Day Four: Down and Out

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Seriously Colwyn Bay: what the hell?

It was bad enough the night before when there was almost nowhere to
eat dinner with utensils. As it turned out, nowhere in the town centre opened for
breakfast either. Does no-one need a swift cup of coffee before work? Are there
no people in need of a shot of grease to set them up for the day? Even the
Wetherspoons, which promised a huge breakfast on the menu outside, didn't
open until nine. If you're eating breakfast at nine, you don't care any more: the
day is yours. You may as well have a bacon barm at 11am.

Fortunately the Bf, and more pertinently, the Prius, were still with me, so
he whisked me out of town to a McDonalds where I could fill my face with bacon
and use the wi-fi. I have to give kudos to McDonalds for that - free, uninterrupted
wi-fi, with no password, for as long as you're inside. That's better than the likes
of Starbucks or Caffe Nero, who charge you, or a thousand other places, that don't
even give you wi-fi in the first place. It's worth clotting your arteries if it means
you can have a swift look at the local talent on Grindr.

The other advantage of the Bf's presence was he could drop me off at
Abergele & Pensarn station. If he hadn't turned up I was going to walk along the
coast from Colwyn Bay (with a theoretical breakfast inside me). This was the only
point of the entire trip that I had been anxious about. The Ordnance Survey map
showed a cycle path, but not a footpath; obviously where one goes, the other
almost inevitably follows, but it wasn't a certainty. What's more, the cycleway
seemed to skate dangerously close to the water at times - I had visions of being
trapped on a ledge above the tide, with nowhere to go.

In the pantheon of tragically abandoned railway stations of the North Wales Coast Line,
Abergele & Pensarn wins the prize for "saddest station building". Everything pointed to
the lovely station house.  The approach road and the car park were outside. The station
sign was outside. It looked great. But it was boarded up, locked and abandoned.
Dammit, can't they at least put a flat in it? Just in the upstairs? Just to give some
life to the area?

It's a shame, because the station's in a beautiful spot; right on the coast, with the sound of the sea hitting the beach audible from the platform. You could walk off the train and into the water within a minute. You'd probably have to pause to get undressed first: I doubt Arriva Trains Wales would approve of you sitting around in your Speedos.

I'd been looking forward to Rhyl. Miserable, down at heel seaside resorts are a secret passion of mine. I like there to be a grim air of seediness beneath the roller coaster; a mix of teenage runaways, fag-toting landladies and enormous women with tattoos telling Bethany-Louise to get off that fucking ride because I'm saving my five pences for the bingo.

Rhyl is also blessed with a big, proper train station that's clearly had a load of regeneration money thrown at it. For starters, it has some of the widest platforms I have ever seen - they've clearly filled in the old trackbed with concrete, so as you step off the train you feel sort of small and alone.

There's a red phone box, and painted ironwork on the overbridge. I'm afraid to say that it was only at this point I realised why green, red and white was so popular for station colours in Wales. In my defence, the Colour Tsars are so busy all over Merseyrail, I'm just baffled by anything not being yellow and grey.

The ticket hall was gorgeous. Not only did it have staff, ticket gates, and somewhere to buy things - no really - but it also had elegant green tiling, and a real sense of money well spent. See, Arriva Trains Wales? It's not too hard to do.

It failed only on one, essential criteria: nowhere is there a sign saying "Rhyl station". Judging by the pins on the porte-cochere, there used to be one, but it fell off at some point and no-one's bothered replacing it.

This left me with a quandry. I needed a photo of me with the station sign - I just had to have it. But what do I do if there isn't a station sign? Normally I'd have to trot back in and use the platform signs, but in this case, I'd already passed through the ticket gates: if I wanted to go back in, I'd have to explain it to the guards, and then again when I came back two seconds later without boarding a train. I was already cringing with embarrassment.

I walked round the building, and finally found a little side entrance,
with a forgotten sign. That'll do!

My first glimpse of Rhyl proper was disappointingly classy: an old Carnegie Library, with beautiful stonework and a tower. Where was the neon? Where was the faded grandeur? That was just plain grand.

