🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Dragon Slayer

Hello Adventurers, 

Growing up — whether I was skint or flush — I’d have easily bet a grand that it’d be my Mum who’d move back to the UK first…or at least someday in the future. Why? Well, because Ann is/was the quintessential Britophile (though not a royalist); always professing Britain’s green lands to be the most lush and beautiful on the planet, her making every new home of hers in Canada seemingly more English than the last (through additive British bric-à-brac indoors complimented by outdoor gardens that became more British in aesthetic — whether manicured or wild-ish — with each passing year), and her tendency to holiday in England more often than other immigrant family members of ours in North America (some of whom left Great Britain decades ago, and never looked back…let alone every stepped foot back onto it).

My Dad? He always presented as more acculturated in — and with — Canada; legitimately gelling with North America’s opportunities, conveniences, and hustle culture (which he had an innate synergy and synchronicity with). It’s nuanced, but Mike always had this generalised British pride (born from where he was born, but tempered by where he was now and what it better offered him…at least in his estimation) whereas Ann never lost her nostalgic and emotive longing for Britain (which did ebb for its people yet continually flowed for its lands; especially when her memories of yesterday collided with the diminished realities of Brexit-boondoogle’d England today…but her sentiments never fully diminished, and always endured in one form or another).

As such, I was gobsmacked when my Bristolian Dad — during the Pandemic — announced that he wasn’t just briskly moving back to Great Britain (selling his business, his home, and thus sorta retiring overnight), but moving to the largest and most sparsely populated county in the middle of Wales (doubly surprising because his limited connection to this specific region dates back a half-century ago when he did military training there as a twenty-something infantryman). Like, we never ever once visited Wales on any of our family trips back to the UK.

Anyway, my long divorced parents are now both in their seventies and each is retired, and us two boys of theirs are grown-up men today. IMHO, their parenting shift is formally donezo — the job of raising us two dipshits has long been completed — so I love ‘em now doing whatever the hell they want — and choose to do — in their golden years. Selflessly, it is their time now, not us kids’ time anymore. In short, I was as stoked for my Dad to do his relatively recent-ish overseas move as I was for my Mum to stay local in Canada, move into a new-but-old fixer-upper, and renovate it by unsurprisingly Brit-ifying it (which is basically her house-flip signature at this point).

This issue of the newsletter was made on 165 kilometres of treks through Mid-Wales, including one ultramarathon trail race that went comically sideways for ya boi. Admittedly, it is reportage about a middle-of-nowhere region you’ll likely never visit (unless you’re coming with me to visit my Dad). But it is very much for my parents; for where my Dad chooses to be now, and for the elemental essence of what my Mum forever misses about her homeland. For the rest of you, I can only hope that there are some redemptive bits and bobs herein.

- Ben Pobjoy

P.S. Thank you to my stepsister Georgie Porgie for sticking around Llanwrtyd Wells — after dog sitting — so we could hang out, and to my Auntie Nic and Uncle Clive(r) for making the drive over from Bristol for a visit after not having seen each other for donkey’s years. And a massive thank you to Mikey P and Val for hosting us in Wales, driving us around, and letting us be the most imposing guests ever. Lastly, sending good vibes to Greg, who is extended family of mine back in Canada. whom I’m wishing a speedy recovery.

TREK TRACKER

World by foot and/or footnotes

• Countries marathoned to date: 75-ish

• Marathons completed this year: 49

• Kilometres trekked by foot this year: 4,992.5

• Marathons completed since 2015: 893

• Total kilometres trekked since 2015: 79,549

• Next stops wish list: Biarritz next month…if my agent can seal the deal!

RAPID RECAP

A speedy synopsis for time-crunched readers

• The Wildest Thing: Welsh! Hearing it spoken — with a UK accent and the associated inflections — is a mind fuck, as is the way Welsh is written versus the way it is pronounced😵‍💫

• The Biggest Obstacle: Welsh country roads are tight, winding, and constantly dipping. Throw in the fact that everyone here drives like a bat outta hell — swerving to avoid approaching cars on single lane roads — and I’m constantly car sick in the back seat of the whip here…as my parents drive…so be warned that children essentially remain lifelong babies (at least in my case)🤢

• The Lesson Learned: It is never too late to turn it around! This year, my 72 year-old Dad lost 50 pounds by adopting more mindful eating habits, regularly hiking the family hound through Welsh hills, and manually labouring to convert a field behind his house into a veg patch and flower garden. I am exceptionally proud of him, and if he can do it — at his age with a dodgy ticker — then any of us can do it too😍

