(First published October 16, 2008)
Bendith Duw ar Bobl Cymru a`u plismyn gwaraidd!!!
(God bless the Welsh People and their civilized policemen!!!)
My original motivation to travel to Britain for the first and only time, in 2001, was to investigate Notting Hill.
Notting Hill was long famous, even before the warm-hearted film of the same name with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, for its incredibly congested, unbroken mass of bargain-seeking and perspiring humanity crushed within its mile long length, as the best flea market in Europe.
While I did find beautiful ceramics, overflowing tables of eccentric flotsam and jetsam, and the original 1964 Beatles periodicals I was actually seeking, as well as a priced-to-sell full suit of medieval English armor for mounted combat or jousting, the memory I find that lingers longest are my three unplanned days in Wales.
The distance from London to Cardiff, the capitol of Wales, was slightly less than driving from Chicago to Madison, Wisconsin. Interesting places are much closer together in Great Britain than in the States. The approximate size of the former homeland of the world wide British Empire is about the same size as Illinois and Indiana, together.
Britannia…small, but mighty!
To me, the charm of travel is experiencing the unexpected, and that is what the Welsh Police Force was unprepared for, when I attempted to explore their part of that lovely little island, and they kept crossing paths with the continuously confused Jewish guy from the far more dangerous South Side of Chicago.
I just love those guys.
In May, 2001, without warning them first, I flew from Chicago to England for four days, three of them of exploring Wales.
I was going to rent a car in London so I could wander through the Welsh hills, dales and towns. A helpful guy from American Express advised me that my rental car was covered by them as an additional benefit of having their Optima card, and not to take the expensive local insurance policy because that was unnecessary. I thanked them, packed up my guide books and road maps and left the American Midwest to seek British adventures.
This was at the height of the international concern about whether there was an outbreak of mad-cow disease in England, so being a carnivore, I was concerned by how limited that might make my choices of what I could eat there. Because of severe food allergies, including many fruits, vegetables and even some spices, and not being a fan of East Indian cuisine, this was more than a casual concern. Plus, being slightly kosher, I didn’t eat pork. Or drink coffee. Or beer. Or wine. That little British Isle was beginning to look smaller and smaller. And even more of an adventure, too.
Tea, however, was ok.
Not enough, of course, but it was a start.
My initial desire to go to Wales was to visit the world famous town of Hay-on-Wye. I first heard about it years ago when I owned a world-travel bookstore. It was claimed to be the only town in the world with thirty-five used bookstores, each specializing in a different subject, like cooking, science fiction, art and so on. Just thirty-five used bookstores, a pub, a gas station and the Wye River swiftly flowing by, to add to the romantic setting.
Mae`r Gelli Gandryll yn nefoedd ar y ddaear i lyfrgarwyr!
(in Welsh–Hay-on-Wye is Heaven on Earth for booklovers!)
I wondered if all that fairy tale charm could actually be true. I had to see for myself. It was irresistible.
So I landed at Heathrow Airport with my one carry-on bag. I never take more than a single bag under the theory that the airlines can’t lose something of mine unless I give it to them. To date, I have never a lost bag. I also carry a little day bag with me with some essentials: a dozen prescriptions (sigh…); a 1982 antique Olympus X-A 35 millimeter camera, not digital and great pictures, plus ten roles of 36 exposures film; a good historical book set aside in advance especially for a long airplane ride; band aids; a tiny flashlight and a couple of imported dark chocolate bars for hunger emergencies. My standards for what constitutes an emergency is somewhat flexible when it comes to dark chocolate, now considered to be a health food, thank God.
Then I went to the car rental company to pick up my reserved compact Ford, which looked somehow European to me. The steering wheel being on the right side might have had some small influence on my first impression of how the car seemed kind of alien. Kilometers prominently displayed on the odometer were another distraction. But, I dismissed that as no big thing. As advised by my credit card company I refused the offer of 100% collision insurance from the car rental company and paid them for the three-day rental with my Optima credit card. My brief thought about that was:
“Well, that’s a nice savings.”
It would not be my last thought on that subject after the tumultuous days to come.
My first impression of London, while trying to escape from it was:
”Jesus Christ! This is one huge, complicated and jam-packed city, man!”
There was concrete everywhere, big buildings, bridges and thousands of fast cars whizzing around me, as I searched for my exit. The signs being in English were of little comfort because all the names were still foreign to me. There were huge trucks and a great deal of noise surrounding me. I wanted to get out of London as quickly as I could. Then the exit I’d been searching for appeared in my windshield and I did.
I was 132 miles from Cardiff, or about two hours away. Now, I was in no great rush.
The road from London to Cardiff, Wales was beautiful and surprisingly empty. Little traffic and no visible towns for the majority of the distance between the two cities. No billboards. Just green, everywhere. England was many shades of green, was my first impression. I read they had sixty million people living in Britain, but I saw no evidence of any of them for a long time between London and Cardiff. That was also when I first noticed that the highway seemed somewhat narrower than in the States. The individual lanes seemed more compact, too, but I thought I might be imagining that part.
So, driving along, casually, I passed exits for Windsor, Maidenhead, Reading, Newbury, Hungerford, Marlborough, Calne, Chippenham, Corsham, the ancient Roman town of Bath, then rolling through the gentle Cotswold Hills I passed Keynsham, the bigger city of Bristol, past the Bristol Channel just by the border of Wales to Newport, and then down the west side of the narrow channel to one of Wale’s largest city, Cardiff.
Cardiff, a modern city of 320,000 people and the Capitol of Wales since 1955, was first inhabited by European Celts, according to excavations, at about 600 B.C. Its name in Welsh is Caerdydd, which translates, according to most historians, into Fort Dydd or Diff, possibly named after the river Taff where the ancient Cardiff Castle is located. The Romans built that fort in 75 A.D.
It was attacked by the Normans in 1081 A.D. after the successful 1066 invasion from Normandy, now part of present day France. The Normans built the castle over the foundations of the destroyed fort. It wasn’t until 1536 that Cardiff and all of Wales became legally part of England, involuntarily, from what I read. Calling the Welsh people British doesn’t necessarily make them believe that, in their hearts.
(Read on …)