Fortunately, the town centre was far more eclectic. It was a pedestrianised precinct, full of pound shops and hairdressers and cafes. It looked like any number of low-class towns in the UK, except, every fourth store was covered in buckets, spades and inflatables, and there was a much higher incidence of bare upper arms in the shoppers than you'd usually expect.

Eventually I found my way to the front itself, and to the real target of my affections:
an arcade. When I was growing up, an arcade was the only reason to go to the
seaside. I mean that sincerely. Why spend your day sprawled on the beach when
you could be inside, pumping fifty pences into OutRun or Operation Wolf?

To kids like me and my brother, back in the 1980s, the seaside arcade was a hallowed place. It was where you could see games with more than one colour onscreen at the same time, where there was digitised speech, where you could see - whisper it - parallax scrolling. There were cabinets you could sit in to drive, cabinets with guns to shoot, cabinets with ridiculously over-ambitious painting on the side to seduce you into splashing your pennies on it.

My brother and I loved the arcades. We had a day trip to Brighton once, and 50% of it was spent in the arcades, while the other 50% was spent asking when we were going to the arcades. Each one seemed seductive - we could walk out of one and into the one next door, just on the off chance that it had some new, amazing game we'd never seen before.

Remember, we had Spectrums at home; anything without a tape deck was exciting. Gauntlet on a portable tv was one thing, but in an arcade Valkyrie and Elf were quite clearly different creatures, and not just the same sprite in either blue or green. For everyone of my generation, the arcade was a glimpse of the future: we knew we'd be getting boiled down, stripped back versions of these games in a few months for our own home computers. This gave us the chance to see them in their original, unadulterated form. (There was a boy at school who claimed to have a Neo-Geo, which was like an arcade machine for your home, but we treated him with the contempt he deserved).

There's no appeal in the arcade games now. No-one wants to pay to play a game, standing up in the middle of a resort, when they have a game that's just as entertaining on their phone. You can't pay 50p and get an experience as thrilling and in-depth as Grand Theft Auto, and you can't stay in there long enough to get every nuance. Gaming has moved on, and left the old arcades behind. The only machines left were for show-offs - Guitar Hero, Dance Dance Revolution, and even they were rarities. If you played OutRun, you locked yourself into that cabinet and played alone, without an audience. Just you and the machine.

What was left were fruit machines and penny pusher games. I changed 50p into two pence pieces and spent a merry quarter of an hour shoving them into the machines, watching them dance down the back before mixing in with the other coppers and just sitting there. I loved these games too as a kid, but it was harder to justify putting your money into them - next to Sega's blinking, shouting, bleeping machines they looked distinctly old hat. Now they were the main attraction. They all had bizarrely old school names - I spotted a "Disco Inferno" next to a "Rio Carnival" but they were all the basic stick your two pence in and see if you get anything back. I was sure they used to come in different denominations - ten pences and pennies - but maybe that's a trick of my memory. Certainly my skills haven't improved. I got a few cascades of coins, which I chucked back in again, but none of the prizes. I suspect that the Japanese earthquake wouldn't have dislodged them.

With my fifty pence gone, I went back into the sunshine, knowing secretly that I could have happily spent the whole day in there, funnelling coins away. I had a pocket full of change jangling beside me - I needed to get away before I started selling my body for one more go.

Across the street was the prom, which in Rhyl is made of sand-coloured stone, undulating back and forth. Its various bridges and steps and seats mean that you can't actually see the sea from the town, which seems a bit odd, but I could see its appeal on a windy rainy day. There was an aquarium, and a circular space which was clearly the 21st equivalent of a band stand.

Sadly, none of the kiosks were open. I'd wanted some candy floss, or a toffee apple, or some rock. It was ten in the morning; does North Wales have its own time zone or something? Breakfast happens after nine and tourist spots open after twelve.

Strangely, the new yellow-stone development wasn't anywhere near as charming as the tin roofed Bright Spot Arcade. Its newness and determined blandness reminded me of nothing except a Tesco Superstore, or a recently pedestrianised town centre.

