Croeso i Gymru

Welcome to Wales. I always thought it was Cymru but apparently the preposition ‘i’ causes certain nouns to mutate. The plot thickens. I do like a grammatical nuance.

I am taking a few days off work to visit South Wales with my sister. Unless I came as a toddler when my cognitive abilities would have been too primitive to be able to recall, I’ve not been to South Wales before. It doesn’t count that I once visited Caldicot and my friend Adam’s home village of Undy, as these are practically on the Severn Crossing Toll Plaza.

I left Cambridge first thing, aiming to meet my sister in Gloucester. I forgot how travelling long distance on a train during rush hour rinses the bank account. At least it’s far from ‘rush hour’ in the quintessential sense, in that I wasn’t scrunched up on the floor of a vestibule for the entirety. Public transport remains very underused, which I am sure will be offset by steep fare rises in January 2021.

At Gloucester station my sister pulled up with her dog Chester luxuriating in the front seat. ‘He wanted to ride shotgun’, she explained, as I made myself comfortable in the back. Whilst we may differ on our approach to and leniency within pet ownership, our genetic links were reconfirmed in the subsequent discussion about dinner plans. ‘Me and Matt [the fiance] sometimes go get a packet of cocktail sausages and coleslaw. We love a picnic tea.’ We are less on the same page when it comes to an obsession with the morbid and sinister. Before leaving Gloucester, despite suggestions to the contrary, we successfully avoided visiting Cromwell Street where Rose and Fred West lived, and likewise did not detour to Aberfan when passing close by the South Wales valleys.

We drove to Swansea and bumbled about The Mumbles for the afternoon, where this view of Bracelet Bay was one of the highlights. Upon arrival in the Gower village of Reynoldston we checked into the B&B and established the ground rules. The main one is that I shall not be banished from the room in order for my sister to ablute in peace, as I was ordered to do once in my own flat. People doing what they’re doing in the bathroom will just have to make do.