Pier Review

After pushing the car to start it in Cardiff, and being too frightened to stop until we reached home even to buy water or food, we for some reason took A roads home up to Gloucester. In pure synchronicity the radio kicked into PJ Harvey’s The Last Living Rose just as we crossed the boarder into England. 

Wales hadn’t been bad in itself, but we’d been very ill on Southport overindulgence and feeling low since Blackpool really. Dan was both hungover and in pain from his back, grunts from the rear seat being his main way of communicating. The car trouble wasn’t helping my mood either—I’m sure jump starting it isn’t good in the long run and for the price of an hour or so I was sure there was a Kwik Fit (or in Wales a Kwijky Fitwy) to pop to. 

We’d always said piers were just a hook to hang the narrative on, and by now the routine of visiting was very well established: drive into town scanning the horizon, spot the pier, hunt for free parking on a hill (or at least the flat to make pushing easier), walk to the pier and onto it if possible, stopping to write notes, hunt for postcards, decide if the town had anything to offer…

By this point the pier archetypes were easy to spot: pretty empty, closed/in ruins, fading commercialism, and community revived. So we were even more hunting for the odd or for people to talk to. People that weren’t us were a relief; after a few days male conversation falls into nods and tropes so students, bar-staff, shop owners, especially lighthouse keepers has been welcome breaks.

But when we hit the last pier, an emptiness.

What now?

Well, first for me, mind detox, reading up on my Authurian Legends as they hit me many times round the country, counting the recipets to see how much we spent and getting the car fixed. For us we’ve got to write the book. That might take a while, but months rather than years, and sort out a publisher.

So as our beautiful funders, one last thing—ask us any questions you like here in the comments and we’ll answer them if we can. Completely honestly, honest:

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We had a discussion last night as to why we took an anti-clockwise route. I think it was because we didn’t want to hit Weston and then spend the first couple of hundred pages talking about Wales in what is really a pean to a bygone England.

It does mean that the really arduous part is last, loads of two hour plus drives along wind-y bendy roads that scream “Araf” at you when you least expect it. To get back on the motorway home later today will be a blessing, suspect the feeling of returning to England will be as good as hitting that last goddam pier.

Worried this has all been too easy? A fourteen-day challenge tossed off in a mere eleven day?

After a dissapointing trip to Anglesey, to a Beaumaris pier that’s being worked on (new struts Davd who works on the ‘i can see it from here’ Bangor pier says) we return to the car to find it not doing what a car should do. Go.

It isn’t starting, Midge diagnoses a flat battery or a starter motor problem, so we try a push start—it goes but we have to turn off the radio, the phone charger and the air blower as we need to conserve energy. I offered to sing the songs that came up on the ‘What’s on 6 Music’ Twitter feed, but the mood in the car was too dark for that. It also didn’t seem to want a trip to Portmerrion, the Prisoner fantasy scene from the book will have to come from memory. 

Stopping for petrol we prayed that the battery was charged enough to get the car going again, it was about to get significantly heavier. It did so we risked the radio, mood lightened, the sun crept out over a valley, and Bret bloody Anderson came on.

When we stopped at Aberystwyth, though, no joy. A series of bump-starts on hills gets us to the campsite, where we park on a slope and leave this note.

“You can’t park there”, says an otherwise very friendly camp host — so it’s a push in the morning. Uphill. 

But only two more to go before our own beds.

Pontins was everything we expected it to be, with one bizarre addition. Edgehill Uni have run out our student accommodation and have struck a deal with Pontins’s new owners (Britania, the firm that own the Adelphi hotel in Liverpool) to house 250 students on camp.

It’s freshers week and we found a gaggle of lost new students in the Hawaiian Ballroom (where bizarrely it was Christmas).

Tried to keep up with them on shots, and failed, it’s bad heads in the PierMobile this am as we hit Wales.