This is blatant hypocrisy on my part, of course. I wouldn't go on a holiday to Rhyl, at all, ever, and I definitely wouldn't go if it all smelt of damp and the prom was covered in rust and dog muck. Seedy charm is all very well if you want to come and stand to one side and then get the hell out again. The people who do come here for holidays want good clean fun, with their kids, and they don't want broken glass and homeless people fighting. They want it to shine and be there for them when the sun decides to make one of its rare appearances.

I finally managed to uncover the shore by following a group of day care workers taking their charges out for some sea air. Three women, each with a triple buggy - I dread to think how many Pampers they had stowed away. They were happily gossiping as I overtook them to follow the coastal path behind the Sun Centre.

If you've never been to Rhyl, and so you're not sure what to expect from the Sun Centre, you need to imagine a B&Q Supercentre, painted yellow, with a sign featuring a font not seen since Cheggers Played Pop. Hollow out the inside and fill it with water, then overcharge the public because you're the only place within a square mile that's ok to be inside while it rains. It's so ugly, it makes you wonder if the Council just had a load of corrugated iron left over from roofing some allotment sheds and decided to make a swimming pool out of it.

From here to Prestatyn there's a long concrete promenade, following the sea wall and curving round.  The road drops away into the distance and you're left on a pedestrian and cycle route. I had the sun beating down on me and the noise of the sea. The path was empty except for the occasional dog walker or cyclist.

And yet... I quickly found myself plunging down into a little hole of depression.

I try to keep this blog jolly and happy and light. I don't post when I'm feeling down. I keep quiet about low days. I feel like telling everyone about it is kind of self-indulgent. So I apologise for this whole bit - you can skip it if you want. Go to the point under the next photo. I won't feel insulted.

The thing about depression is it's always there. It's like having fuzzy edges round your vision; surrounding everything you see. Sometimes it's just a little haze, but sometimes it swirls down over everything and colours your vision.

That's what happened between Rhyl and Prestatyn. I fell into that hole. I'm guessing it was a combination of my weariness, thanks to the last few days' walking, and the loneliness of the spot. I just felt ridiculously depressed, and alone, and horrible. I hated myself and everything about that walk. I fell onto a bench and just stared at the ground.

I probably would have stayed there for hours. Fortunately, in addition to suffering from depression, I have an obsessive compulsive disorder. The two mental illnesses had a little tussle inside me, and the OCD dragged my arse up and out of the seat. Because, dammit, there were two. Stations. Left. That was it. Two stations and it was complete.

With heavy legs and my forehead lightly toasting in the sun (if you look at the photos over the course of this trip, you can see me turning a nice shade of pink) I pushed on into Prestatyn: the town where people go to die.

The Bf's mum used to live in Prestatyn. (She now lives in the flat below ours. I know, I know. Don't get me started). I've been there a few times, and what's always struck me is how low it all is. Not just its position on the coast, between the sea and the mountains, but also its architecture: long straight avenues lined with bungalows. Nice single storey buildings for all the pensioners to hole up in. Each house was the same. No grass in the front lawn (too hard to maintain), just a load of gravel with a thousand pieces of garden centre tat positioned all over it. If you think gnomes are a bit declasse, you should see some of the horrors perpetrated in Prestatyn's front yards. Each house had a glass porch on the front, with a couple of wicker chairs, so that the occupiers could sit and stare out the window and wait to die. If I hadn't been depressed before, I would be after all that.

Prestatyn station was undergoing some major, major redevelopment. The single island platform was surrounded by a mass of ironwork and glass and scaffolding. Disability Discrimination Act works mean that an enormous ramp was rising up to a new lift shaft.

I understand that access for all is extremely important, but that is one ugly ramp. It makes Aintree's twisting mess look positively understated. Is this all necessary?

Down on the platform, there were already a few people waiting for the train. There was a highly excited father with his little boy in a pushchair, getting him overstimulated at the prospect of a train arriving soon. There was also an enormous woman with two teenage daughters, proudly telling another woman that her fourteen year old daughter was so mature looking she regularly got served in pubs because they think she's over eighteen. Nice.

All the works meant I had to settle for a platform sign:

Onto my last Arriva Trains Wales service. On the whole I can't really complain about them. There's that horrible blue, of course, and some of the guards had been less than pleased when I'd made a request for them to stop, but they were on time and mostly clean. Some of the trains were stupidly small for the routes, and ended up being rammed, but it wasn't too bad. Perhaps Deutsche Bahn are having a positive influence on them.

