Shops and Donkeys

There was a handful of shops. Aran Morris was the greengrocer. Of his produce, spinach seemed to be what we could afford and I hated the stuff. At the age of nine months I spat a mouthful of spinach in my father’s face as he tried in vain to feed me. “Ach-y-fi,” was the inevitable response. I was never offered spinach again.

Mrs. Galloway ran the little toy-shop, but in those days after the war the shelves were often empty, not that my parents had money for toys. There were mysterious gaps on the shelves, gaps that came and went. I tried to imagine the toys that weren’t there. Where had they gone? What adventures did they have away from the safety of the shop? Did toy soldiers fight unknown battles? What maidens did they rescue? What giants did they face? What became of them? Did toy ships sail on unknown oceans to undiscovered lands? What adventures befell their sailors? What sirens, sea monsters, islands of content? Back home I made toy cars out of empty matchboxes and raced them across the lino. Matchbox ships sailed over endless linoleum seas.

Mr. Bowen the chemist was the source of various ghastly bottles of linctus I was supposed to drink. Trefor the Butcher was always good for a quarter pound of meat for mincing. Old Louie the shepherd would walk in from Brynowen. Sgt Davis was the policeman, whose appearance would strike terror into my heart, just in case I had unwittingly committed some unmentionable crime. Perhaps someone had told him about the ice-cream.

Year round this worthy crew and many more would gather at Bel-Air. There Aran’s fruit and veg. was a magnificent catalyst for timeless conversations of great confidentiality. It was a world that was certain of the past and mystified by the present.

In the Summer the donkeys would appear on the beach, led by Emlyn the donkey man. At first they would frisk and gambol, rejoicing in the sun and sea. But after a while their eyes would become sad. In the distance they could see the green slopes of Cader Idris.

Ice Cream

My mother stared in amazement. It was tea time. At her first call I had not appeared, at the second I had busily scuttled through the door with a neat paper bag in my hand. When she inspected the bag it contained three neatly wrapped bricks of ice cream. They had clearly come from the shop, and being correctly wrapped had obviously not been purloined. Tea was consumed in an atmosphere of some expectation, and in those days before refrigeration the ice-cream was swiftly eaten too.

Then I was taken firmly by the hand, led across the road and round the corner to the village shop. At barely three I was not old enough to cross the road on my own, and certainly was not entrusted with anything as radical as pocket money. The shop keeper was first given an apology, and then an explanation was demanded.  Genial as ever he related that I had toddled through the door and confidently asked “Please can I have some three ice-creams?”

So assertive was this precocious request that the shop keeper could only assume that I had been sent out in advance and that mother would shortly be along to pay. As it was I had politely concluded proceedings by saying “Thank you very much” and marching out the door, nonchalantly clutching the bag of ice cream.

Sŵn-y-Don

Later we moved to a different cottage nearer the centre of Borth. It was called Sŵn-y-Don, ‘Sound of the Waves’. It shared a wall with another cottage: Sŵn-y-Mor: ‘Sound of the Sea’. It was nearer the shops, the bus stop and railway station.

In those days there were few holidaymakers, fewer cars, and no day-trippers. There was rough pasture in the marshy ground behind the village. But most cottages faced the sea. There was no natural shelter from the prevailing wind and waves, and the sea wall had not then been built. Pulled up on the stony beach above the high-water mark were a handful of wooden fishing boats. On the green above the beach was a huge pair of rusty cart-wheels from which a boat could be suspended and pushed in or out of the water.

The sea was incessant, day and night, Summer or Winter. Always there were the calls of the wheeling gulls and the never-ending sound of the waves. Sometimes I thought I could hear bells under the ocean.

The Bells of Aberdovey

One day we saw small wooden boats on the Dovey north of Ynys Las. Each white sail had the outline of a bell on it.

“The Bells of Aberdovey,” said my father.

When Cantre’r Gwaelod was flooded it drowned not only houses and farms but churches as well.  When the fishermen of Aberdovey sailed out beyond the bar they could hear the bells of the churches far below the sea as they were rocked to and fro by the waves. There’s an old song by Dibdin called ‘The Bells of Aberdovey’ that proves that the legend was known in the mid-18^th century. People there will still tell that on quiet nights you can still hear the bells ringing below the waves.

