Wales

We arrived in Pendine Sands at our house on a hill, begging for you to try your brakes before you needed them on the top of the hill. Surely you should already know the state of you brakes beforehand. Maybe not. But death if no brakes are available is not compulsory on this particular hill as there is a tiny lay by, next to the road where you can drive your runaway car into instead of crashing horribly at the bottom.

The house we rented was tremendous though, a particular high point after the near death experience. There was a hot tub that stayed on all day every day, just in case of emergencies. This had been commented on in the guest book by just about everybody – that it was a great asset to the house – not that it was a great strain on the national grid. There were tellies in almost every room, bar the toilets, including a great big one in the living room and another just above it that folded down into an even bigger one on a projector screen. And it had an immense number of light switches, for there were a lot of lights and a lot of ways to turn them on and off – for lazy people perhaps, so they didn’t have to go far to reach the correct switch; and yet it seems hard working to try and find the right one.

The beach was just down the hill and I had the pleasure of not having to walk up or down it, for we had the benefit of a car – and one with working brakes. The tides were ridiculous; many hundreds of metres of long very narrowly sloping beach made for this amazing natural phenomenon, up there with the aurora borealis (ok maybe not.)

The water was much warmer than that in Corfu, because of the super heated sand but the further out you went the more you had to work for the warmth, for they existed only in pockets.

It was a famous beach too, for motorcar speed records were taken on its 7 mile length. It even had a museum dedicated to it, but you had to pay extra or appear on the right day to see the actual car. And along some of it, the army had an area cordoned off for shooting practice. I don’t think the records coincided with the shooting, but if they did, I suppose there would have been extra motivation for the driver to go fast.

There were only two restaurants in the small village we went to, and only one of them worthy of going to. But the cake selection was good and they recommended you take it home with you. So I did.

The ice cream there was there in many places and many varieties – Crème Brulee, Donatello (which had nothing to do with the Ninja Turtles), some sort of clotted cream, Dragon’s Delight (which had something to do with wales) and even vanilla.

Closer to the beach than our house was a caravan park, each available for about 11 grand. No special deals though. Next to them was a set of toilets the disgustingness of I had never before seen. So I used the sea instead. After all, what with all the fish in it, it basically is a giant toilet.