The next station was Flint or, to give it its full Welsh name, Fflint. And with that extra F Fflint wins the prize for Most Annoying Use of A Consonant. Are there really Welsh people looking at "Flint" and thinking, "How do you pronounce that? It makes no sense."

The Bf lived in Flint for many years, and one of his best friends still lives there, so I'm not unfamiliar with it. I don't remember seeing a giant disembodied foot on any of my previous visits, however.

Called Footplate, by Brian Fell, it is a "tribute to all forms of transport", with the foot filled with cogs.  It's a bit weird, if I'm honest, but still nice to see.

It's nice that Flint was my last station because it's a delight. Really. It's well maintained, nicely painted. It's a good building, appealing to my OCD with its symmetry.

The ticket hall includes photos of the station and trains from days past in its clean, well appointed waiting area:

Lovely stuff. A plaque commemorates the work, and it's well deserved. Kudos Flint.

As a tribute to the combination of England and Wales over the last week, I took my photo in front of both station signs. Flint and Y Fflint, one country and another.

Are you sitting there saying "but wait! He hasn't been to Shotton! That's the last station between Flint and Chester!" Well, actually I went there two years ago, as part of the Borderlands Line.

I did think about carrying on. I thought about walking along the coast, but it's not a pretty route, and it gets decidedly dodgy around the steelworks - there's no paths marked on the OS map, and I didn't fancy trotting along the side of the A55. I considered getting a bus to Shotton, but then I thought - sod it. I was having a bad day. You could hardly say I was slacking off.

So I went for a pint.

This was actually a bit of a mistake, because the pub I went to was one of the scabbiest, most low rent pubs I have ever been in. I walked in past a haggard old man sucking on a fag in the doorway; he followed me in because, as it turned out, he was the barman. He poured me a pint with disdain - how dare I interrupt his ciggie time? - and I took up position on one of the threadbare benches with a view of Bargain Hunt on the tv.

Still, it gave me time to sit and think. My journey was practically over. All those miles and all those trains. All that walking and riding. It was all done.

I loved it. At the time, sat in the pub, I was glad it was over, but that was more to do with my depressive state of mind. Now, a couple of weeks later, I've got nothing but good memories. It did what I'd originally set out to find when I looked at the Merseyrail map: it gave colour to the names, an added dimension. Those little ticks on the map now have memories and pictures attached to them.

Sixteen gorsafoedd (stations): Holyhead, Valley, Rhosneigr, Ty-Croes, Bodorgan, Bangor, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, Llanfairfechan, Penmaenmawr, Conwy, Llandudno Junction, Colwyn Bay, Abergele & Pensarn, Rhyl, Prestatyn and Flint.

That's a lot. And I'm pleased I did it. It feels like a great achievement, and I get a real sense of satisfaction. Of course the question is: where next? (Just don't tell the Bf).

Finally I got the train to Chester, a Virgin Super Voyager. Trek geek that I am, I always think of Janeway and her crew of annoying idiots whenever I see that name. It's always a slight disappointment that Neelix isn't manning the shop. I clambered up and over the bridge at Chester to platform 7b.

There was something pleasingly right about finishing my journey here, on a Merseyrail train. I'd started this whole blog because I had an all areas Railpass to get to work in Chester, and I realised I could get my money's worth out of it. I'd spent months and months on that platform. And now it was time to go home.

Day Three (Concluded): Underworld

Edward I must be spinning in his tomb. Welsh flags over Conwy Castle? All those years of oppression for nothing.

I headed out of town. It's a sign of how difficult it is to cross the Conwy estuary that there are three bridges here, each one within a few feet of another: a Telford suspension bridge, a Stephenson railway bridge, and the main road bridge. The Telford and Stephenson bridges were both trial runs for their larger efforts over the Menai Strait - it was a nice bookend to the day. I was on the newest bridge, which is much quieter than when it was originally built.

