The Lurgy and the Ghosts

Sunday Sept 26th - Destination Chirk.

Woken by the sound of a pig passing by - oh me, oh my! - but all we can see is a retreating bicycle. We giggle. Pig on wheels? We pop our own pig into the frying pan and then it is time to find Chirk Castle, a fine National Trust affair with a lot to see. So at £10 a ticket it is in fact good value for once, not that we have to pay, but just in case you find yourself wanting to visit, go for it. Spend an entire day here, bring a picnic. Post pig I was feeling like nothing more tasty than a pair of Paracetamols, and BB is coming down in sympathy, sneezing for Wales.  But with such beautiful weather it was hard to find fault. If you had to live in a castle, this would be a good one. Nice and squat, a bit like Tamworth, complete with dungeons and because this is Wales, also dragons. Whilst BB nips up the Medieval tower I look around the ground floor leading to the dungeons.   I wish I wasn't feeling as if the world was going dizzy, and then see something that gives me a start.
'Good grief! Was that a sword knocking the table?' The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

Chastity hat, titillating tights

'A sword? Hardly likely in this day and age, Madam,' says a sturdy young yeoman in a rather fetching tunic. (Am I really that unwell?)
He is leaning on something that does look remarkably like a sword, long, pointy, metal, hands clasped on the hilt, perfectly serious. My brain is having trouble catching up, one does not expect a sense of humour in a dungeon.
'Then you must be a ghost!' I reply, 'Would you mind if I passed my hand right through you, just to check?'
He bows.
'If you can manage that madam, you may wear one of my hats.'
I look at the table where a selection of metalware is waiting for unsuspecting visitors. With a head currently as thick as mine, I have no need of anything thicker to protect it.
'You wear the hat,' I suggest, ' I'll take the photo. And, by the way, there is another ghost, I heard a peacock whilst in the ladies, but I understand there are no peacocks at Chirk any more.'
'Damn! Outghosted!'
What a splendid peasant.
 And see those brown leather leggings? They were in fact loose chaps, tied with thongs, so when the back is turned and the green mini-skirt  hitches over the bum, you get a saucy flash of white long-john. Far too sexy for his hat this ghost.

The interior of the house is split into different historical ages: Medieval, 17th Century Long Gallery, 18th C state rooms all with ancient holly leaves on every seat so you have to keep going. Then there is the more modern East Wing where you can sit on all the very comfy chairs and chat to old ladies who remember the de Waldon family who didn't own the castle, but leased it from the Myddletons (Not Kate) from 1911- 46. There is a black and white film of this family growing up in perfect happiness, acting pantomimes, sledging - very Downton Abbey - and it turns out Tommy 8th Lord Howard de Walden was a true philanthropist and patron of just about everyone artistic, musical, and dramatic, in the first four decades of the 20th Century. His life reads like a tale of Boys' Own derring-do as he encompassed a huge variety of projects, a lot of them funded from his enormous inherited wealth.  In fact we can blame him for virtually single handedly restoring the Welsh language to its current position, although he died in 1946 before that happened. You come away enchanted by the black and white 1930 idyll,  and then visit the dismal Refectory which has tiny high windows and a  list of rules to curdle your blood. One rule for the Myddletons and a lexicon for the others, although to be fair to Tommy, that wasn't under his watch.

Model armour.

Dean Castle, gifted by Tommy's
son in 1975 to Scotland - now free entry.

Seaford House now UK  Defence Academy

Now let's visit the Laundry; an annexe of substantial proportions.. State of the art c. 1912. The very best washboards, huge copper, trundle baskets. Dirty laundry was brought in not only from Chirk castle, but  by train from Dean Castle, in Scotland and Seaford House, Belgravia, London, - two of the other three De Waldon homes -  met at the station by the chauffeur, washed in Wales, and dispatched back clean and pressed to the rest of the UK. My mind cannot really take in the scale of this operation, and it isn't just brain-fuzziness either. Was it showing off, or the most efficient way to launder three castles? Perhaps it was a very cunning plan and saved a mint. I really ought to go back and ask the old lady who knew them.
She doesn't know their laundry thoughts, but tells us,
'Lord Howard de Walden had his own suit of armour made, and used to do cartwheels on the lawn in it. He stomped about inside the castle too.'
 I look at the impossibly pointy stiletto toes of the suit standing in the bay window.
'Didn't his wife have something to say about the holes in the carpet?'

