Is Wales The New France?

 I got dragged to Wales when I was a child.
As a teenager with a serious paper round it would cost me wages to go away and I always tried to stay home alone, so as to be free for a week.

Well when I say Wales, it was North Wales and every other person seemed to be from Liverpool.

 I recall one week at the summer peak most of the customers on my paper round seemed to be on the same Caravan site, or maybe the next.

Gradually I broke away and become friends with many of the locals, who would call for me when I was there and we would go off to the arcades and the fairgrounds looking for holiday makers, hoping to Kiss Girls Quickly and Squeeze Them Slow.

Or was it Kiss Them Slowly and Squeeze Them Quick.

Well both really, I wasn't that fussy.

This is the time before Facebook and Social Media so it seemed impossible to plan ahead. So you pick up friends where you are.

 Staying in touch was difficult.

When I got a bit older my Welsh girlfriend didn't have a phone so every Tuesday and Thursday she would walk over the phone box and call me. Or try to.

There used to be queues outside phone boxes, remember those big red monsters sitting on the pavement usually on the corner of roads.

I would phone and a bloke would answer it waiting for someone to call him.

“Its not you again is it? Will you get off the line I am waiting for a call”

I would hear my lady friend asking “Is that for me”?

“I don't know, you will have to wait” It was a joke.

I would ring back a few minutes later and the phone would be engaged, and engaged and engaged again seemingly forever. I would go the loo or something and come back to the phone and my sister would be on it, gabbing away one of her friends. Smiling......

“How long are you going to be” I would ask. She would be talking for an age and eventually I would make the call and the phone would ring out. She had been waiting that long that she went home.

This went on and on for a long time.

The kids don't know they are born today with their mobiles.

Now I am starting to sound like my old man.

I always recall when we came into the road to Prestatyn and looked over the valleys and even though I was interested in previously stated.... other things as a youth, I could not deny the outstanding natural beauty.

Being a fisherman my treat was to get into Wales with the grown men, who were all accomplished Anglers who would show me how to lay the ledger down in a eddy swell and wait for a chunky Chub to snatch my luncheon meat.

Or trot a float down river for some distant shoal of Dace. The hope of hooking a Grayling was always there.
 I did many times, becoming an accomplished angler. I took it very seriously indeed.
https://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.com/2015/03/pilkingtons-vase-decorated-by-richard.html 

I stayed out of trouble by fishing the rivers and lakes of Wales sometimes getting as far as Bala. Rain, hail and snow and the glistening sunshine in the summer there was no obstacles to my adventures.

My mates at school called me Findus for a while. 

Findus The Fisherman. I hated that.

Captain Haddock was another. It just shows you how much they knew as I did not go sea fishing.

Some of them would get into trouble later on. How could I tell them back at my school for hard knocks, about the excitement of seeing a Kingfisher land on my rod. And that its iridescent red breast feathers shone like beacons against the pure white snow. That snow that had drifted in overnight. That we had travelled through watching the wildlife wake up. While  the more nocturnal creatures such as foxes would be seen scurrying home before the dew had drifted away on the breeze. The air always tasted different. There was no taste of smoke or industry.

It was then that I decided I will come back when I am older but apart from antique buying trips, I only occasionally travelled back through the country.

It never disappointed even if sometimes the food did.

That's all changed now.

To stock my India Building shop I would travel to the continent sometimes twice a month, circumnavigating most of France and then all over it again.

Like a grown up kid looking for treasure I searched for Circa. Circa 1900, Circa 1920.

 Art Deco became my favourite style and France seemed the place to pick it up.

I must have been to some cities 40 times over twenty years. There are some I know as well as my home town.

I don't know whether its the fact that the language barrier means you miss the mundane, but the food was always good and the perk of the job was that I could eat out most nights.

 I have eaten some good food in France, I mean really good.

Though some of the best was cooked in French style in Belgium, but that's another story.

What a beautiful country full of twists and turns and friendly people.

But the grass is always greener on the other side.....of the Channel in this case.

But as with the poem that has always stayed with me says.

We shall not cease from exploration

And at the end of my exploring

I will arrive where I started

And know the place for the very first time.

I don't know if its just because you are older but It is a delight to journey through the Welsh hillsides with all their surprises. I think that the lack of industry and investment in some areas has been sadly missed but there are areas that look as if they have not changed for ever.

And this now, is that countries charm. Or at least that's my opinion based on the areas that I have recently frequented.

This means that in some places it has saved its rivers and lakes from pollution so you can quite easily go wild swimming in crystal clear pools that are hardly off the beaten track.

See waterfalls with that sweet fresh magnetic smell.

Rolling hills and sunken valleys with trees, branches moss laden with emerald velvet shimmering in the April showers. Yes, there are showers but that is the price to pay for the lush life and that spring growth that seems to regenerate your soul.

Its the spring, when the Welsh come out of their strong sturdy slate stacked piles, from their winter slumber. In just enough time to spare, to greet the new wave of woolly jumper-ed walkers who too, need to taste that fresh air with its bitter sweet taste of cold dew, lifting from the winter wake. They come from all over the world. 

Though lingering in the memories of The Welsh is Tryweryn. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-34528336

It is easy to provoke but if you play a straight bat you are alright.

And when you go into the history and the language.

Welsh is in fact ancient Breton.

The English are speaking a mixture of Viking, Angle and Saxon. The Welsh have kept their independence and you have to respect that.

The English are the ones who have been conquered many times.

I recently found underneath the pews in a listed slate built Welsh Chapel, a simple piece of pitch pine. Signed John Felix. Taliesin.

https://www.dyfiospreyproject.com/blog/emyr-mwt/2020/01/26/short-story-10-john-felix

 And dated 1895.

https://www.facebook.com/dyfiospreyproject/photos/a.194204187277130/2911469942217194/?type=3&theater

Frank Lloyd Wright one of the 20^th centuries great architects called his design company Taliesin. His company would be responsible for the curving Guggenheim, amongst many other memorable structures. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taliesin

This brings into my minds eye several stories of King Arthur's bard and poet of the same name, who may have been washed up in a leather satchel on the beach of Aberystwyth.

 The Arthurian legend is as much Welsh as it is French in the guise of L'Morte D'Arthur.

I am amazed at how little I have been made aware of the great history of Wales.
I really do look forward to exploring the myths and legends of old Wales.

Its time to pay respect and appreciate the history and independence and learn a bit of the old Brythonic language.

Wales Definitely Is The new France …...For Me.