For a long time, traffic was forced through the tiny medieval streets of Conwy; anyone heading from the North to Holyhead would have had to compete with narrow, 13th century roads. It seems like a nightmare. Fortunately, in the late 80s, they finally decided to do something about it.

Running underneath those boats is the Conwy tunnel, a dual carriageway that bypasses the town completely. It was the first immersed tube tunnel in the UK - sections were floated out into the bay and then lowered into the riverbed.

I know right now there are a whole load of railway people reading this who are rolling their eyes and skipping ahead, and fair enough. I'm not a trains vs roads person. The country needs good railways and good roads. There's far more romance in the railway - it's difficult to get misty eyed over a Vauxhall Astra - but the roads are a necessary, valuable part of the network. The tunnel under the bay is a brilliant feat of engineering, and I find it fascinating. If it were up to me there'd be road tunnels all over the place, sending motorways under city centres and everything. But that's going back to my deep seated Freudian tunnel issues, so let's not dwell, shall we?

One last glimpse of Conwy Castle and then I was into the town of Llandudno Junction. After the scenery across the river it was a bit of a shock. Ugly industrial units. Messy road layouts. Fences everywhere. It was as though Conwy had deliberately farmed all its unattractive parts over here - the picture in its attic.

Also, for a town actually named after a railway station, they go out of their way to hide it. I expected it to be signposted as soon as I hit the bank, but no; I had to follow my instincts, trying to keep the railway line in sight and hoping I ended up outside it.

The path stopped suddenly, and forced me down some steps and into an underpass. They'd done that classic municipal trick of allowing graffiti artists to paint a mural on the inside, as a deterrent to further painting; personally I can't stand it. I know it gives young people something to do, deters crime, blah blah, but I'd prefer a nice brightly tiled tunnel when I'm skulking under a dual carriageway. The heavy purple of the paint, combined with the poor lighting, made it oppressive. It was all well done, and there was a nice cameo from the railway junction, but I still rushed through.

I finally found the station, entirely by luck, and I staked out a spot in the car park for the photo. Unfortunately my camera's lens wasn't wide enough - you'll have to imagine the final 'n' for yourselves:

It was a strange little station. I was there for twenty minutes, and there was almost no activity whatsoever. No trains came through. Then, in a five minute period, we seemed to get about four hundred of the things.

When I'd planned this trip, Llandudno had very much been on the agenda. I was going to take a train from here to Deganwy, next on the branch from Llandudno to Blaenau Ffestiniog, then walk to Llandudno itself so I could take a ride on the tramway. Then a regular train back to Colwyn Bay. My love in with the various towns of North Wales had put paid to that idea, though. It was pushing four o'clock; the tramway would almost certainly be closed by the time I got there. I decided to leave it for another trip, sometime. Maybe.

Instead I took a seat on the platform to wait for the Colwyn Bay train. There were a couple of teenagers further down, teasing a seagull with some Pringles. A group of pensioners arrived, and were dismayed to find that the coffee shop was closed; the man disappeared and returned with some Capri Suns from the Netto over the road. I put in my iPod to blot out their bleating. I was listening to Ian's superb album Come to Metro-land; the evocative lyrics and very British music were the perfect soundtrack for a peaceful train station platform.

And so to Colwyn Bay.

I had a minor frisson of excitement as I arrived on the platform. An ALF! Well, a semi-ALF. Tucked away at the far end of the platform was a Welcome to Colwyn Bay sign with a dragon on it. It's not really an Attractive Local Feature - not unless there really is a dragon with a magic wand somewhere in the town - but I'll take what I can get.

The station meshed Victoriana with Eighties red brick, not entirely successfully; while the lift shafts were necessary and unobtrusive, the octagonal customer services building with its mirrored glasses was too much. Too brassy and low class; Miami Vice in amongst Upstairs Downstairs. On the plus side, we had a working, staffed ticket office, and even ticket gates. Wow. I'd assumed that Arriva Trains Wales had given up on revenue protection as throwing good money after bad. What next, a pleasant, friendly member of staff? A clean train?

Ignoring the stares from the drivers in the taxi rank, I took the station pic:

The town was pretty and busy. The shopping day was winding down, but the pedestrianised precinct was still thronged, and the shops looked well patronised. The WH Smiths, in particular, had a nice metal canopy with WHS formed in the ironwork.

