Tuesday 1st of July 1969
My dad tried to have one day off a week and he would go off and get completely away from the pub to relax. On the Monday evening he said we could go off to North Wales for the day. We packed up a big plastic bag that was used to line the beer tanks in the cellar and took two sleeping bags. We took a change of clothes, a wash bag and tooth brushes with us, we left after the pub closed. Dad had recently got a new car and it was really very posh . It was a gold coloured Daimler 2.5 V8 and I loved the leather seats. We drove through the night and arrived on the isle of Anglesey in the early hours of the morning, it was still pitch black. We found a quiet laybye with a soft grass verge. Dad and I unrolled the plastic bag, it was about eight feet long and five feet wide and put the sleeping bags inside it. We snuggled down in our make shift tent and went to sleep.
I was awake at first light and got up telling dad I could not sleep and I would see him later. I think he heard me but he was snoring as I walked down the road in the first dawn light. I could hear the sea in the near distance, I walked towards the sound of the gulls and the waves. I came across a sign the said Croeso Benllech and I knew that meant I was entering the town of Benllech. It was deserted as you would expect at three thirty am. I walked through the town and down the road towards the sea, when I got to the harbour the sun was up and it was starting to warm the air around. The tide was out and the rocks were bare except for being draped with seaweed. The wading birds were all along the tide line dodging the waves as they lapped to and fro. The sea was lovely and gentle and almost mill pond calm, it looked idyllic.
A milkman came by with his cart pulled by a pony, I bought a pint of milk from him. It was thick and creamy as I remembered milk was when we had got it direct from the farm before we moved to Liverpool. I sat on the harbour wall and drank the milk watching all the life going on around me. After my bottled breakfast I decided to go for a walk along the rocks below the cliff towards Red wharf bay. It was tricky walking and climbing over the big rock with the sea weed hanging off them making it very slippery. There were pools in between the rocks with a myriad of life in them, I saw anenomes, crabs, blennys and lots of shrimps all living in the pools. It was amazing to see what was under all the bladder wrack weed, I picked up a big bunch to find limpets stuck to the rock right next to periwinkles all sheltering until the tide came back in. I eventually found my way down to the beach and walked along the tide line south towards a big head land. I started to walk around the base of the cliff and the tide was starting to come in. I did not notice until I was being forced back onto the rocks by the waves. I climbed up onto the rocks and kept above the water as I made my way from rock to rock around the head land back on to the beach. I had made it round to Red Wharf bay.
I walked up to the jetty and was just walking up the road when dad appeared in the car. He had rolled up the plastic bag and the sleeping bags and come to look for me. He had met the milk man who told him which way I had gone. He was really Ok about it considering I had been gone for four hours and had just nearly been cut off by the tide. We went off and found a cafe to have some breakfast, full welsh breakfast with soda cakes, bacon, fried eggs, sausages and tomatoes. Fresh hot toast with strawberry jam and great big mugs of hot steaming tea. After breakfast we strolled around the town of Benllech and even watched a local fishing boat come in and unload its catch of mackerel. All had been line caught over night in the Irish Sea and were so fresh they had not lost the stiff rigor mortis like the older fish in the fish mongers back home. We had a good time laughing a joking about different things, this was a side I didn’t often see, dad was relaxed.
It was getting around one o’clock and dad suggested that we go to visit a friend of his for lunch. We got in the car and drove up to the next little village called Tyn-Y- Gongl and to a pub called the Californian. I was introduced to the owner, a Mr Alex More. He had one hand the other was a false one with a black leather glove. He had lost it in the war I believe, he was a wonderful man who always smiled and was cheerful with all the people around him. We had a wonderful lunch of homemade steak pie with chips. He let me have a glass of the welsh beer he was so proud of in his pub. On the wall was a beautiful silver sword in a glass case. I asked what it was for and he told me that that afternoon in Caernarvon castle Prince Charles was being invested as the prince of Wales today and the sword was one of the special commemorative ones made. We had a smashing afternoon with Mr More, I later found out his brother was Kenneth More the famous actor. I had seen him in the film Reach For The Sky as Douglas Bader.
We left the pub at closing time and decide to make our way home slowly along the coast. Dad stopped as we got off the island, two young ladies were hitch hiking the way we were going. They got in the back and said they needed to get to Liverpool. They were students at Bangor university, we got talking and they had met the Beatles and the Maharishi while they had been at the university. They stayed with us untill we got though the old Mersey tunnel on to Scotland road where they got out and we went through to Ormskirk. We called in on Aunty Mavis and my two cousins. We stopped for tea and I had fun telling Maureen and Michael about my adventures of the day.
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