FIELD NOTES: POWYS, WALES

Rambler’s paradise

It wasn’t in the plans to visit Wales this year…but my Dad announced he was ditching his car at a ‘park and fly’ in Manchester, coming to Toronto for a family wedding, and this meant — should I fly back with him — that I could conveniently catch a ride with him from England back to the Welsh boonies in which he lives (which would save me a couple of train rides to get there). Throw in the fact that my wife has been indoctrinated by Downton Abbey, Bridgerton, The Crown, et al., and it was a no-brainer for us to pull the trigger and tag along (although I am continually surprised that my bright and bubbly city slicker wife remains enthusiastic to slap on Wellies as well as a massive cable knit wool sweater to happily ramble through a damp, grey, and truly uneventful country county full of slippery mud and stinky sheep shit). But hey, I’ll take it!

Anyhoo, my Dad lives in Llanwrtyd Wells which claims to be the smallest town in Britain; it has a population of 850 people, and is approximately 500 metres wide by 500 metres high in size. The town is intersected by the 483 A-Road (from north to south) as well as the Irfon River (from east to west), and is nestled in a country valley surrounded by hilly sheep farms and the southern edge of the Cambrian Mountains. Basically, it is so small that the houses are named — rather than numbered — and if the local postie AKA letter carrier were to retire, I’m sure the new replacement would prolly wanna blow their brains out trying to learn the naming conventions of the homes here.

Llanwrtyd Wells is so small that one can see all of its sights and attractions in 15 minutes or less; which is basically a pub-y hotel (named the Neuadd which is pronounced ‘Nyath’ here in Wales), an old stone bridge over the river, a new convenience store, a public toilet, and a gas station. However, you could possibly extend your stay by up to 30 minutes should you visit the free District Heritage & Arts Centre (which is open 10AM to 4PM, Thursday to Sunday).

On appearances, Llanwrtyd Wells — as a town — is quaint and charming…which is a polite way of saying it is a very sleepy place. However, it is unusually quirky too: home to the Man versus Horse Marathon as well as the World Bog Snorkelling Championships. Furthermore, the drummer from Kasabian recently bought the town’s chapel to convert into a music venue for the metaverse.

Caveats ‘bout the sleepiness outta the way, Llanwrtyd Wells is redemptively situated within Powys, a breathtakingly beautiful Welsh county full of rough, raw, rugged, and hilly meets river-y backcountry punctuated by logging trails as well as pedestrian paths (which are ripe for walking, running, hiking, cycling, and horse riding). Because of this — being Llanwrtyd Wells’s small size within the big offering of the greater county’s splendid nature — I have made the editorial decision herein to broadly profile Powys (merely so this issue of the newsletter is substantive versus just a few sentences ‘bout the town that is Llanwrtyd Wells, LOL). Furthermore, do take note of the photo captions herein since — at a quick glance — the ‘double l’ town and village names will seem the same, but they’re not!

Before we exit Llanwrtyd Wells, it is important for me to state that the town is now objectively past its prime. And this is not me being a dickhead, rather, it is well-accepted fact. In 1732, a vicar observed a frog miraculously hopping out of a local sulphuric spring — and suffering from irritated skin himself — the vicar drank from the spring, and the “foul smelling” waters allegedly cured his ailment. This led to Llanwrtyd Wells earning a reputation for magical waters and thus becoming a celebrated spa town; visitors soon came by the thousands to experience the healing properties of the water, and a burgeoning industry developed around providing accommodations to them as well as visitor access to the waters in the 19th century. However, advances in medicine — and peoples’ greater access to the National Health Service in the 20th century — meant spa treatments lost their popularity. As such, the spa buzz died here in the mid 1950s, businesses shuttered, and Llanwrtyd Wells contracted in terms of economy and population size.

The aforementioned is a summary of the town’s golden era, and the following are some of my favourite newspaper quotes from that period in time:

Rumoured cholera outbreak in fact, "The painful effects of excessive indulgence of garden fruit." (1866)

"Wm. Jones of Llanwrtyd is charged with the sale of beer to eight miners during a Sunday." (1868)

"A pigeon called Swift St. Julian was let off at Llanwrtyd on Friday afternoon and arrived safely at New York (America) on Tuesday." (1888)

Mr. Hezekiah Herbert, Llanwrtyd, dies at the good old age of 102 years. "He was an inveterate smoker, and also enjoyed a glass of ale in his old age." (1897)

Today, I struggle to comprehend how people earn a living in Llanwrtyd Wells. There are — of course — loads of farmers who raise sheep for meat as well as trades people who widely service the region, but beyond that there’s just a handful of seasonal bed and breakfast joints that exist for hikers or touring motorcyclists. Presumably, the rest of the townies are retirees like my Dad or Pandemic decampers who work remotely.

