Yr Eifel and Nant Gwrtheyrn

Up behind the hamlet of Pistill, where we're staying is a collection of tall mountains, rising up out of the sea or the inland plain. Driving east on the B4417, ascending to the hill village of Llithfaen, we were able to take the upland road to a parking place from which we could hike up or around the twin peaked Yr Eifel (564m), either to visit the remains of a large Iron Age settlement on its eastern flank, or simply to follow the national coast path over Bwlch yr Eifel pass (350m), which we chose to do.

The summit was hardly visible due to cloud while we were there. For a while it covered the pass as well. I took the track up to the lower peak in the mist, with scant hope of reaching to top, but I did take a look at the exterior of the telecoms installation just below the peak, from professional curiosity. Sure enough it was owned by Aquiva, the infrastructure company that grants a license to use the CBS digital TETRA system. There was no phone signal up there, only on top of the pass, emanating from a cell relay some distance below, I suspect.

We walked back to the car park and had picnic lunch there, admiring the remarkable monument to the men who worked the three marble quarries of Nant Gwrtheyrn in the cliffs along the shore a thousand feet below us. With no haste and great care we descended the narrow road to Nant Gwrtheyrn village. Since the closure of the quarries the village has acquired a second life as a national center for Welsh language learning through residential course and conferences. Clare has wanted to visit here for years, and now she's seen for herself, wants to come and attend a conference here.

The two rows of quarry workers' cottages have been converted into conference accommodation. New classrooms are nearing completion adding to existing facilities. The village chapel has been restored and transformed into a meeting place and visitor centre, recounting the quarry's history. There's a new restaurant and cafe overlooking the sea, with fast and open wi-fi. A long golden beach, is only a short steep walk away. It's not so much a place of pride in Welsh language and culture as a place of delight and loving enthusiasm for it. Yet another place of pilgrimage to add to this week's itinerary. 

Although the summit of Yr Eifel remained in cloud all day, the sun shone down in the valley and on the shore below. I can't believe how fortunate we've been during our stay in here Llyn, connectivity excepted.

Considering how many people come from around Britain and the rest of the world to visit coastal Wales, it really is a scandal the extent to which it is deprived of fast broadband and 4G connectivity. It's not good enough to say it's too costly to upgrade per residential user, when there are millions of transient users who are paying for the service elsewhere in the country and have come to rely upon connected devices for informing themselves about everything, and keeping safely in touch when out and about. Ironic - they say you can get a 4G signal on top of Everest and Snowdon for that matter, but not in Nefyn or the tip of the Llyn Penisula. Perhaps the British Parliament or the Welsh Senedd should meet in Llyn for a week or so, and learn for themselves what others have to put up with.

It's forty five years today since I was ordained priest and ten years this month since I first started writing a blog. Surprised that I'm still going strong, as much in love with the Word and words as ever.

 

 

On line at last

This morning I went to meet the lawyer who deals with church property affairs from an office at the boundary of the boundaries of Los Boliches and Torreblanca barrios. From her, I obtained the key to the basement room of our urbanizacion housing the vital telecoms control unit. I went home straight away and started composing a text message to the Telefonica/Movistar engineer who had kindly given me his mobile number to contact him when I could give him access. Before I could press the send button, he was ringing the door bell! Is this telepathica? I thought and later tweeted. 

Within ten minutes the line was connected, phone and broadband working perfectly. Such excellent service, delivered cheerfully. Before he departed he put me on to his trouble-shooting supervisor, who spoke excellent English, so I congratulated him on the concientous delivery of this service, far superior to anything I have ever experienced from British Telecoms or TalkTalk back in the U.K. He seemed bemused to be thanked profusely. It seems handling 'complaints' was his primary role. 

So now we have our internet enabled devices attached and working without glitches or peak time outages. Why can't it be like this in Britain, I ask myself. The answer lies in reluctance to invest big time in infrastructure upgrading when it was needed, a decade ago. It may be happening now, but here and there, not everywhere. Mind you, it may well be the same in Spain if you live out in the remote campo. Grand plans, beloved of politicians, can be devilishly difficult to implement on the ground. We live in an age of breakthrough technical achievements, but vision and imagination can easily outstrip the practicalities for implementation, even with the most capable people on the job.

After lunch I went down to St Andrew's to join the church Craft Group, assembled to make Palm Crosses, with fresh palm leaves taken from someone's garden. The last time I weaved Palm Crosses was when I was Chaplain in Monaco, thirteen years ago. There was a variety of palm tree in the church garden which produced useable leaves, and a handful of us, including octogenarian sacristan France Ametis, made our crosses ahead of the Sunday service. France was the one who remembered how to weave the crosses. She'd been doing it for sixty years, most of them with her late husband who'd inherited the sacristan job from his father.

It took me a few fumbling efforts to weave my first palm cross. I had to be showed by two kind patient neighbours on the production table. Then it was as if my fingers remembered what my brain had failed to, and took over. I managed to weave about ten crosses to add to the couple of hundred to be given out at the five chaplaincy centres of worship next Sunday. It was a happy experience that reconnected me to another period in ministry among the expatriates of Europe.