Sixty Years Ago

While I was clearing my father’s house I found a platform ticket for… Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwyllllantysiliogogogoch.

Yes, I still have it. My brothers remember my dad stopping the car outside the station on holiday and the short argument that followed; rain hammering on the car roof and my mother getting out and running across to buy a souvenir ticket to say that they had at least been there. It’s just a ticket. It cost three old pennies – about the same as a modern penny – and I can probably get a replacement on Ebay, but it wouldn’t be this one. The one the station master sold to my bedraggled mother, knowing that she was probably not going on to stand on the platform (like most of the people who bought platform tickets from Don’tMakeMeSpellItAgain).

I don’t remember the incident, or our family holidays to Wales. I was probably there at the time, sitting on that odd little booster seat in the back of the Hillman designed to lift toddlers to adult height. I don’t have any photos, but trust me on this; if you survived a Sixties childhood, well done you. That child seat was a padded block set into the centre of the backrest of the back seat and folded down on its hinge for the child to sit on. It was dead centre of the back seat, not fixed down, no seat belt (no seat belts anywhere in that old Hillman). Great view from there – nothing between me and the windscreen. Nothing at all to stop me from flying forward between the front seats and straight through the windscreen in the event of a sudden stop. The brakes were probably not effective enough to fly me to the bonnet, but hey.

Our holidays are a joint agreement. He wanted to go to Chester; I thought that would be interesting, and made it a six day trip so that I could go back to some of the north Wales beaches the rest of my family remember clearly. As a toddler, it was all just beach. My clearest memory was being carried screaming to the first aid post with a piece of broken bottle embedded in my foot, and that could have been anywhere. I’m going to be mean and suggest it was Rhyl because we went to Rhyl this year and we didn’t like the place. The beach was fenced off for Balfour Beatty to do something to a stretch of it with diggers that left great piles of sludge-colour sand. The cafe and toilets were open until the end of September – except that metal shutters were padlocked shut on both doors. The seafront was a solid mass of tawdry-looking money traps – bingo halls, slot machine arcades. The tourist information booth had given up and gone dark, and I don’t blame it. You can put as much lipstick as you like onto a pig, but nobody wants to kiss it.

Next stop along the coast was Colwyn Bay. Much better. Still wet and windy, and the car park we chose had maybe fifty spaces, but the Flat White Cafe was open and serving great coffee and cake. We walked to get down onto the beach and got caught in a hailstorm, arriving in the train station soaked and laughing. The station master and another customer stood chatting with us, and the customer came out into the filthy weather to set us on our way.

If we’d had a full day here, we could have walked along the beach to Rhos on Sea along the seafront of Colwyn and Rhos. Our landlady told us we should have gone, so maybe we’ll come back and have a better look next year. The toilet was haunted by a tourist who desperately needed a pee but wasn’t willing to spend twenty pence to get in – she managed to get in when the previous user left, but wouldn’t have been able to lock the door behind her. The same door was then haunted by an official who was clearly wanting for her to come out. We scarpered before we saw whether he was going to ticket her for not paying or just get in for free himself.

Final stop of the day was Conwy Castle. Magnificent. Walls pretty much intact and the chance to walk around the top of them; clear signage to tell visitors what each bare space had been and what went on there (dining and dungeons very close together – good story material). I could have climbed a set of spiral stairs up to the top of the towers. I didn’t. I should have. I’m afraid of heights, and it annoys me to have that fear keeping me from enjoying great views from high up places.

There will definitely be a next visit to Conwy. One in which I will get to the top of that twenty metre high tower, hopefully with the same clear visibility. I enjoyed the walk around and the information boards. The castle was probably whitewashed when new, so that it was visible for miles as a big imposing thug on the landscape. Bits of tower still stand along the seafront with modern buildings embedded in them, and a long wall stretched away from the castle, climbed the hill in the distance and over the top out of sight. A castle town.

The other day we spent not walking around Chester was a free one – where did we want to go? Nowhere, not until the rain stopped coming down like surf on a Hawaiian beach. We waited in till midday, discussing places to visit nearby. The Sandstone Trail was a good walking path, but with no peaceful walking route to get to it, and no parking places. The pub with a reputation for great food and magnificent views had changed hands a few months prior and was now serving greasy spoon food at haute cuisine prices. The village across the main road had nothing to recommend it except for a craft shop which was closed unless you were attending a paid workshop. The sun came out and we drove to the only local attraction left that appealed to us – Beeston Castle.

There’s not much left of Beeston, but it must have been some fortress in its day. You climb uphill to the car park, then uphill to the curtain wall, then up again to the summit of the hill and the castle itself. The castle was short of domestic luxury in its day, with the inner space set on uneven ground and all the living space in the towers, but as a fortress it had balls. It was built as a show of defiance by Ranulf of Chester, who returned from the Crusades in 1220 to find the new king Henry’s justiciar confiscating lands of other men who had (in Henry’s view) was more wealth than they deserved. Ranulf’s castle was built to say; “Come up here if you want to take my money.” Henry waited his time and seized the estates from Ranulf’s heir in 1237, granting the castle and the earldom of Chester to his son, the future Edward I.

The castle was taken by Parliamentarian troops in 1643 and taken back by Royalists in 1644. After the series of Royalist defeats elsewhere in 1645, the garrison surrended to Cromwell’s forces and the castle was ‘slighted’ – damaged so as to make it indefensible in future. Chester Castle was spared that damage as its position near the River Dee and the Welsh border made it more valuable to hold as a fortress.

This is the point when we learned that, from the top of Beeston Castle crags, you can see the great dish of Jodrell Bank just thirty miles to the east. If I had known how close Jodrell Bank was, I would have planned a trip there. Seems we’ll have to go back for another stay in the area. I’m hoping to get the chance to stay in The Smithy again, with a lovely garden and silence at night, and hope The Grosvenor Arms in Aldford is still serving great food and good beer.