[photos to be added]
I had left the window open and the curtains wide when I went to sleep, so as to enjoy the bleating of the neighbor sheep, the bird song, and the bright morning sun, so I woke first just after first light--perhaps 4 o'clock--to the faintest of grey light. Then again around 5:30 to bright sun filling the room and bird song and bleating. Then again at 7:30. Heavenly to notice the blooming of the day and then fall asleep again easily and without concern about all there is to get done.
Driving south from Dolgellau, the mountains were at first dramatic stunning forbidding climbs of green and rock and purple haze, then gradually becoming gentler with more varied vegetation, and then gentler still with good pasture land and then hayfields and even a few fields of brilliant yellow rape. The road became wider and less tightly wound, so that I felt comfortable taking the straight bits at 60 and the curves at 40-50mph. I still haven't broken our little Skoda to my will, but it has become somewhat more docile, and I was having fun with the curves and beginning to wish for something a little more fun--perhaps an Aston Martin DB4 or a 1960's Mercedes SL convertible.
We found Jill's place without too much difficulty and sat in her kitchen getting acquainted while she made picnic sandwiches--in my web search for interesting things to do in Monmouthshire, where Jill lives, I had come across a listing for Midsummer Night's Dream to be performed out of doors at the Blaenavon Ironworks, an 18th-19th Century blast furnace complex now a World Heritage Site. I didn't really expect the acting to be all that great, but summer Shakespeare out of doors usually makes a pleasant evening, even with iffy acting. So we went, even though it was threatening rain. We went early, planning to look around the Ironworks before the performance, but it was closed--not to reopen for at least an hour. So we drove about a bit looking for something interesting to fill the time, and after a few false starts--a brewery that offers tours but was closing shop for the evening, a 19th Century coal mine that had already closed for the evening--we wandered into a the Blaenavon Workmen's Hall, built in 1895 as a social gathering place with money collected (by the workers themselves) from the workers' wages. It had a theater on the upper floor and a library and billiard, recreation, and meeting rooms on the lower floor; a cinema was added in 1930. When we wandered in, a group of local teens was preparing for a performance of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat in the theater (the stage and its lighting and rigging modern, but the hall itself still the original, or at least quite early). The downstairs cinema is still in use, showing first run movies for 3GBP, the recreations rooms still house one snooker table, but the rest have been replaced with ping pong tables.
http://forgottenlandscapes.org.uk/2013/02/27/our-proud-history-the-workers-self-funded-blaenavon-workmens-hall/
When we returned to the Ironworks, we discovered that the play was to be done in promenade, which complicated picnicking a bit, so we ate quickly. The play turned out to be a generally excellent and occasionally hilarious production, judiciously cut, with crystal clear enunciation, sweet music, funny interpolated asides in modern language, and a bit of well-integrated audience participation and silliness. The skies held off, but a rainbow began to fade in above the actors' heads just as the Mechanicals' play was ending.
My camera battery died just at the end of the play, so I wasn't able to get any pictures on the drive back to Jill's--the sun was setting and the light on the mountain moors was gorgeous, as was the sunset behind Raglan Castle--all of which we drove past far too quickly to enjoy properly. But all in all a fitting end to a fine vacation.
No comments:
Post a Comment