“… and we’re here at this dot, in
Machynlleth…”
Oh. So that’s how you pronounce it.
The affable young man smiled down at my
daughters, who were stomping across his gigantic floor-map of the United
Kingdom in their small red and yellow rubber boots. Sorry, their “Wellingtons”.
“This is where we
started biking,” I told Molly and Lizzy, pointing. “In Chepstow.” After several days of being lulled by Welsh
accents, my own sharp American vowels sounded grating. “And this,” I pointed
again, “is where we’ll finish this bike route, in Holyhead.”
Molly, brow furrowed, examined the dots on
the map. Chepstow. Machynlleth.
Holyhead. Then, looking
delighted, she grinned up at the helpful employee of the Centre for Alternative
Technology. “Wales really isn’t very
big!” she told him.
Awkward, kid. Awkward.
Really, there’s nothing a man likes more than having a nine-year-old guilelessly
insult the size of his eensy-weensy little… nation.
“We’re from Alaska,”
I mumbled, by way of explanation. “It’s,
um, large...” Right. And Americans are known for their tact and
cultural astuteness.
The young man, however, did not appear to
be offended – merely completely nonplussed.
“You’re from… Alaska? And you’re…
bicycling? Across Wales?”
The fact that two tiny little people with blonde plaits had arrived in
Machynlleth (population 2,147) by bicycle was clearly unfathomable. That all four of us were residents of Fairbanks
was, quite literally, not on his map. “Um…
What brought you here?”
He was not the first Welshman to show a
distinct lack of ego about his Bonsai-sized homeland. As one cheerful rural
farmer put it, why would a family from Alaska want to visit “little old
Wales”?
All along our route, we were met with a
similarly humble, perplexed, startled-but-welcoming attitude. And I, in return, was humbled, startled, and
perplexed. Because… castles! Expansive views across stolen-from-time
picturesque farmland! Ancient ruins!
Unspoiled stone-built villages! An amazingly cool display on Alternative
Technology! Tea and scones with heaps of jam and fresh clotted cream! Why
WOULDN’T American tourists – including that peculiar breed, the Alaskan -- want
to come to such an idyllic place?
When I say that the
Welsh seemed modest about their nation, I don’t mean that they didn’t appear to
be socially distinctive and culturally proud. Red dragons fluttered from flagstaffs. Jay crammed startling numbers of Welsh cakes
into his handlebar bag. I was pleasantly
surprised to find that in many cozy cafés and pubs, the four of us were the
only English-speakers amidst a boisterous barrage of words that my ears did not
seem to be able to parse at all. Indeed, the difficulty that English-speakers
experience with the Welsh language seems to be, in itself, a source of pride. Way back in the 1860s, residents of one small
town decided to rename their home, “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch”*.
Why? Well, the official answer is “for
promotional purposes”, but quite possibly the real reason may be that the
national sport of Wales involves gentle torment of those who cannot wrap their
tonsils around Welsh consonants.
This was brought home to me in the tiny
Rhayader Information Centre. “Llanidloes”, said the grinning clerk.
I stood there, bike helmet still fastened
beneath my chin, trying to weasel my way out of attempting that “Ll” (let alone
the “dl” that followed) while asking about camping options in the next town. I pointed at its name on a map.
The clerk’s eyes twinkled. “Llanidloes,” he repeated.
I tried.
I failed. I tried again,
laughing. One of my small side-kicks,
with the effortless linguistic flexibility of childhood, smiled back
conspiratorially at the clerk.
“Llanidloes”, she said. And then
they both laughed at me -- but in the nicest possible way.
This mischievous whimsy, I discovered, wasn’t
limited to place names. At the Centre
for Alternative Technology we didn’t just get to examine that excellent
floor-map and ride a way-cool water-powered tram; we also learned, from the
neatly bilingual signs labeling various electrical appliances, that the Welsh neologism
for a microwave oven is a “popty ping”.
Popty ping! Could any small nation be more delightfully
lacking in a Napoleon complex? A country
that is willing to show the whole world its popty ping obviously feels it has
nothing to prove. 
And yet, strangely, the whole world didn’t
seem to be there to appreciate all that Machynlleth had to offer. When planning our bike trip, I imagined that
we’d cross paths with lots of like-minded foreigners on similar ventures -- but
we didn’t. True, we found English tourists somewhat ironically cluttering up
the castles that were once sacked and besieged in bold defiance of unwanted
dominion from the east. Atop the
delightfully precipitous turrets of Caernarfan, the small children ignoring warnings
to “be careful” were chided in accents of London, Birmingham, Liverpool, or
Leeds. The Welsh were invariably kind to these interlopers, yet seemed to have
no expectation that the allure of their green hills might extend past the edge
of the English Channel or the coast of the North Sea.
