Suzie in Wales -Day 1 (It’ll be nice when it’s finished)

The only real aim for today was to get from Milton Keynes to Aberystwyth to start a few days holiday, mainly visiting the Little Trains of mid-Wales. I’d stopped with my friends Steve and Mandy overnight to get a reasonably early start and we were actually away about 30 minutes earlier than we’d targeted. For quite a while it looked like we’d have a clear run, a miracle for a Back Holiday, albeit partly because the satnav had avoided some potential problem areas. Sadly it didn’t last, we got caught up in a traffic jam of vehicles going to a motorcycle hill climb* which basically cost us the 30 minutes we’d gained at the start of the day. 

We stopped for a quick break at Woofferton Wharf Services (we never did work out why it’s called Wharf as the nearest waterway is the River Teme which is a fair distance and wasn’t a working navigation). It’s also adjacent to the last short wave broadcast transmitter station in the UK which was privatised from the BBC in the 1990s but still transmits the World Service. The original hope has been to get to the hotel about 2pm but it was pretty much 3pm when we arrived so we checked in straight away before going for a wander. 

It was fairly bracing on the sea front but it was great to get out in some fresh air. We had hoped to have time to do the Cliff Railway and Camera Obscura but by the time we got there the latter was closed and it was tight for the last trains up and down - we’ll see how the timings are tomorrow. We were also looking for somewhere for dinner and ended up in the White Horse, a fairly standard pub with fairly standard pub grub but the food was good quality and the service was friendly so an all round good choice. 

Aberystwyth itself is undergoing quite a bit of regeneration with plenty of scaffolding around some of the older buildings, based on the signs this is thanks to Levelling Up funding but also prompted the comment in the title! Tomorrow it’s the Vale of Rheidol railway which I last did in  1978 when it the only remaining steam on British Rail. 

*We were only about 5 miles away from the famous, and historic, Shelsey Walsh hill climb but this was one of those muddy climbs up an impossibly steep hill that usually ends up with the rider and bike separated and sliding downward!