When I first started posting photos from our trips on this site many years ago I mostly just put up the photos with only the barest of details about what we did. Over time, however, I’ve reduced the number of photos and expanded on more of the travelogue aspects. It’s because I like to write. It keeps my mind and fingers active and you never know when an active mind or a dexterous finger will be needed. And so, many years after putting up some initial, limited information posts, and many more years after the original trip itself, here is a little about the village where we stayed when we spent a few days on a Welsh Getaway in 2011.
A reminder right at the start, should you be unclear on this matter: this is an account of our experiences in 2011. It is no longer 2011 and it hasn’t been 2011 for quite some time now so things will have changed. Interiors may have been updated. Exteriors may have become more weathered. Establishments may have new owners or employees. This is not a reflection on how things currently are in the places mentioned. For all we know, though, it might even be worse. But, you know, let’s just assume that’s not the case.
Some background to the trip because I do like to pad these things out.
As a child I’d passed through Wales several times because that’s what you needed to do when you visited Ireland where family lived. I’d also visited Cardiff for a day while at university in the early 1990s, and at some point in the 2000s my wife and I had gone to watch a rugby game in Cardiff too. That occasion, incidentally, had been our first experience of Welsh people making very unpleasant remarks about the English in earshot, and England weren’t even playing. “Ah, racists,” we thought briefly, and tried to think little about again. Why am I mentioning that? Foreshadowing, baby!
Anyway, apart from those forays across the border, we’d never stayed in Wales or considered it as a travelling destination, but in 2011 a birthday of some note was coming up and I decided that it would be nice to go and see the place where The Prisoner TV series had been filmed. West coast of Wales, in case you didn’t know or couldn’t guess. Decision made, we hunted around online and booked ourselves a short break in an inn in a village called Tremadog. If we were to return there today we’d spend more time in and around it because it’s got quite a nice bit of history and surrounding landscapes (everywhere in this part of Wales does, to be fair) but back then it simply made for a convenient base for exploring further afield.
We broke up our trip from Portsmouth with a look around Birdland in Gloucestershire, and braved a few minutes on the rainy, windswept promenade of Aberystwyth solely because it had been an alternative university location for me if Liverpool hadn’t worked out. But that weather and the time of the year meant it was getting quite dark fairly early and we had no satellite navigation to rely on at the time.
We arrived under dark clouds and heavy rain and checked in to The Golden Fleece Inn in Tremadog. As is traditional, some photos of our room for the few nights, and it was a very nice-sized room indeed. We had no complaints about the room. As rooms in inns go, it’s probably been one of the better ones we’ve stayed in over the years.
But that hadn’t been our first impression of Tremadog or of the Golden Fleece Inn. We’d pulled up, grabbed our things from the car, and headed to the main door. It was busy in there and we could hear happy noise spilling out; lots of people talking, laughing, all the signs of a bustling, thriving, local place. And everyone talking in English…
…right up until the second we opened the door and stepped in. Welsh, instantly. A cacophony of Welsh accompanied by not-too-subtle glances in our direction. That classic cliché of TV and movies wrought before our eyes and ears. We signed what we needed to sign, were directed to our room, looked at each other. “Ah, racists,” the pointed stares expressed, not for the first time. Nor the last.
A few photos of Tremadog from the following morning now because the location was lovely, even if the rain was still drizzling. We’d spend this day visiting places on Anglesey for the most part.
That’s the Golden Fleece Inn back in 2011 directly in front in the photograph below. Just to the left of shot was a restaurant (and at time of writing there’s one there still – Y Sgwâr – but I can’t say for certain whether it was called that back then) and we paid a visit to it on that big birthday I’d mentioned earlier. We’d had a fabulous day in Portmeirion and felt that dinner in the inn with its xenophobic clientele and barmaid with no knowledge of basic drinks and mixers could do with changing up.
The restaurant was not busy but there were a few tables with several people on them, most in business suits, all laughing loudly, some sharing a joke with a waitress whose face darkened upon seeing us enter. We were approached, eventually, and we asked if we could have a table for two and no, we hadn’t booked ahead. Sigh. Come this way. She went back to laughing and chatting with the suits – in Welsh – in the restaurant and we waited. She returned after a few minutes with a face full of contempt and a couple of menus that fell somewhere on the cusp between shoved and thrown on the internationally-accepted scale of transferring items from one person to another before they came into our possession.
Glancing at the menus and at what everyone else in the restaurant was eating, we surmised that they were all taking advantage of some “early bird” offer. Not us, though. The most surly of waitresses transformed before our eyes into someone who couldn’t do more for us and even graced us with a forced smile or two as soon as we’d got past ordering a bottle of wine and started picking from the à la carte offerings.
“What the fuck was her problem?” asked my wife when we were alone at the table.
“She probably thought we were cheapskate English looking to save some money rather than sensible local Welsh people supporting a local business in the most tight-fisted manner possible.”
“Ah, racists,” said the knowing look that we shared.
Of course, I don’t know for sure that everyone in Tremadog was actually racist but I will say that if you were racist against the English then your behaviour wouldn’t really differ from what we encountered in the village during our short stay. Elsewhere in Wales on this trip we met some lovely Welsh people. At least to our faces, and that’s all that counts.
And finally, one more reminder: this was an account of our experiences in 2011. All these places might be filled with very friendly locals and employees in the hospitality industries these days, and I imagine in the days of more online reviews and ratings they’d almost have to be.