To and In Aberystwyth

July 3rd (Thurs) – Today is Mike’s mom’s Birthday. We thought of her first thing but of course we couldn’t call because it would have been in the middle of the night in L.A. Instead we wrote her a postcard, which she’ll not get for a while but at least she’ll know we were thinking of her. Today we head into Wales and because we wanted to stop in the “Book” town of Hay-on-Wye, we didn’t want to linger in Stow. Toast and grapefruit for breakfast for me (finally, a little variety) and then to the Coffee House for more cocoa and then to Hay. Driving there was uneventful, although we did go through some pretty towns. Hay itself was small but filled with bookshops as promised. Mike wanted to head straight for the ‘Linguistics’ bookshop, and there we discovered it was closed! Poor Mike stood in front of the shop peering in the window forlornly – even called the number of the shop to see if there was any chance the shop owner would open up that day. He got an answering machine and was completely heartbroken. We hit a couple of other bookstores – one was called Murder and Mayhem, so my kind of thing. But they were closing for lunch! I, too, must have looked forlorn, because they agreed to lock me in and let me browse as long as I went across the road to pay for any books I wanted. In the end, we simply didn’t have enough time to really have a good browse anywhere. For book-lovers like us, you need more than the two hours we had designated. I chose two books from the mystery bookstore, sighed the sigh of one deprived of a million other good finds, and then we checked a couple of others for Welsh linguistics books to no avail. On our way out we decided to take one last peek down the street to where the Linguistics bookstore was – and we happened to see the owner just opening her shop! Mike was down the alley quicker than you could say “Cymru” (the Welsh word for Wales) and entered the shop before even the owner even as she had just stepped away for a second. In the end, Mike did find several goodies there and I bought two Beatrix Potter books written in what’s called ITA (similar to IPA, which we linguists use), which is an alphabet that was used once upon a time to teach children to read. The owner tempted us sorely by offering to take us to her home where in her garage she had tons of books on phonetics. If we hadn’t been pressed for time to get to Aberystwyth, we’d have gone in a heartbeat.

We left Hay and headed for Aberystwyth, noting the changes in the landscape as we got further into Wales. Everything seemed much greener and the hills a lot larger with more trees and even more sheep. Everywhere you looked the green hills (mountains?) were dotted with little white furry dots. It was a lovely drive that we broke up by stopping in the town of Rhaeadr (which means “waterfall” in Welsh) and having a Welsh tea; this consisted of a pot of tea and two Welsh cookies and a piece of Bara Brith. The Welsh cookies look like little pancakes with currants or raisins in them and the bread is like a spicy fruit bread. We reached Aberystwyth around 5:30. Our hotel was on the waterfront road, Marine Parade, and although a bit past its prime, had an excellent view of Cardigan Bay. Couldn’t really get any closer than that! We checked in and then decided to explore the town a bit and look for dinner.

The one unfortunate incident occurred when I tried to get money out of an ATM. Although my receipt says that the machine gave me 200 pounds (about $400), it actually only gave me one 20 pound note ($40). As the bank was already closed, Mike and I spent time hanging around outside the bank trying to find a number to call to report the problem. The only number we could find was for the bank’s closed circuit TV surveillance camera, but that number’s recording gave us another to call. Unfortunately when we called that number, it was a misdial. Luckily a very nice lady came by and listened to the message and number for us and told us that the first number was probably a zero and not an eight as we had thought. Mike called that number and reported the problem. He was assured that the bank would fix the error and that we did not have to do anything further. If they don’t, we have no way to prove it and I’m out $380 that I never got.

We finished out the evening by eating at Gannet’s Bistro described in our guidebook as cooking simple but good food. This restaurant turned out to be run by two Welsh women. Mike was in bliss just listening to them talk especially as a young man (son? grandson?) came by and spent quite a long time talking with them in Welsh as well. The food was simple: fish, a dish of potatoes, and a dish of veggies to share – topped off with homemade raspberry and blackberry pie. We ended up getting a recommendation for our route to Caernarfon from the owner. At one point I had asked her how to pronounce the name of the city (the Welsh way, not the English way) and after that, although she’d been perfectly nice before, she was much warmer. It was the perfect choice for our first night’s dinner in Wales. I simply can’t describe how happy Mike was to hear the Welsh. After this, we walked along the water and discovered the tide was coming in with a vengeance. Waves were really moving in, being whipped up by the wind, and crashing against the beach and breakwater. Mike stood looking down at the waves and grinning, happy as a clam. At one spot, there was actually a wooden pier that was like a series of graduate steps that went down to the water. With the tide coming the steps were rapidly disappearing. Mike decided to see how far he could get without getting wet. He almost pushed the ocean a tad too far! Finally, all along the parade, there were flags of different types and Mike discovered the plaque that explained they were the flags of the countries whose minority languages were represented in the city. What better thing for a couple of linguists to see? We put the night to bed by watching the sun go down over the bay.