I get the impression the de Waldens had enough money and probably a carpet factory in the Punjab with an annual order on their books, so we doubt if the holes were of any real significance. Tommy not only had a life-size suit of armour made, which was captured by Augustus John as he read The Times at breakfast suited and spurred, he also commissioned a tiny and very delicate replica.
You will be relieved to know that apart from these possibly slightly mad projects, he spent a good deal of his wealth on others, even instituting 999 year leases in Marylebone, (which he owned, lock, stock and single glazing.) The man was a glorious mix of eccentricity, philanthropy and  so eclectic he has to be worth a salute of some kind. He fought in the Boer War, the First World War, supplied some rare new-fangled radios for the army, and whilst he fought in Egypt his wife accompanied him, set up and ran a wartime hospital in the heat and dust. He then went on to the Western Front.  Twenty years later, too old to fight in Hitler's war, he organised the local Dad's Army at the castle, trained housemaids to shoot and throw methylated spirits at enemy tanks. No doubt he was a bit upset by then that when he ran Hitler over in the 1930's, he had later aplogized to him, rather than finishing the job.
Yes, that is true.
We bought a raffle ticket to help renovate a roof,  from a 90 year old custodian lady from Finland who has lived here for 65 years. (Not in the castle, in the UK)  That is one of the more interesting things about the National Trust, not just the buildings, but their living fossils. I shall make a point of chatting to them in more detail in future, but I'm afraid my usual levels of curiosity were a bit dimmed by the presence of the lurgy, so I cannot tell you her life-story. From her accent, I would say she was a Jewish Refugee. My DOM's friends were all Jewish Refugees, and it didn't seem to make any difference if they hailed from Germany, Poland or Italy, the accent and sense of humour was identical. We won't win the raffle, but she won our hearts.

Hawk House

Hawk eye view

A slice through time

Both of us feeling like a pair of podgy suet puddings by now having absorbed so much detail we could write a book, sorry a blog. As a result we nearly leave the castle without seeing the gardens. That would have been a mistake. They are worth the walk. Magnificent yew hedges.... A performance of Alice and playing croquet with flamingoes would be perfect on these lawns. A brilliant architectural use of the yew. But in case you are thinking of copying this technique in your own garden be aware it probably took about two hundred years to achieve the look.
No hawks in Tommy's hawk house, sadly, but autumn colour, crocuses, vistas over a haha into Wales - or possibly out of it, since we are looking east. A pair of deck chairs are provided for those who wish to sit. We dearly wish to sit, but have you sat in a deck chair since !965? It is an awful long way down. And even as a child they were virtually impossible to rise out of without tipping yourself onto the floor, so reluctantly we bypass this nice touch and choose a bench instead.

Salt & Pepper Exit

The whole place has a feeling of still being much cherished as if the ghost of Tommy is overseeing. He chose this place as his favourite home, although ironically it was not one of his own properties; he kick-started a Welsh revolution towards homnegrown art and drama and heritage, gave Dylan Thomas a house to live in whilst penniless. Somehow all that enthusiasm for detail and tlc still shows. Even down to sheet of paper in the ladies which lists all the resident cats; the ones that have died, and the ones you might still find...

If you look in the disabled loo
you will find his name

What with light and health fading, we have to make tracks. We ask Molly to take us back home, it is less effort, theoretically. Perhaps she'd been at my Kindle again, she takes us into the Heart of Darkness. One day we will buy her an upgrade that works out the most intelligent route home, not the most popular. It seems the entire nation went on one last summer holiday this weekend, the motorways are packed, the side roads have stalled, so we limp, creep and chunter home up the M6, and don't really care because our final Travel with our Duchess this year has been a winner. We have heard ghosts of peacocks, seen ghosts in dungeons, at windows. What more can we want?

Goodbye

Alien Abduction sept 25

Welsh Bavaria - Langollen or Llangollen, depending on your nationality. If you are English read with two Lls. 

Statistically, what are the chances? I mean this is England, Nigel Farage country. Not even Johnny Foreigner is allowed in, let alone visitors from outer space.  Nige's gob would have been permanently smacked by the events last night. In fact a tweet asking him if he's ever been abducted by aliens might throw some light on his rather twisted tunnel.