The Travelodge came with a surprise: The BF! He'd driven down to Colwyn Bay to meet me, and to take me out for a dinner. This was a wonderful treat, not least because the town's culinary options seemed limited - if you didn't want KFC or a kebab, you would be out of luck. With the Bf's arrival I could justify going to a proper restaurant. Eating out on your own seems like a ridiculous extravagance.

We ended up in what seemed to be Colwyn Bay's sole non-takeaway eatery; Virgilio's or, as it's also known, the Restaurant Time Forgot. If you bundled up every Italian restaurant cliche, scrunched them into a ball, and threw them into 1976, you'd get Virgilios. Plastic vines crawling over a terracotta indoor roof; plastic tablecloths and laminated menus; red, white and green fairy lights thronging the ceiling. We were the only people in there and ate our pollo cacciatore and seafood pizza inbetween whispers. The owner lurked behind a wall, chatting to her friends, but keeping a firm eye on us; we'd barely put our knives down before she whisked our plates away. It was cheap, it was cheerful, and it was a lovely end to the day. It beat a Morrison's sandwich in my hotel room, anyway.

Day Three (Continued): Love Profusion

Up until this point, my feelings on Wales had been mostly distant admiration. Previous visits had convinced me it was a bit of a miserable place - that soulless strip of grey buildings that hugs the coast from Shotton to Prestatyn; rough houses and abandoned factories and miles of tin caravans. The trip so far had shown me some astonishing beauty (on the Anglesey coast, crossing the Menai Bridge) but also ugliness (Holyhead, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch). I had been impressed, and sometimes enthused, but I wasn't captivated.

That was about to change. I was on the train from Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch to Llanfairfechan, which sounds like someone trying to say the first one but giving up halfway through ("Llanfair... feckin' hell, can't they just speak English?"). Onboard I noticed this little notice, which fascinated me:

To save your eyes, it says "It is an offence to consume alcohol on trains and stations on the following routes: Ponytypridd to Treherbert, Aberdare, Merthyr and Caerphilly to Rhymonsey". To which the obvious question is: "why?". What goes on at those stations? What scandal erupted and turned them dry? I wondered if this was part of that Welsh Temperance Movement, still clinging on to the railways through some antiquated by law. It's probably more likely that it's to stop marauding rugby fans from tearing up the carriages.

As was becoming the norm, I was the only person to get off at Llanfairfechan; I didn't take it personally. The station was squeezed under the A55 which lead to an interesting contrast. I was stood on a deserted country station, but all I could hear was a drone of traffic whizzing past behind the retaining wall. It was like being back on Anglesey, with the jets interrupting your contemplation.

On the other side of the station is a small park, which runs down to the promenade, and blessed be: a totem sign! I hate having to use platform signs on this blog. It's just cheating. I grinned madly under the BR logo, and only got one pitying look from a passer-by, which is a result:

Under the A55, and I got my first surprise: a very scenic river, cascading down the hill towards the coast. It was pretty in a sort of ridiculous way, like it had been designed for a Disney film; it was so perfectly tranquil. I headed up the hill towards the village proper, becoming increasingly gleeful as it unfolded in front of me.

The thing is, Llanfairfechan is wonderfully, brilliantly, amazingly gorgeous. It is one of the most charming places I have been to in my life. I was absolutely smitten. The high street was heralded by a round tower, and after that it was a parade of tiny, valuable shops: a carpet store, a bathroom fittings store, a hairdresser, all local businesses, not chains. Interspersed with them were greystone cottages and little patches of green, with the mountains rising above me. And behind it all I could hear the cascading water as it made its way down the slopes.

Rather than push on, I took a table in the Castle Bridge Cafe, and had a pot of tea out of the kind of glass cup and saucer that I thought had vanished in the 1970s. The Cafe seemed to have some kind of nautical theme going on; there were plastic starfish in the windows, and my tray was encrusted with all sorts of barnacles.