The yacht designer Jack Holt is thought to have drawn the GP14 sailing dinghy in Aberdovey and decided that the bell should be the class symbol on the sail. GP14 number 1, named Kittiwake II, was launched in Aberdovey in 1950. The Dovey Sailing Club formed the first fleet and sailed their boats over the lands lost beneath the waves. In my mind I always contrasted the merry bells dancing above the water and the solemn bells tolling below it.

Porth Gwyddno

One day we saw small wooden boats on the Dovey north of Ynys Las. Each white sail had the outline of a bell on it.

“The Bells of Aberdovey,” said my father.

When Cantre’r Gwaelod was flooded it drowned not only houses and farms but churches as well.  When the fishermen of Aberdovey sailed out beyond the bar they could hear the bells of the churches far below the sea as they were rocked to and fro by the waves. There’s an old song by Dibdin called ‘The Bells of Aberdovey’ that proves that the legend was known in the mid-18^th century. People there will still tell that on quiet nights you can still hear the bells ringing below the waves.

The yacht designer Jack Holt is thought to have drawn the GP14 sailing dinghy in Aberdovey and decided that the bell should be the class symbol on the sail. GP14 number 1, named Kittiwake II, was launched in Aberdovey in 1950. The Dovey Sailing Club formed the first fleet and sailed their boats over the lands lost beneath the waves. In my mind I always contrasted the merry bells dancing above the water and the solemn bells tolling below it.

The Edge of the World

The edge of the world was marked by the sea on once side and the mountains on the other. Just below the hills, on the old turnpike road, lay Tre-Taliesin, supposedly the home of Taliesin, in legend the greatest bard that Wales has ever know. Tre-Taliesin was a tiny village – most of the cottages were 19th century miner’s dwellings. But, even if it was named by some 18th century cleric, somehow the location seemed right, and there was originally a cottage there called the house of the bard. …

Borth

The village of Borth was tiny and fixed in an ancient Welsh landscape. It perched precariously on a narrow shingle bank on the edge of Cardigan Bay. Behind it was the huge marsh of Cors Fochno, but it faced the ever-present sea.

Centuries ago Borth had been a cluster of fishermens’ cottages at the south end of the beach. Just north of the cottages the Afon Leri flowed into the sea at Aber Leri. But the longshore drift of Cardigan Bay built up the shingle bank and Aber Leri gradually moved almost three miles north. Eventually the river was diverted to flow into the River Dyfi East of Ynys Las.

By the 19^th century a single street ran south to north on the shingle bank. Either side of the road tiny fishermens’ cottages became interspersed with Victorian houses. The older buildings often had Welsh names, as if they had grown out of the landscape. But the names of some were exotic. They were the names of far-away places visited by Borth sailors, or the ships on which they sailed: Arequipa, Bel-Air, Dovey Belle, Gleanor, Amity, and Sabrina. The bones of those houses had sea-salt in them and nothing changes: Alan, son of Aran and Eileen Morris of Bel-Air went to sea at the age of 16.

The Railway Station stood back from the main street. The railway arrived from Machynlleth in 1864. It brought first the navvies, then the tourists, though never in the numbers hoped for. The line ran between the shingle bank on which the village was built and the Cors Fochno. Some melancholy donkeys grazed on the waste ground beside the line. They had an old bath-tub for a drinking trough.

A few dark public houses crouched shamefacedly, hopelessly outnumbered by nonconformist chapels.  The names of the pubs betrayed their genesis: The Railway Inn, The Victoria Inn, and encouragingly, The Friendship Inn. Half way along the village was the Grand Hotel, built optimistically near the railway station.

The chapels seemed dour, especially in Winter. To me they seemed utilitarian, uncompromising, unwelcoming. When the village was young there must have been a chapel for every family, each haggling over the minutiae of Biblical interpretation or Sunday practice. Behind the village on Ynys Fergi, a rocky island in the marsh, was the Victorian church of St Matthew. Somehow, on its little hill it seemed both psychologically and physically a bit nearer to the sun. On Sunday the faithful would straggle across the railway line for the service, summoned by a single, strident bell.