I'd like to start by saying, 'it was a dark and stormy night...' but that would be lying. The sunset was perfect, the layby commodious, no hint of Things to Come in the heart of Staffs. We were on our way to Chirk Castle and I'm willing to bet that the Border Folk would never have put up with invasions of any kind, let alone an alien one. But I am jumping ahead. Let us go back to the finding of a spacious layby on a narrow side road, somewhere near Little Madely - no relation to Richard as far as we know.

Darkness had done its usual trick of clobbering the sun as we left home a mere forty minutes after Best Beloved returned to the nest. The sky was a peachy pink, no time to stop and film it. We had tanks to fill and obstructive women using the wrong pumps at the garage to circumnavigate. BB was not impressed. By7.15 even the look-at-me-no-lights-Immortals had put on their headlights and we were only at Derby 

Therefore, 40 miles from Chirk when we found a place to pull over in the pitch dark, it was a Good Sign. Within five minutes, with the  bed already made up before departure, curtains and blinds closed, a car pulls up behind us. If we lift the blinds it looks nosy, so we don't, but why is it that when you park miles from anyone else, even when there are forty other spaces to choose from in a massive public car park, total strangers cant resist lining up in rows, right next to you? No wonder that as a nation we excel at line dancing. And Scotland is no exception either, think Strip the Willow, what is that if not a Close Encounter?  Here we are, minding our own business, and the obligatory strangers cozy up, only this pair aren't here for a quiet clog dance. There was loud talking, shouting, slamming of doors, and then they stayed put. It wasn't the sort of layby that might encourage tourists, nowhere pretty, so why were they here? Puzzled, and a little apprehensive we turned in.

Don't ask.....

 No sooner were we abed when there was an almighty whizzing from in front of the Duchess. She rocked, rolled even. We had unwittingly parked just next to a bridge, the mainline to Manchester. Who needs HS2 when you've got racket and speed like this?  Behind, was the arguing pair, in front, Richard Branson and his forty Virgins fighting it out with goods trains, all night,  alongside, a country lane that forbade heavy goods vehicles to enter it, but was doing a fine trade in illicit lorries. We were nearly asleep when there was a thumping clatter on the front of the Duchess.
 Had our neighbours decided it would be more comfortable to spend the night in our van instead of their car? Or had they come to pick a fight? Now nakedness inside a small tin Tonka toy makes you feel vulnerable. Imagination ran wild. Investigations were made. After twenty minutes of peeping and peering, BB found Molly Satnav had parted company with the window and fallen onto the dashboard. Suddenly our neighbours seemed quite a benign pair after all.

Closeup Encounter

 Relaxed now, we slept, and awoke to a huge rumbling and shaking of a more intimidating kind than the mere rumble and rock of the trains. The inside of the Duchess was flashing orange, voices were giving instructions, the van throbbed. Our 1975 edition of the Reader's Digest guide, had forgotten to mention that Little Madely was twinned with Roswell. Thus, totally unprepared  we were now, in the middle of the most spectacular alien abduction, and all we could think was, 

'Bugger, where did we put our trousers?'

Morning reveals all

  We even forgot to film the event, probably owing to the fact that we couldn't even find our toenails, let alone a camera. So I'm very much afraid there are no grainy photo of the Duchess being born aloft into the belly of the Mother Ship, and we only just caught the abduction of the other vehicle as it was whisked up out of sight.
An almost eerie silence fell.
All we had to contend with now was the chirping of crickets, a strange acapella chorus, and the thunder of forty high speed Virgins. Piece of proverbial really. But the question is, did those aliens wipe our memory of this far too close encounter? We can't remember what they actually did to us - which goes to prove the abduction must have been genuine. 

Strange Acapella chorus

Morning broke, well it sort of bent really, it was a bit on the dull side for breaking anything, and we set off for Langollen, vowing never to park up on a landing strip again. 

Wales, ah Wales! We know we have crossed the border by the double talk. Every single sign is translated, even the ones where the word is identical in both languages. Why, we wonder? All Welsh people read English so why do they need special signs? It makes them look a bit thick to be honest, but we will do our best to make allowances. 

