Staycation destination: Dwyryd Estuary and Portmeirion in north Wales
When I heard that insurer AXA aims to get customers “back to the good stuff” after life’s mishaps, I had no doubt what that good stuff would mean to me.
I think everyone has their own “happy place” – a place they go to in their heads when sleepless or stressed, a place where the sky is forever blue. Mine is a tiny house in north Wales, directly across the Dwyryd Estuary from Portmeirion, the famous Italianate village whose columns, arches and towers of pastel pinks and yellows rise above the water like a mirage.
My blood is mixed in with the stones of that house: 40 years ago I helped raise a new roof on the building, when it was just a tumbledown shack with a stream running through its one room – I cut myself during the work, and still bear the scar. Even before that, the place was in my blood. It belonged to my grandfather Richard Hughes, a writer, who lived in the main house nearby. I would spend the long, hot summers of my childhood there with a succession of cousins hunting for crabs and shells, playing pirates or climbing mountains, always ending with tea and bara brith cake.
The little house is still in our family, and I’ve visited every year, but lockdown was the first time I had spent a whole year without seeing it. My heart yearned for that first view of the estuary, when the car snakes up the long drive and crests the hill and the whole panorama is revealed: the range of mountains, from flat-topped Moel-y-Gest and the pointed peaks of Snowdon and Cnicht to the undulating Moelwyns; the mysterious, perfectly round island, like a giant button waiting to be pressed; and the estuary waters that lap the edge of our garden gate at the highest tide and at low tide empty to reveal a limitless stretch of sand rivalling any beach in the world.
So we set off, my new partner Ilana and I, for our first adventure together outside London. We talked for hours, and as we crossed the Welsh border we played musical consequences: I put on a song, and Ilana followed with another inspired by it, and so on. But I was worried – would Ilana, a Londoner, see this rustic idyll as I saw it? Or would she see only a basic home with no internet and no TV, and nothing for miles but sand, water and sheep droppings?
What does ‘the good stuff’ mean to you? On a journey back to the rural idyll of his childhood holidays in north Wales, Dominic Wells discovers that it’s all about family, home, happy memories – and having a special someone to share them with
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Car cover to give you peace of mind
Every driver knows that sometimes mishaps happen… and when they do, AXA insurance understands that you want to get back on the road, and back to all the things you enjoy in life – “the good stuff” – as soon as possible.
AXA car insurance covers you for those bad luck moments, like reversing into a bollard, or returning to your car and finding the wing dented and scraped by another driver or even a shopping trolley (yes, it’s a hazard in supermarket
car parks).
Of course, AXA can’t stop those mishaps happening but it can get your claim and repair sorted swiftly – and will even give that repair a lifetime guarantee*. You can register your claim online quickly and easily, at a time to suit you. And with up to 99.7 per cent of claims paid**, it is easy to see why Defaqto gave AXA car insurance a 5 Star rating for 2021.
At that first view, Ilana was lost for words. I switched off the car engine, and we drank it in. “You never told me it was this beautiful,” she said at last, and I relaxed. Over the next few days, we visited Portmeirion, where I told Ilana how I, too, owed my existence to its eccentric architect, Clough Williams-Ellis. Nearly 100 years ago, my grandfather got a call from Clough. A young artist, Frances Bazzley, was coming to stay at Portmeirion – would he mind picking her up from the train station? So Grandad took his rickety old motorbike, which he used to joke didn’t so much go from place to place as from time to time, and deposited Frances on the back, her hands wrapped round his waist. And, reader, she married him…
I took Ilana to the Second World War bomb crater, now overgrown, where I played as a boy, sliding down its sandy slopes as though surfing; to the farm where I used to collect warm milk fresh from the cow, in a metal churn half as tall as myself, struggling back with it to the house; to St Michael’s, the little 12th-century chapel over the hill where my grandparents, uncle and aunt found their final resting place.
And I showed her the huge old tree, which my grandmother once sent me and a pack of rowdy cousins to eat our tea in: “If you’re going to act like monkeys at the table,” she had threatened, “you can live like monkeys.”
As we swung in the branches with our sandwiches and bananas, we thought what a fool Granny was: this was a reward, not a punishment! Until I was laid low by a stomach ache, inevitable after eating while flying madly through the branches, and I had ample time in bed to ponder the wisdom of her lesson…
To impress Ilana, I also laid on the usual Welsh attractions of castles, gardens and seaside cafes. It was fun, but, like me, she realised that it’s not the really good stuff.
The good stuff is the ties of family, the tug of home, the palimpsest of memories laid over a familiar place. And the revelation, when you share all this with that special someone you have the blind good fortune to meet who might still turn the autumn of your life into summer, that you really are kindred souls.
*All repairs carried out by our approved repairers are guaranteed throughout the time you own your car
**Data relates to personal motor insurance claims for policies underwritten by AXA Insurance UK plc from January to December 2020
Past and present: clockwise from above, the Italianate village of Portmeirion;
the view from the little house Dominic has known since childhood; St Michael’s, where his grandparents are buried
Dominic Wells (pictured here with his partner Ilana) is a Times travel writer, editor and screenwriter. He and Ilana journeyed through the evocative memories of Dominic’s youth
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