Three days in Mid Wales and I still couldn’t quite finish the GBG chapter.
It’s possibly the most challenging “county” after Rutland, which just doesn’t open at all, with weird opening times, aggressive sheep and occasional trains.
But I did make it to Llanwrtyd Wells (pronounced clan-weir-tid), some 22 years after last driving past it (actually, Mrs RM was driving, it was my birthday, we’d just been to Pontfaen) and thinking “I‘ll be back there soon“.
But I wasn’t, until now, even though it’s a mere hop away from Builth, where I seem to be every year recently.
This is the centre of Llantwryd, which I sense I’m just about to spell wrong.
850 people, the smallest town in Wales, if not the UK, where Fordwich claims that crown.
Apart from net curtains, there’s a great café (caffi Sosban), three (3) hotels with cask, the Sugar Plum Christmas Tree Emporium and a fine collection of pashminas on day trips from Brecon.
And the World Bog Snorkelling Championships.
It’s next week*, so there’s still time for Mark Crilley or Pashmina Pauline to take the crown from Neil Rutter, who I think has the initials on his name the wrong way round.
As Duncan pointed out, Neil rather let standards slip last year.
And if bog snorkelling isn’t enough, there’s also Man v Horse, not to be confused with the frankly gruesome 1970 film starring Richard Harris.
These, and other events such as BRAPA baiting, have giving the Neuadd Arms a profile well beyond its size over the years.
Of course, I attempted to get in via the side entrance.
Yes, it’s not boutique.
But inside, ignore the lounge, and head to the Public where magic awaits.
Oh no, they’ve got homebrew !
At the bar, an Old Boy was entertaining his grandson by letting him play Fortnite on his phone on the sofa. That’s Proper Pub.
“Are you after one of those REAL ALES”
I couldn’t deny it.
“That one’s very popular, I hear”
It was pretty good for £2.80 a pint (NBSS 3), cool and rich if still defiantly homebrew. I could have had the Felinfoel if I’d gone in the lounge.
But then I’d have missed Jones the Eggman dropping off his punnets (“got lettuce too if you want them“) and frankly the best bit of basic pub of the month so far.
Mrs RM would have loved it.
The Neuadd was pretty busy, so clearly there’s still people who want to escape craft murk by putting on a snorkel and wading through cask mud.
*Next week folks, don’t miss it.
retiredmartin 
It’s thirty years since I stayed there and I keep meaning to return, but they could do with a tin of Elizabeth Ann’s 1959 green paint for the side entrance
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You spotted it too, Paul!
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Mendocino, where we set up camp last night, has a slightly larger population than Llantwryd.
54 more souls at the last census to be precise.
It sits atop rolling hills overlooking the crashing breakers of the Pacific Ocean and it’s a stunner.
We snagged the last room in the town’s only hotel ( Established 1878 ) – it and the bed it contained was so small Mrs PP-T and I slept top and tail for the first time ever.
The shared bathroom has stained-glass windows.
Two doors away Dick’s Place was like an old western saloon; ancient, wooden and designed for hard men of long ago to stare moodily into their beer and shot inviting trouble.
But it was town’s other bar where we spend most of last night.
Normally I avoid Irish pubs like Jeremy Corbyn avoids rigorous journalistic questioning.
But Pattersons looks nothing like an Irish bar from the outside so we gave the old white clapboard house a try.
Inside it was no bigger than a large micro but it was heaving, loud and raucous with workers in dirt-stained overalls and tourists like us downing drink and eating food like it was going out of style.
28 beers on draught and a huge menu of freshly cooked mountains of food.
I had the bangers and sauerkraut.
With a big, juicy Liberal for dessert.
On hearing my accent while ordering a hazy IPA my neighbour at the bar, a San Francisco-based lawyer, introduced himself with ” so this Boris is a dick like Trump is he ? ”
Mrs PP-T recognised the glint in my eye and nipped outside for a cigarette while I set about my work.
Today we continue to head north into Oregon.
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A big juicy Liberal for dessert?
Thought Cyril was long dead.
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If he was still alive Cyril would be a post-dinner wafer-thin mint.
Under Eight.
I’d get my coat but it’s hot out here …
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You don’t get much of a smoke during the time it takes to say “yes”, prof.
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P P-T,
Are you suggesting that sleeping top and tail, like opera and oysters, is something you have to do once ?
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A fine looking pub, but swimming in mud…….
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At least not swimming in murk 😉
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Had a good chuckle at your comment about Neil Rutter having “the initials on his name the wrong way round.” (Poor guy, he has perhaps had that pointed out to him one too many times I expect!)
Thanks for including the video on bog snorkling. No wonder England is the source of almost all the world’s major forms of sport. You all invent them so readily, you’ve got surplus ones that you can relegate to ‘local curiosity’ status. 😉
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Oh and thanks for the shout out. I reckon Pauline would leave me in the dust (or in the mud, as it were!).
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I think she would, too. In my most extreme dreams you and Pauline and your families meet up in a grim estate pub in Maidstone to compare notes.
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Glad you’re my most intelligent reader and picked that up, Mark. Sometimes I think I’m wasting my time 🤔
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Bog Snorkeling doesn’t easily translate to Indiana, does it?
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It is always worth considering, that the materials used in stair rods can be steel, iron, wood, aluminium, or brass, but nowadays brass, and brass-plated ones are generally considered to strike a PERFECT balance, between strength, appearance, and value.
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PERFECT
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Has there been a drug test for 2028 winner as he appears to be 12 better than in 2010? WADA have been notified
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