We are off to a good start with four hours of carparking for £1 and a Klondike hippy with huskies.He is followed by an intense man absorbed in a rollie and another one who is so engrossed in his library book we barely avoid collisions. These people have absorbing lives, we like it already.

 Then it is up those steps behind our reader to the taxidermist. 

Only in Wales. No beautiful little riverside town is complete without a taxidermist is it? And oh joy, in front of it is a rash of scooters. (That is their true collective name because they descend like an ancient pestilence, disfigure the place with their annoying buzz and depart before you have time to swat them with a handy Druid.)

 So we cross the bridge and  buy fruit. That is the cure. Why? No idea, but it works. Best Beloved will sigh about my fruit habit. He knows it is no use thinking we can pass a greengrocer's without a purchase, any more than he can think of passing a gents without a piss.( I confess that is totally untrue, but it sounded so much better than being unable to pass a bookshop without a browse- which is true, and we didn't.) A wonderful, huge secondhand bookshop above an Internet cafe is just the place to spend a morning, but we didn't have a morning, just half an hour to find a newer Guide to Britain. I know you will be relieved to hear this; we can't have an Alien Repeat, although I am bound to say in fairness that the 1992 Guide throws no more light on the Little Madeley connection  to Roswell than its Readers' Digest Motherbook. Obviously the Digest is owned by the CIA which might explain the culling of relevant information.

It seems that since the Digest went into Administration ( I had a very nice email to confirm this)  encyclopaedic guides of this sort are no longer published. It can't be because there are more villages to describe, because the last modern town to hit our shores was Milton Keynes in 1967. It's a travesty, not only Milton Keynes, but the lack of Guides, and this is why:

 If you are a travelling Duchess - with retinue, which we are,  you need a village-by-village elucidator arranged in convenient small areas, not an enormous, alphabetic glossy coffee-table tome. You need a neat little map full of interesting stop-off points, perfect for the retinue to be able to plan suitable refreshments for her Maj. So we are grateful for this mere 20 year-old guide to Our Island. (Yes, you know who you are, who remember Our original  Island Story, but if you choose to look puzzled, deny any knowledge of such a volume, be my guest.) This relatively new tome should last us until we are all antiques, but for old times sake we purchase a 1970's book on wine-making because it's an idiot's guide -  so we qualify, and there is a half price sale. £6 of Satisfaction.

Which butcher would you ask?

Time to eat, BB has the job of locating a nosherie and asks a friendly butcher, whilst I am busy with the fruttivendolo lady, driven to distraction by her Saturday lad. 

'Bloody Houdini' she remarks to me as the boy wriggles out of her fruit shop and disappears down the street. 'And if you don't come back, I'll be.....'
She's angry enough to melt a melon.

'Bad day?' I ask, not in Welsh. She's London B and B.

'He's like this all the time. I know where he's gone. The bookies. I'll go and fetch him myself if he don't come back.'

'Would you like me to mind the shop?' My words are drowned out as a Pestilence of Mods bleat by in a cloud of fumes.

'I bloody 'ate them scooters,' she confides. 

I know what she means.

'I'd have thrown banana skins in the street by now to watch them skid!' 

'Well, It's not as if they stop off for a bunch of grapes is it?' She grins and scoots off herself to bring the errant lad back from the bookies.

BB has selected the fish and chippery, " Seajays," we suspect it might be a nifty Welsh play on words, never mind if the sea is beyond the mountains, fish is definitely involved - but we forgot to ask about the name because we are distracted by our waiter. Well, stunned would be more accurate. He (or she) stands before us, a vision of neatness, uniform, pinny, tousers, shaved head with a fifty-strand pony tail, and a chin-strap painted, yes actually painted,  around a delightfully rounded chin. I later summon the courage to ask,

Special Comendation

1st prize  

'Could  I take a photo?' I know it's a bit cheeky, but to the young this is flattery, not intrusion. He, (we think it must be an adolescent he) asks
'Why?' A good question. I like him.

'I think you look very interesting.' I say, I am not lying either, apart from the Mexican Indian in full head-dress playing a reed pipe outside, he is far the most interesting dresser in town. ' Is it a religious thing?' 