But… why not? Not only were the nearby attractions
appealing (did I mention castles?), but I was heartily impressed by the availability
of numerous well-planned and well-marked bicycle routes. These routes kept riders almost entirely on
superbly bikeable byways, using not only mile upon mile of dedicated bike paths
and greenways, but also Britain’s incredible tangle of miniscule B-roads.
From my memories of childhood
vacations to visit family in the United Kingdom, I recall B-roads with a
mixture of fondness and horror. They are
utterly perfect for biking precisely because they are almost impossible to
drive. My adventuresome and inquisitive
mother, always eager to find the most interesting corners of everywhere, would
sit in the passenger’s seat eagerly reading directions from a guidebook, while
my father struggled to shift gears with the wrong hand, to “keep left” in a
space too narrow to even have a “left”, and to restrict his swearing to a
minimum. We were looking for stone circles left by ancient Celts, or
six-thousand-year-old burial mounds in sheep paddocks. Occasionally, we eventually found these
things. Always, we eventually found a
creaking farm vehicle attempting to navigate the same B-road in the opposite
direction. The laws of physics have
trouble with the B-roads of Britain.
B-roads don’t really
go anywhere – and therein lies their perfection. On our over-laden bikes, with the kids gamely
sweating behind us on tagalongs, we pedaled up hills -- only to immediately
plunge down the other sides. We
meandered past field after field of placid neatly-shorn sheep and outsized
late-summer lambs still optimistically attempting to nurse on mothers barely
larger than themselves. Ripe raspberries
and maddeningly not-quite-ripe blackberries dangled within reach along the
hedgerows. In small pubs jostling with hungry
farmers, an enormous baked potato – a “jacket potato” -- with baked beans and
cheese and a fresh salad cost £2.75. The
kids told us that the local milk tasted happy, and I knew what they meant.
One farmer shifted a dozen sheep to the
next field to make room for our tent, and the beasts spent the evening spurning
the perfectly good grass in their new spot in order to stare at us accusingly. At another “campsite” – again, at which we
were the only campers – our host noticed the twins admiring two squealing
litters of little porkers. He asked the
kids if they’d like to help dole out the daily ration of stale bread, after he
picked it up from his friend at the local bakery. Yes, yes!
They would!
He was gone for a while, and the kids were
wracked with fear that bedtime would arrive before pig-feeding time. When the truck finally pulled back into the
driveway, both girls went tearing across the grass in their nightwear.
“Sorry I took so long,” the farmer said, before
I could apologize for the over-familiarity of my offspring. He told me about the lumber deal he’d been
trying to work out with his brother, about the difficulties of local
ordinances, and about his hopes for rebuilding some outbuildings. The kids hurled crusts. The piglets gobbled. The sun set.
The world was small.
Alaska – and, indeed, much of America – is
impressive on a grand scale. Denali,
recently reaffirmed in its proper and rightful Native name, is so imposing that
it often commands our horizon from a hundred miles away. The majesty of our vast landscape inspires me
- but I am not always looking for majesty.
I thought I understood where Molly was
coming from, when she told the nice young man with the map that his country was
diminutive. She wasn’t merely proud and
pleased to see how far we’d come, in the four and a half days of our journey
thus far, and how relatively small a distance we still had left to cover, in
the remaining two-and-a-half days in this Welsh leg of it. Her joy was also intrinsic to the smallness
of Wales. It was akin to her pleasure
(and her sister’s) in building intricate little dioramas, racing Hot Wheels along
miniature tracks, and sewing realistic snowpants for dolls. There is something deeply pleasing about
being able to experience the adventure and excitement of a whole new world on a
scale that feels Lilliputian.
Yeah, it sounds appallingly patronizing to
imply that an entire nation, language, and culture is “twee”. I wouldn’t blame every single incredibly
kindly Welsh person who offered help, advice, directions, or a cheerful wave to
the family of stupidly lost and confused Americans for wanting to whack me with
a partially dried cow-pat for sounding like such an arrogant bastard. But “twee” is not really what I mean. What I realized – and what the kids
discovered too, I think – is that Wales was a complex, personal, immersive adventure
perfectly proportioned for bicycles. It
was letting a calf suck on your fingers, admiring the enormous slugs, noticing
that every single sheep says “baaa” in a distinctly different voice, and
wondering why someone had carefully built an old microwave into a stone
wall. Popty ping!
On our bicycles, we found that B-roads
don’t really go anywhere – and in going nowhere, they go everywhere that
matters.
* The name means “Saint Mary’s Church in
the Hollow of the White Hazel Near the Rapid Whirlpool of Llantysilio of the
Red Cave”. To hear it pronounced, go
here: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bd/Cy-Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch_%28Welsh_pronunciation%2C_recorded_17-05-2012%29.ogg