The only other people in the cafe were the owner, a man sat at the counter, and a table of four: three old ladies and an old man. I could have listened to them forever. They must turn up every day, for their tea and cake and gossip, and stay here till it closes. The man at the counter was doing a crossword: they offered to help but he refused, because they'd spoil it for him. In the meantime, I leaned back and eavesdropped. Anyone disgusted by my behaviour should think again - eavesdropping is the best free entertainment there is, and more people should do it. Especially when the conversation was as good as this. Among the gems I unearthed in my half-hour in the cafe:

- Lady No. 1 was out in her dressing gown last night because of a disturbance over the road. The police were called because someone had tried to break into Alistair the Artist's shop. (Woman behind the counter, horrified: "The police came?")

- Lady No. 1 regularly goes on holiday with a lady named Rhoda who, for reasons best known to herself, refuses to go to bed unless she's wearing a cardigan.

- "I was watching Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? It was his last film. No, not Sidney Poy-ti-eh [sic]. Spencer thingy. With the hat."

- "That trip to York was awful. Morse died while we were away." (She meant John Thaw, but apparently none of them were fully cognisant of the fact that Inspector Morse was fictional).

- The man brought up the topic of football, which they all agreed was rubbish and a waste of time. He complained: "Manchester City won the FA Cup and there was a picture of them celebrating in the paper. They all had their mouths open - it was disgusting."

I texted The Bf. "We're moving to Llanfairfechan. Start packing."

Only part of me was joking.

There are two ways to get from Llanfairfechan to Penmaenmawr if you're a pedestrian. The first is to walk up the mountain, round the back of the summit, and back down again, via the North Wales Coastal Path.

The second way is to get a bus.

What?

Sod it, I was tired and lazy and the cup of tea and the interesting chat had made me a bit dozy. I figured I could do without a hike through the foothills of Snowdon. Plus the bus stop - a tiny little one in the Welsh countryside, remember - had a shelter and seats and an LED Next Bus indicator and a service every fifteen minutes. That's better than Merseytravel offer me in Oxton. There's a shelter at the top of my road with no seats or timetable, and the buses only turn up every half hour on days during the Spring Equinox when there's a rising star in Cancer. And even then, they don't go anywhere you'd actually want to go. I took up a seat in the shelter and watched the people in the bus stop opposite stroke a horse in the field behind. It was all so wonderful.

The bus was clean and efficient and on time. I was sat across from two people talking Welsh. Surprisingly, this was the first time I'd actually heard people talking Welsh on my whole trip. Previously, I'd found it a slightly annoying language - all those extra l's and f's, and the occasional throat clearing noise, and their absolute refusal to use the letter 'x' ("tacsi"? Really?). Now, in my new fondness for all things principality related, I wondered if it was difficult to learn. It probably is, but I figured that I wouldn't be able to truly consider myself a productive member of the Llanfairfechan community until I was able to ask for a pint of bitter using only consonants.

I was close to choosing wallpaper patterns for my new Welsh home when I realised the bus was heading for the Penmaenbach tunnels. The A55 swings through two tunnels here, one built in the 1930s and now only used for Eastbound traffic, and one built in the 1980s for Westbound traffic. In line with my general love for massive engineering projects, I have an unhealthy fondness for tunnels. I think it comes from reading too many adventure stories as a kid, and growing up loving anything secret and hidden. I still get a thrill when we use the Mersey Tunnels (true fact: the night I met the Bf, I got him to use the Kingsway Tunnel, because I'd not travelled through that one. And he still came back for more!) I was ridiculously pleased as we disappeared into the darkness.

The downside of buses is that if you've never been somewhere before, you don't know where your stop is. Train stations have a certainty about them. They're fixed, unmoving points in the world. Like God. Except they exist.

As it was, I had to just jump off when I estimated I was in the centre of Penmaenmawr. If I was wrong, I apologise, but what I saw looked gorgeously centre-ish. Again, I was entranced. This had a different feel to Llanfairfechan; that had been mostly about nature, with trees and the river capturing me. Here it was the buildings and the people. Penmaenmawr was busier, and its high street was wonderfully Victorian - thick solid buildings with ironwork and glass out front.

