Holiday in view

An overcast damp bank holiday Monday, but there's still housework to be done to ruin a lazy morning. We thought of going out to breakfast, but arriving in a café in damp rain gear is a strong disincentive for me, so it was porridge and toast as usual to start the day. Much to my surprise, while checking for a pack of hair ties in a wash kitbag I thought I'd emptied, I found the shaver charger I thought I'd left in Fuengirola. I connected it to the old shaver, its charging light light flashed a few times, the same behaviour as when I connected it via the USB cable I bought, but it wouldn't re-charge. Just as well I bought a replacement shaver last week.

We were out of coffee, so a visit to the Co-op was a vital necessity after the cleaning was done. I couldn't help noticing when buying a few items that the price of coffee and Fairtrade chocolate has risen by thirty percent in recent months.

After lunch I needed a sleep in the chair before reading through a confidential document I'd received. Then I went out for a walk with Clare in the park. After she turned for home, I walked for another three quarters of an hour, but fine drizzle turned into rain and my legs were quite wet by the time I got home. I was wearing the pair of trousers I bought last week, made of some new lightweight material which dries quickly. I have older pairs made of the same fabric. They are meant to be for summer wear, but are good for outdoor walking all year round except in the coldest weather as they're windproof.

This evening I found and started watching the third set of episodes of a Finnish crimmie called 'All the sins'. The first two sets were interesting in portraying crimes in a rural community where a revivalist Laestidinian Lutheran sect hold influence. This set of episodes continues the storyline of the first two.

Last week I made enquiries about staying for the inside of a week at the Trigonos centre in the Nantlle valley on the western flank of Snowdon, where we've stayed many times before. We were hoping for full board but that didn't work out so Clare started looking elsewhere, and came up with a place in Burry Port, on the west coast of Carmarthenshire with the Gower peninsula on the eastern horizon. We've been there once before, on the way to somewhere else or to home. I can't remember. 

My father may have lived there as a small child before moving to Taff's well, as his father was working in the area with a team of mineshaft diggers developing a coal mine. Burry Port was a busy industrial town with a railhead to the port for shipping coal out of the Gwendraith Valley. The old port is now a leisure marina, and the village itself gentrified, but its mining history started in the sixteenth an ended in the twentieth century. Its story reminds me of the port cum holiday resort of Garrucha on the Costa Almeria, whose industrial archaeology was of interest to me on locum duty in Mojácar seven years ago. I look forward to exploring the area!