Regardless of what people do here, everyone seems to generally live the same; in old houses where moss grows on the slate roofs, and the flora grows untamed and unkempt from wild-ish yards or mismatched planters strewn around properties. On my local treks here, I can’t resist being a lookie-loo…because the aesthetics are so peculiar to me as an urbanite.

In the absence of garages, everyone seems to have crap leaning on their homes — ladders, building materials, and miscellaneous junk — which gives-off hoarder vibes as well as a sense of uncompleted projects and widespread procrastination. This is compounded by the interior decor — maximalist and additive — where outdated pottery, out-of-fashion ceramics, and gaudy figurine tchotchkes populate every imaginable surface, highly patterned settees clash with bright zig-zagging wallpapers which conflict with bygone plaid rugs, and every inch of wall is covered with a frame of some sort (containing art and photographs with no defining motif or correlation). I’m not critiquing any of this, rather, I’ve just observed that no one appears to ever throw anything out (it seems they just add more — and when they croak — the contents are donated to a charity shop to continue this cycle ad infinitum).

One rarely goes to the country for the towns and villages — we visit it for the nature — and this of course applies to Llanwrtyd Wells too. As such, I deeply love to marathon the surrounding area by way of ramble because it is like moving through an olden John Constable or Thomas Gainsborough landscape painting (of lands untouched by time). Rolling green pastures support throngs of grazing sheep (which my Dad affectionally calls ‘hill dandruff’), the hills provide drama against the violent clouds and diagonal rays of occasional golden sunlight which pierce them to varying degrees of success, thorny and impenetrable hedgerows offer holly and blueberries along paved-over Roman-era roads, and arthritically-branched trees dangle leaves brimming with mottled mustards, rusted reds, and orangey ochres (at least at this autumnal time of year). And red kites — the national bird of Wales and the emblem of the Powys County Council — soar high up in the air streams, squawky corvids give you stink-eye from their perching on power lines, and the occasional pheasant flaps its wings to laboriously fly a few yards to gain the safety of some distance between it and whatever it deems to be a threat. Collectively, it is bucolic and idyllic, and I cannot stress how much I love to marathon Powys.

The one incongruous thing is that the peacefulness is occasionally interrupted by heavy artillery fire or low-flying jets doing acrobatic exercises, courtesy of the nearby SENTA grounds.

On my rambles here, I’m constantly taken aback by the sense of trust that abounds in the countryside. Here, everyone knows everyone else so one’s reputation is one’s currency. As such, Powys can act differently than distrustful cities; unmanned firewood is piled roadside and you can take what you need so long as you drop a few pound coins into the weathered tin hammered to the rotting fence post the same way you can take eggs from another outdoor shelf elsewhere so long as you leave some pound coins in the dish.

Me? I stumbled upon a ‘coffee cupboard’ on the edge of a caravan park — being a help-yourself pantry meets kitchenette — and would routinely make pit stops there on my dreary morning treks to boil the kettle, make myself an instant coffee, leave 50p in a dish, chat with the roosters, wash / return the provided mug to its tray, and close the stable door before continuing my journey on foot. I never encountered another human there, always honestly paid for what I used, and wish more of this type of thing existed everywhere else (due to being so rad and folksy).

Wales is either wet because it is raining or wet because it just finished raining a minute ago. While the weather is reliably lousy (and soakers are inevitable), it does produce neon green lands and very hardy people. For instance, we went to the beach because the forecast called for sun, but it became stormy upon arrival yet locals were still out in the downpour walking dogs, playing football on the beach, and swimming in the freezing ass waters. Here, rain is just part of daily life and everyone keeps on living.

I know that I am officially becoming an old person because I spend 84% of my ‘trekking time’ in Wales oohing and ahhing over anything old and/or made out of fieldstone. Building with local materials means everything here blends in with the local scenery, and this delivers a sense of harmony and complementariness (especially since the plants and moss growing outta the ground also grow off of every building surface). The missus and I passed the Church of Saint David (pictured above) on our near daily afternoon walks…and I can’t believe it is 15 minutes down the road from my Dad’s place…and it — as well as everything else old and stony — never stops making me smile on my Welsh strolls. Plus, all of it is kinda spooky in vibe, and such felt timely with Halloween approaching.

