Barb & John's Hols: A long day in the saddle....Wales

Visiting friends in Berwick St John and Aberyswyth

We did consult the RAC trip planner before deciding to fit in a diversion to our friends Brian and Phyl. They live in Berwick St John (near Shaftesbury) and we were merely on our way to Aberyswyth on the west coast of Wales, there to spend the night with more of John’s uni friends, John and Anne. Unfortunately RAC doesn’t allow for traffic jams and roadwork (John: or my wildly optimistic and inaccurate estimate of travel times. Oh woe!).

John was best man at John and Anne Gee’s wedding nearly 40 years ago and had all but lost contact with them after moving to Australia. By a stroke of coincidence and good luck John emailed us while we were in Scotland. His daughter Siobhan was recently engaged and the family had been pouring over old wedding photos when the questions were asked "who's that with the long curly hair" and "good grief, whatever happened to him?" With contact re-established we arranged to visit them in Aberystwyth the night before we go to France.

So …. we left Susan’s place early at 7am. We knew there’d be traffic on a weekday morning but John had forgotten just how much traffic there would be heading on a major motorway towards London (John: oddly, heading towards London wasn't too bad - but once on the M25 it was hideous. Read on). By the time we reached the M25 slow became standstill! This is the ring road around London designed to facilitate the movement of traffic around the perimeter of the city and to decant it onto other motorways as appropriate. Today that didn’t work so well (John: only because there were so many road works to improve traffic flow ....). Thank goodness we weren’t trying to catch a plane.

We finally managed to turn off onto the road heading towards Salisbury. We were so busy concentrating on our route that we were surprised to see a large number of people standing around in a field. Duh! They were looking at Stonehenge. We saw the megaliths in a blur as we whizzed past (we’ve stopped there once before, no time to tarry this trip) and soon diverted off the main road towards Wilton thinking that might be a quicker way to get to Berwick St John.

Indeed it might have been had there not been un-signposted road works completely blocking the only path through the town. We tried to find a way round it but the GPS kept taking us round the houses only to confront the impassable roadworks yet again. So frustrating!

We called Brian to warn of our late arrival and back-tracked the way we’d come onto the highway and came via Shaftesbury instead.

Barn, Brian & Phyl

Brian & Phyl's gorgeous garden

Brian and Phyl were very welcoming and a cup of strong sweet tea and a lovely lunch with convivial chat somewhat restored us. It was so good to see them and their garden has really blossomed since our last visit to them some five years ago. Phyl has taken up bell-ringing since we saw her last. When she spoke of several bells being rung to produce the different tones and tunes, well, Barb was imagining Phyl as a one man band with bells ringing from both hands and feet, but apparently it's only one bell per person. Not as much fun.

We had to cut our visit short as we still had to get to Aberyswyth. We estimated we’d be there by 6pm. Wrong! Oh how wrong!

It took much, much longer than John could have imagined to get as far as Cardiff. Have we mentioned Oh Woe? From there we took a route up through the Brecon Beacons and while this was a beautiful scenic route it was a long way from being fast. We wove and wended our way up and down mountainous roads (just the kind that scare Barb silly) and again had to pull over to warn our hosts we’d be quite late. Oh, and did we mention it was pouring with rain most of the way, all day? It was well after 7pm when we got there. A tad frazzled John had been driving around ten hours by this time.

The Second Severn Crossing motorway bridge

It was wonderful to finally catch up with John and Anne. It was as if there had been no hiatus at all and we quickly caught up on all the doings of the past few years. We talked late into the night over whiskeys and gin & tonics. Barb viewed the wedding album and pronounced they hadn’t changed a bit in the last 40 years, although their hair colour doe seem to have taken on a silver hue.

We’re hoping we’ve convinced them to visit us in Australia sometime in the near future. It would be lovely to repay their generous hospitality, but more importantly not to lose contact with these lovely folk again.

John & John

John & Anne

Before we parted company in the morning, they showed us around Aberyswth. It’s an entirely charming town with a small harbour and even has a castle!! What more could you want?