto the campsite's established roads.

I was frustrated and angry.  The double back meant I had wasted a massive amount of time, and now it looked like I was going to be late.  I walked over hills and through fields, passing through what seemed like dozens of empty camping sites, just trying to find a way out.  Then, in the distance, I heard the parp of my train passing.  I had missed it.  That meant the end of my carefully planned schedule for the day.

Seething at Gwynedd Council, Shell Island, campers and humanity in general, I located the way out, through the facilities complex.  Perhaps it was just my negative mood, but it all seemed a bit too wholesome to me; the sort of place that cults set up for special weekends of worship, and which are then blown up by the FBI because it turned out they were stockpiling AK-47s in preparation for the end of days.  Put it this way: I bet they sold Kool-Aid in the supermarket.

The site is accessed via a causeway, which floods at high tide; it means the landscape is flat and brown and dull.  The sea waters trickles through channels.  I must have looked a pathetic sight, my jeans still covered in sand around the bottom, my backpack dangling off one shoulder, the only vertical in a horizontal landscape.  The causeway just added to the end of the world feel.  You weren't just camping here - you were ready for the apocalypse.

I passed round the other side of the RAF base, dark and empty, with signs saying "warning: unstable roof" on the asbestos huts.  The only sign of life was an air cadet centre; I wondered where on earth all the cadets came from, because the area seemed completely unpopulated.  Maybe they helicoptered in.

Then, blessed be, there was Llanbedr station, a little blue speck in the distance that got bigger and bigger.  It wasn't much to write home about, but it didn't matter by then.  It was a place where I could have a nice sit down and a drink.  That'd do.

Putting The Bar in Barmouth

The beer was going to my head.  It was just one pint of bitter, but I'd not eaten since breakfast, and now it was five o'clock.  I could feel the booze swilling around behind my eyes.

Across from me, on the other side of the pub, was a group of holidaymakers who'd obviously hidden from the rain in here all day.  They were loudly, boisterously, demonstrably pissed, laughing, caterwauling, hysterical, but all good natured.  "I need a wee!" shouted one of the girls, clambering over her mate so she could get to the loo.

They were all from the Midlands, brought here by the train line.  Wales is crossed from east to west by three separate lines - one across the north coast, to Holyhead; the London train, via Cardiff and Swansea; and the route from Birmingham to Pwllheli.  It means that the coastal resorts have been divided up by the English regions - Scousers and Mancs to the north, Cockneys to the south, and Brummies here, in Barmouth.  You're as likely to hear a Midland accent as a Welsh one along this section of coast.

I'd been in Barmouth for an hour.  It had suffered a battering from the rain, leaving the streets black with moisture.  I'd had a soft drink in my hotel until the worst of it had subsided, then I pulled up the hood of my coat and ventured down to the front.  The town sits on the north bank of the Mawddach estuary, and looks out over miles of open sand.  It was originally a shipbuilding town, but as that industry subsided, tourism came to rescue it; thank goodness for all that beach.  Even under the miserable skies, the acres of yellow-brown sand are incredibly tempting; if I'd have had a bucket and spade I'd have been out there building a fort.  The joys of a day at the seaside never let you go.

It was that weird in-between time for the season, after Easter but before May Day, when no-one's quite sure whether it's Spring or not.  The attractions on the front had come down on the "not" side.  The waltzer was unlit, the amusement arcade shuttered, the hot dog and burger shack closed for the day.  If indeed they'd ever opened at all.

The high street is parallel to the front, squeezed between the sea and the mountains.  On the corner was the Arousal Cafe; it was the Carousel Cafe until someone stole the "C" - they've given up replacing it.  It's a pleasing piece of seaside innuendo.

Beyond it are chippies and kebab shops and curry houses, interspersed with the kind of weird gift shops you don't get anywhere else.  The kind of places that sell draught excluders for £12.99 and white wooden birdhouses that no bird will ever live in, stuff that's only bought by day trippers searching for a souvenir or an escape from the rain.  One shop had a life sized Predator skull made out of metal taking up pride of place in the window; I wondered how that went down with the little old ladies ("that's an unusual hat").  There was a bit of a bohemian edge to it all though - orange banners flew from the Arts & Crafts centre, and a tiny theatre was boasting its jazz evenings and experimental productions.  There was the sad hulk of an old department store; no, sorry, a drapers, a lovely building but too big to work in this tiny tourist  town.

Now the rain had finally given up people were starting to appear in the streets.  I heard one group before I saw them, cackling, screaming with laughter.  I rounded the corner to encounter a gang of six middle aged people, four women and two men, the women wearing garish fur hats on their head, like they'd killed some Muppets and taken their pelts as a trophy.  There was a couple hanging back from the other four, arm in arm; as I passed, I heard her mutter to her husband, "We don't want to go to a restaurant with this lot, do we?"

"Why?"

"Because they're too fucking noisy."

The street flattened out at the bottom to form a square.  In the centre was a white painted piece of artwork which probably represented the might of the local fishing industry, but to my eyes just looked a bit... well... vaginal.  I can't tell you why - God knows I'm no expert - but there was just something fanny-ish about it.

I backed away slowly in case it looked like I was paying it too much attention and passed under the bridge which carries the railway into the town.  It's on the same level as the beach for most of its passage through Barmouth, but then it rises up on a viaduct over the harbour before disappearing into the kind of brick tunnel mouth you thought only existed in Hornby layouts.

A brief snatch of tunnel and then it's across the much longer, much more magnificent Barmouth Bridge.  I looked at it with a combination of admiration - it's a wonderful sight, curving across the bay - and excitement.  I was going to be crossing the bridge the next day, at the start of my Cambrian Line quest.  It was like a big wooden trailer for the main feature.  The bruised sky just made it even more dramatic - nature's version of a deep-throated voiceover.

I would have loved to have called into the Sailor's Institute, which advertised billiards and a reading room on the sign outside.  It was at the end of a row of family restaurants, the kind of place you'd go to on the last night "as a treat".  Was it the river or the sea here, lapping at the wall, making the boats rock gently?  I couldn't tell.  I licked the salt off my lips.

The Last Inn was calling to me by now, an old fisherman's pub on the square.  Soon I was sat in the corner with my pint.  It was a weird place to be; on my right was a fireplace, warming my chapped cheeks, and on my left was a waterfall.  A proper, cascading waterfall, actually inside the pub - it delighted the little girl who came in with her parents not long after me.  She stood in front of it, clutching her blackcurrant and soda and gazing rapturously.  A trickle of tourists came in, not long after the drunken Brummies had left, shaking themselves warm as they came in and grabbing at menus.

It's a lovely spot, Barmouth.  It's got that wonderful combination of a stunning spot combined with charm and personality.  I'd coasted round the town, beaming, just drinking in the atmosphere and the sights.  Being alone on the streets helped - I appreciated it all the more without heaving day trippers around me.  I stayed there for three nights, in the end, and it never failed to entrance me.

I swallowed the last of my beer and headed back to my B&B.  Tomorrow was going to be a long day.