To mix it up, we hit a few different towns and villages by car to punctuate our nearly two week stay in Wales. Regardless of their official classifications, all the towns and villages felt like hamlets defined by a single high street which offered variations on the same theme; charity shops, gift stores, pubs, and the occasional kebab spot. Liandeilo (pictured above) definitely felt the most tony amongst them all; home to a great café and a shit-kicking kitchen store with a beautiful facade.

I never got the memo, and just learnt that Wales is home to more castles per square mile than any other country in Europe. 600 once dotted the land, and 100 are still standing, either as ruins or as restored buildings. We visited Carreg Cennen Castle, and at first I found it to be very Game of Thrones-y then decided it felt more Lord of the Rings-y. Interestingly, my missus informed me that JRR Tolkien had a real connection to Wales via childhood visits. Welsh was the foundation for his Sindarin elvish language, and I can only believe that Mid-Wales’s landscapes informed the landscapes of his Mid-earth (although I could be wrong).

I’m strategically ending my field notes on Powys with photographs of cute-sy livestock to inspire some scroll stop. Yes, because the local full-bodied horse with the tiny legs and its too-long-tail-which-drags-on-the-ground is an allegedly rare breed, and definitely ridiculous…as are the spray-painted sheep (uniquely marked with farmers’ insignia to identify one’s stock…because the sheep roam freely across the lands…and frequently escape pastures, and thus wander down roads).

However, I really just wanted to close strong and profess my love for the public’s right to roam in the United Kingdom. Basically, there are 140,000 miles of ‘right of way’ paths and trails here that legally allow you to, “Walk freely through open country and explore wild landscapes. These areas are known as open access land.” 

My North American brain cannot process this — the public being allowed to open gates on private lands, and hike through them — because this would be considered trespassing back home (and I’d risk getting arrested or being shot on sight). So even if nothing about this Welsh dispatch speaks to you, I hope you one day get to experience the glory of this in the United Kingdom — which is a right we should be pestering politicians to enact everywhere else — because the world feels sooo much bigger when you’re allowed to explore more of it. May we all be able to ramble more freely, happily, and adventurously!

BEST LOCAL THING-Y

My Dad recently rented a field from a farmer, and busted his ass to convert it into a little veg patch and flower garden. And like a true asshole, I played no part in any of the labour (due to me living on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean)…but I benefitted from the bounty when I showed up; organic, fresh-from-the-earth veg that we regularly used to make dinners with.

Beans, broccoli, and cabbage were steamed as root vegetables were roasted…and all of it tasted better than anything store bought! And while it is complete speculation on my part, I can only believe that my Dad growing his own fresh and nutritious food played a part in him bettering his diet (and — in turn — enabled him to reap the rewards of weight loss and improved vitality; you should see him hike hills now…his pace is like that of someone half his age)!

I recognise this local recommendation of mine is basically useless to you…so here’s an alternate option; there is excellent Thai food in nearby Llandrindod Wells.

POBJOY'S GLOBAL PRICE INDEX

This is an on-going documentation of how much things cost in different places around the world. Here are some of the things I bought around Powys (all prices converted to USD):

• Used coffee mug from a charity shop in Builth Wells: 13¢

• A DIY colour photocopied, 56 page, folded A4 sized paper zine about local history / walking routes from the one gas station in Llanwrtyd Wells: $5.23

• A 12 ounce soy latte from a café in Llangrannog: $5.10

MARATHON MUSINGS

On bogs

I’ve never had much of a desire to compete against others by running a marathon on a closed race course. Well, that’s not entirely true; I’ve always wanted to do the Pyongyang International Marathon to gain entry into North Korea. However, if you know me, you know that my freestyle ‘take’ on — or ‘hack’ of — marathoning is simply a creative pursuit that just so happens to be athletic; a marathon is a socially acceptable measure of distance that affords me the ability to wander aimlessly, and intimately document earth through words and images.

Strangely, Wales is one of the most dangerous places I’ve ever marathoned, which I’ve done about five times over three trips across the last four years. Why? Well, because the dual-lanes roads here are only nine feet wide in parts, people drive crazily fast as they play ‘chicken’ with oncoming drivers, there aren’t sidewalks in the countryside, and you’re therefore pushed up against the prickly hedgerows (which have a way of dampening sound…meaning you only hear cars right when you have to dive out of their way as they come around some bend or up a dip in the road). While the Welsh landscape is relaxing, the marathoning of it is hella stressful.