The sadness was that the village centre had seen better days. Most of the shop windows were empty, but strangely, it didn't seem frighteningly bare. There wasn't an air of decay. It seemed like they were temporarily between tenants - not so much abandoned, more "resting". I decided to have another cup of tea to compare and contrast the gossip with Llanfairfechan's. I picked the Light Up Pen Cafe which was, I thought, the worst pun-named cafe in the history of the universe. "Light Up Pen"? That's just rubbish.

Turns out, the reason for its strange name is this cafe is a community run venture: all the profits go to funding the annual Christmas lights. I felt the sense of local pride while I was in there - the staff and the customers were bantering back and forth like old friends. I should however report that the level of gossip in the Light Up Pen cafe couldn't compare with the Castle Bridge, so I'm afraid Llanfairfechan wins that battle. The best Penmaenmawr could manage was a couple of blokes earnestly discussing the football, and who cares about that?

It was a very pleasing walk down the hill to Penmaenmawr station, past one of those miserable looking Victorian monuments to Gladstone. Apparently it was erected from local donations - I'm not sure why they bothered, since he doesn't look very happy to be there.

On the plus side the station itself is lovely...

...or it would be if it wasn't shuttered and boarded up. Sigh.

I'd trekked all the way from Anglesey, and I'd only encountered one working station, at Holyhead itself. That was mainly because they were sharing facilities with the ferry terminal. What gives? (Though in fairness, Bangor might have been staffed once they finished the building work). How hard is it to lay on a single ticket office, with one man who can answer questions and sell you a ticket. He'd be an oracle, a salesman, and a security guard.

Because I got thinking: this would be a great place to commit a murder. A nice open space. Not too many people around. The ability to come and go without raising suspicion. Time it between trains and no-one would ever know. You could get a couple of hours of bodily mutilation without being bothered.

Although thinking about it a bit more, it'd be better for an affair. You want a discreet place to spoon with the person of your choice, without having to pay out for a hotel room. Here's your spot! It's got parking, it's got places to sit down, it's undisturbed. Far better than doing it in the back of a car on a lane somewhere. And if you're of an exhibitionist bent, you can coincide with the express trains and give them all a flash of your arse as they speed through.

With my mind firmly in the gutter, I got on board the train and headed off to Conwy. I'm not being English-centric - this used to be called Conway, didn't it? That seems to have fallen out of favour completely. I'm not complaining. Conwy sounds much nicer, and in my new pro-Welsh stance, far prettier.

It's a testament to the power of the railways in Victorian times that the trains brush right up against the skirts of the castle itself. No-one dared tell them that it was a bit close to the heritage, or that they might endanger the artefacts, or it didn't look as pretty. They built the line where it was practical and that was it. Something the HS2 planners should perhaps bear in mind.

Conwy's another request stop, but I didn't need to worry: the platform was teeming with tourists waiting for the train. I wasn't the only one to get off for once, either.

I know this isn't exactly a newsflash, but Conwy is very pretty. Ridiculously pretty. Obscenely pretty. Castle + walls + tiny streets + more history than most countries forget = gorgeousness.

Just look at that. That's the square right outside the station; that's before you've even ventured into the town proper. Like most tourists, I wandered round with a delighted smirk on my face. It was all so lovely.

But - well, there had to be a "but" - it was all a bit fake. Not the history, but the feel of the town was that it had become a tourist destination, and that was it. The shops were almost all tourist tat or tea rooms. Or banks. No matter how small the village or town was in Wales, there always seemed to be a representative from each of the big banks: perhaps the Assembly is secretly funding it.

It meant that while I liked it, I couldn't love it. It was a bit too theme park for me.

On the plus side, it did have somewhere I could buy one of these:

so obviously it's not all bad.

No, actually, it was a wonderful little town. Perhaps after Penmaenmawr and Llanfairfechan my joy muscles were all tired out. I'd come to expect - not expect, take for granted - that this corner of North Wales would be beautiful and scenic and lovely.

I leaned back in the pub and let it all wash over me. The barmaid brought me a prawn sandwich that was about four hundred times better than the mangy one I'd bought in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, and for half the cost. The man next to me rustled his paper. The sun streamed in from the beer garden.

I thought, I could stay here. I could just settle in and relax and have a few pints and be happy. Contentment.