Category: travel
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Up the Ely river
Where we start happens to be in south Cardiff, but could be anywhere in the world in 2019. Apartments are stacked in Duplo’d piles, each block with a ‘concierge’ and a primary colour. Sheds, with metal roofs shaped in shallow arcs, are home to companies that shelter behind opaque titles, usually including the word ‘global’. …
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Dilyn Iolo
Bore mwyn, di-haul o Ionawr, a dyma bedwar ohonon ni’n cychwyn ar Daith Gerdded Treftadaeth Iolo Morganwg. Taith gylchol o ryw bedair milltir a hanner yw hon, un o gyfres o deithiau cerdded wedi’u dyfeisio gan Gyngor Bro Morgannwg, gyda help Valeways, Ramblers Bro Morgannwg a’r Undeb Ewropeaidd (cofio hwnnw?). Taith berffaith ar gyfer canol…
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M4+: a road to nowhere
Two public issues overshadow all others. That’s because doing little or nothing about them puts our own existence in danger. They are our own warming of the earth’s environment (anthropogenic climate change) and our destruction of life on earth (loss of biodiversity). Very soon Members of the National Assembly of Wales may be asked to…
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Indexing Gilbert White
Selborne, Hampshire. Why we’ve never been there before I don’t know. The village isn’t far from Winchester, familiar enough territory. It’s a bit off the beaten track, though a busy B road passes through the village, channelling noise and people through the narrow main street that would have been quiet in the mid-eighteenth century, when…
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In Bunhill Fields
This week we paid a visit to a place that’s been on my wish list for many years: Bunhill Fields. Some might think it a perverse pilgrimage, because Bunhill Fields isn’t not a rural glade or open park, but an old burial ground – the origin of ‘Bunhill’ is thought to be ‘bone hill’ –…
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Wales Coast Path, day 13: Swansea to Mumbles
This may be Day 13 in the geographical series, but chronologically it’s number 95 – Sunday 9 September 2018, and the very last stage of our Wales Coast Path journey. We‘ve left our ‘home stretch’, one of the flattest in the whole course of the Path, till last. It’s a route – along the track…
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Carmarthen to Aberystwyth by train
It’s our first time on the Gwili Railway – thanks to a nearly-three year old boy obsessed with trains, or, more accurately, steam locomotives. We spend several hours pottering back and forth along the four mile track between the Railway’s current termini, Abergwili Junction and Danycoed, on two trains, one pulled by a steam engine,…
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Wales Coast Path, day 79: Church Bay from Valley
Just the two of us today, to finish our circuit of Anglesey. We get up early, plant one car at Church Bay and drive the other to Valley. No cloud and drizzle this morning, just a balmy breeze and powerful sunshine. For once I can’t avoid wearing my socially disastrous reversible sun hat. There’s no…
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Wales Coast Path, day 78: Cemaes from Church Bay
The driver of the Lewis-y-Llan 62 bus to Holyhead needs nerves of steel. She takes the three of us at a good pace on the main road from Cemaes as far as Llanrhuddiad, and then turns off to Rhyd-wyn, down a long single track road with no passing places. Meeting another vehicle would be difficult. …
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Wales Coast Path, day 77: Porth Amlwch to Cemaes
Have we made a mistake? After a month of the driest, hottest weather since the summer of 1976, C and I chosen today to start our final, three-day campaign of the Wales Coast Path, from Porth Amlwch to Valley, on a less than tropical day. It’s dark, drizzly and clouds are so low that Cadair…