Letter from Barmouth

Niall Griffiths

Get on the railway bridge at Morfa Mawddach and walk above the estuary waters. Herons and other mudflat fowl.

This is the longest timber viaduct bridge in Britain, apparently, and the oldest in regular use, so that’s nice.

Once on the other side, in Barmouth town, stand beneath that same bridge as the train rattles above you and close your eyes and  imagine you’re back in Chicago, underneath the El on Wabash, and then open your eyes again and accept that you’re in Abermaw, colloquially known as Y Bermo, Barmouth, Birmingham-on-Sea, Walsall-on-the-Waves, Sandwell-on-Sands. Sigh.

There’s a bizarre marble sculpture here, entitled The Last Haul. One Frank Cocksey, a local artist, carved it out of a single block of white Carrara marble, lifted from a wreck between Barmouth and Harlech where it had lain for three centuries (maybe bound for Llanaber church and its marble-heavy graveyard).

Freakish

It’s an impressive piece, depicting three human figures in different period costume, all hauling on a bolt of thick rope, sitting between each other’s spread legs. Impressive, but also slightly odd; the figures seem to merge and become one freakish three-headed and many-limbed creature.

There’s a suggestion of grotesque birth and a homo-eroticism that has been unsuccessfully disguised.

Nearby too is the Lowe Memorial, in commemoration of Henry Godfrey Lowe, who left Barmouth to go to sea at 14 and who would assist the rescue operation of the Titanic. Well, this is interesting.

The Last Inn

Opposite, you will see The Last Inn, which might tempt you; succumb to this lure, because this is a very good pub.

Further up the main drag (Church Street, becoming High Street) is Myrddin’s Tap, Barmouth’s ‘First and Only Original Micro Pub’. Have a drink here too. And remember those barrel shops from the 80s and 90s, which would have dry goods in big tubs, which you’d purchase by weight?

They’ve largely gone now, but Barmouth still has one (surprisingly not cheap). Buy some, I dunno, raisins or rice crackers from here then move a little bit further up the street and let Tilman’s Bar croon you in.

This, too, is a very good pub. Have a few drinks in here, eat some raisins or rice crackers then stand all hazy outside and regard the mist-veil on the hill looming over The Rock and over the foothills of Cadair Idris on the other side of the estuary and reflect on the circumstances that have brought you here. How life startles you and how the world wildly spins.

Best in Wales

Jackdaws squabble over discarded chips, kebab meat, pizza crusts. There are small dogs everywhere and never a cat. Never a cat.

There is an outlet called Verdun House and you wonder why: a renowned massacre? A place of slaughter? Why such a name?

It’s sandwiched between Amritsar Hall and The Siop y Somme (that’s a joke). The Bank restaurant, recently voted best in Wales on TripAdvisor. You want to eat there.

Turn left onto Jubilee Street (where the Nick Cave song of that name will set up camp in your head).

Here is The Mermaid (a fine chippy) and Theater y Ddraig. Here is the bus stop, adjacent to the bins where you can sit and watch the rats scurry and scavenge (indeed it will be here where, in two months, you will hear the only  spoken Cymraeg in Abermo: ‘oo, Sioned! Edrych ar y llygodau mawr! Hyfryd!’.

You can turn left here, past the UK seaside resort typicalities of donuts and candy floss and amusement arcades (the infernal noise) and explore the beach (see the moai, a startling feature, on the Ynys-y-Brawd dunes), or you can turn right and go back into the town via the central square.

Have another couple of drinks in the Tal-y-Don pub, also another fine place (albeit one where, two weekends running, you’ll be mystifyingly approached by two different couples and asked whether you swing).

Idiosyncracy

Here is another takeaway called The Carousal: a misspelling or a not-bad pun?

There’s Wendy’s caff, a place of superb rarebit. Co-op, pastie/oggy shop, railway station, built to connect the English midlands to the Welsh coast.

The transient nature of this place has robbed it of much character and particularity; this is of a piece with towns that tourism keeps ticking, and paradoxically adds a certain tang of idiosyncrasy, but you kind of want to wake up and be in Wales.

There are the mountains and there’s the sea and the public signage is bilingual (largely) but you don’t really know where you are. A hand came down from the sky and picked you up by the scruff and scragged you like a terrier with a rat and flicked you across the Mawddach.

Throughout the hours of night you will hear the church bells announce the passing hours. One day soon, when you take the garbage down to the communal bins, you will see a pair of yellow wagtails lift themselves whirring out of a puddle, only the second time you have seen these birds in your life, and you will stand and marvel.

But that’s for the future. Right now, at this moment, you’re swaying a little in the cone of a street light as the flag of St George flutters from the roof of a passing camper van.

Bostin’.