The delights of being a grandpa for a week with the family in a house by the coast in Wales. The opportunity to open for a week that compartment of the mind that contains absolutely nothing. Bliss. Bathrooms and comfortable chairs for everyone. Time in abundance. Time for monopoly down to the ugly megalomaniac end (with grandpa the sad victim of a ruthless young real estate tycoon). Time to complete a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle. Time for a mixed doubles table football tournament.

Our house is in the little village of LLwyngrwil by the sea. In the mid 20^th cent. there were over twenty shops.  Commerce and the population have steadily declined and now the village only has a church, a train station, a pub, lots of cute little houses and a post office/shop providing the essentials. And the building that recently housed a primary school now stands clean, stripped of life and grass grows longer on the un-trodden sportsground. But the village does live on. Life is simple. Sheep live on the hills above the village and the townspeople find an assortment of occupations. Down the road there is a horse-riding school, and further along, a showroom presenting a dozen exotic cars. A viable business? An expensive hobby?

The shop opens at 3 pm for the afternoon.

Me – “How do you pronounce the name of the town?”

Shopkeeper/post mistress – “I don’t”

Me – “If you were in another town and someone asked where you come from what would you say?”

Shopkeeper/post mistress – “I wouldn’t say.”

Although Welsh is now taught in school only about 20% of the people speak the language. Welsh according to WikiHow claims it is easy to learn, but the locals don’t all agree.

When travelling, the unplanned and unexpected experiences are sometimes the most memorable. Wouldn’t have occurred to us to say to the boys “don’t kick he football into the rapids”. Where did they kick the football? The ball, of course, gravitated to the inaccessible far side of the rapids, getting stranded in backwaters. Grandma philosophically wrote the football off at this stage. All part of the adventure for the boys, who lobbed rocks and sticks at the ball to get it moving toward the inevitable –  ball reclaimed, but everyone and everything soggy.

Further up the coast are the popular seaside resorts like Barmouth with iconic trappings of donkey rides, centrifugal fairground rides, Rows of tall, thin, ornate old boarding houses and hotels facing out to sea, the life boats ready to launch, fishing boats high and dry in the estuary waiting for the incoming tide to chase kiddies in across a mile of sand. The boys engage in facing off the incoming tide with rock and sandscaping. The sort of skills that are useful for dealing with footballs and rapids.

The residents of Machinlleth, a large town in the middle of Wales, have some quirky ways of decorating their property. These are a couple of sights on the streets of Machinlleth.

One of the major attractions of Snowdonia is the hill walking. The following movie clip is a composite of a few walks in the area. The mountains are famous for being able to turn on four seasons in the space of a few hours. We were lucky to experience only a few variations on pleasant springtime.

A challenge posed by the hosts was to complete the jigsaw in a week. Teamwork led by Grandma saw the jigsaw finished in a few days.

A fitting climax of the Wales episodes the  Zip line adventure. A high tech, high speed, long distance flying fox ride over wild welsh mountains. At times high in the sky, at other times swooping so low over ridges that there is reflexive lifting of the feet. Thinking “we’re going too fast to stop at the landing site”. The video clip is a condensed composite of three trips at different sites.