Because of the dangers, I decided to participate in the Devil’s Staircase Ultra Trail Race which the organisers describe as, “Approximately 50 km (31.5 miles) with a total ascent and descent of about 5,200ft (1585m). Most of the race will be off road with some short road sections including the hellishly steep ascent (25%) of the iconic Devil's Staircase.” Oddly, I didn’t do the race for the aforementioned, I did it because it meant some of the Welsh lands would be safer for me to traverse by foot — since the course was marked and marshalled — and so that I could experience the ‘right to roam’ through fields, farms, and whatever else. And honestly, I only learnt about the race 48 hours before it started ‘cause it was listed in the ‘Ogeg I Geg’, being the community’s monthly newsletter that just so happened to be on the coffee table at my Dad’s place.

The race began at a pub (which is where it ended too), and it was immediately apparent that it would be a joke; not the race, but me; outfitted like Paddington Bear in my bucket hat, a hooded sweatshirt, and carrying a jostling backpack filled with my camera, a video camera, and a sack of trail mix. Everyone else was in performance gear, clutching hiking poles, and kitted out in spiffy race vests stuffed with energy gels. Oh, and I was also in shoes that were too big because I don’t have a shoe sponsor, and couldn’t find shoes in my size at the discount store last month.

Things nevertheless got off to a good start; I was competitive for the first 20 kilometres as I stayed with the middle of the pack; running up barely defined trails that an ATV had made by tamping down bushes up a hill (which were sketchy, and from which another runner slid off and tumbled down), crossing foot-soaking rivers, navigating gnarly tufts of uneven turf across wild fields, and not really struggling with the Devil’s Staircase (because my legs are stupidly long for my body). But on the descent things went downhill.

Do you know what a bog is? I didn’t. I just presumed they were muddy variations on quicksand pits. However, what I came to learn is that they are as deceiving as they are dangerous. Imagine a field of long grass that presents as passable, but causes pause for concern because you can hear moving or sloshy water but can’t see it. I proceeded carefully, but then the seemingly solid ground beneath me had this strange buoyant feel where my feet started to dip about a foot into pools of water below, with the grassy earth feeling like a flimsy net over something more sinister. I then crashed forward — and thigh deep into a bog — and the muddy floor held my feet in place as my left knee twisted leftwards as my body corkscrewed rightwards upon impact. The pain was so tremendous that I momentarily whited out — and embarrassingly — I thought I was going to poo my pants ‘cause it felt like both my body and brain were doing a hard reset (of which I had no say in the matter). Please note, I did not shit myself. Phew.

I wriggled myself out of the bog — and nearly lost my too-big-for-me shoes like a dumbo in the process — and immediately did a quick inventory of my knee. From what I could tell, no bone in my knee had snapped or broke, and nothing around it had torn because I didn’t hear any snap, crackle or pop during my fall. But the remaining 30 kilometres of the race were thus hilarious; I couldn’t bend my left knee, had to use it like a stiff stilt, and had to turn my right leg rightwards / put all my weight on it / and push my right foot off of the ground to propel myself forward. I looked stupid as hell, and my pace slowed to that of a pathetic crawl.

What I appreciated is that every competitor who then passed me — who could see I was badly injured — never inquired as to whether I needed medical help. Rather, all told me that I was doing great. Basically, no one gave me an inch to quit — or an out — and it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever experienced; this type of trail runner code that entails competing yet having the humanity, compassion, and empathy to nevertheless motivate fellow competitors to finish, and get the job done. Seriously, how rad is that? Also, a 59 year-old woman who passed me told me that she had fallen waist deep into a bog on the course, and was momentarily worried that she may drown (but somehow got herself out of the bog with her hiking poles). So mental yet motivating!

Anyway, my trek was an absolute trial but the incredible surroundings (pictured above) counterbalanced the carnage, and taught me that doing hard things through beautiful landscapes is a pretty special experience. Wildly, I somehow finished in 27th place out of 31 runners, which excluded four non-runners. I literally do not know how I didn’t finish dead last when I almost killed myself in the process.

Admittedly, I didn’t feel much crossing the finish line, just the shrug of completing something that was somehow both terrible and terrific. TBH, I was more worried that I had just destroyed my knee on the third day of my holiday with my wife, and had likely ruined the rest of our trip (figuring I’d have to be immobile for a bit). However, my wife ran me a bath after the race finished — steaming with Llanwrtyd Wells’s sulphuric spring water — and my knee somehow recovered over the next three days.

I can’t be sure, but maybe there’s still something in these Welsh waters here.

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