'No! I made it up myself!' He is very proud of his design, and why not? It is unique, well worth the visit to the cafe.

'Fantastic!' I reply and applaud. Well, what else could I do? BB keeps a low profile. I get a snap, but am debating if it is ethical to include another family whose faces are just as startled as ours were when we first placed our order. I will omit these people as I don't have their permission, but please take the time to imagine an eight year old, mouth dropping, and two equally bemused parents probably praying their son won't utter those immortal words, 

'Are you the only gay in the village?'

I will add a disclaimer here, there was no evidence of any particular sexual preference on show, and to be honest we couldn't give a Fruttivendolo fuck.

Having said that, the Mods have turned out with hardly a woman in tow, so perhaps there is more to Llangollen than meets the eye.

Their scooters whine back and forth through the otherwise delightful town as we eat a perfectly good meal, and to be honest I am surprised CJ herself  (shaved head, very skinny, totaltatoo body art)  hasn't teamed up with our Fruttivendolo lady and strung a wire across the road. Maybe she is a Mod.

BB has been busy observing some interesting things about these 20th Century throwbacks.. First of all they haven't changed since the 1950s (Although how he would know, I have no idea, being either a twinkle in his daddy's eye or still in nappies.)
 Where the  Rockers have mellowed, spread outwards and sideways, lost their lengthy locks through wear and tear rather than the barber's blade, the Mods are still thin-lipped, close-cropped, mean-looking, unfriendly, and notably skinny. BB thinks they look like they are on a prison outing, sallow complexions and not at all friendly to curious outsiders like us. They have cobras on their machines and on the back of their uniforms - a very Labour Red. Perhaps they could escort our Prime Minister in Waiting to No. 10, or Wormwood Scrubs.

This is in stark contrast to the Hoard of Rockers we later found at the top of the Horeshoe Pass in a sprawling eyesore of a pub, the Ponderosa. They were happy to chat.

'If you guys are called Bikers, what do you call the guys on scooters - Scootists?' I ask, by way of an opener.

You can see several rather colourful alternative descriptions flitting through their heads before one of them says,

'Mods!'

'So you still fight then?'

They roar with laughter. We get the impression if one of them sat on one of those scooters it would condense into a small flat rectangle, along with its rider.

'No need to fight now pet, we passed them on the motorway, flat out at 40 mph.' 

Point taken. We also note that this herd doesn't just have its own pub on tap, it has its own Injury Lawyer.

We hope this is just a social visit

Llangollen village is a delightful little town, full of buzz, no one Welsh made us feel unwelcome, in fact I'm not sure anyone Welsh was actually there. Accents from all over lilted, belted, and even skipped across the busy street. We think we might return. We wander over the bridge, admire the steam train that takes you two miles up the valley for £12. Then it is time to visit the famous canal and its even more famous horse, owing to Country File declaring it the winner in last year's TV photographic competition. £6 for a short ride. It is a nice horse, but I remember even as a small child being completely underwhelmed by the experience of being towed along the canal by this horse's great great great grandmother. I was horse-obsessed, so this should have been the highlight of my (mega wet) holiday. It wasn't. The boat moved at a plod, with the horse about fifty yards ahead, not even a whiff of horsey elixir, and that was it. I suppose I should be

 grateful the man leading the horse back in the day, did not have a luminous yellow jacket. That is guaranteed to ruin any shot, including the Country File Winner's. That is why you are seeing the horse without the boat. I refuse to use my camera on a luminescent horse-walker.
But I do like the canal. I learned to row on it.
 Should have brought a little blue plaque.

Having reached the point of saturation which comes shortly before the parking ticket expires we drive over the Horseshoe Pass, spectacular views, large layby, but after last night? We'd have to be mad to stay in a place with enough room to land a whole Starfleet. so on we trot - for about 2 hours. The only kind of stopping place in this part of Wales is a galactic carpark. The minor roads have no pull-overs because a sporadic rash of houses is built in just about every nook and cranny of every hill and dale. Town Planning in Wales is  more like Ireland, where if you can buy a field you can build in it. We eventually find a place and vow that next time, if we have to drive for more than half an hour, we will book into a Caravan site. It would cost the same as the petrol used. But night falls peacefully, we ate at lunch time, so now it is a picnic, and no night time visitations.