Day 18 (part 2) – Landrillo, Snowdonia and Portmeirion

After farewelling mum, we headed off to Portmeirion, the seaside locale where weird and strange building features go to retire. Bizarre features, out of place architecture, statues that would otherwise be considered grotesque, and random hanging sheep signs are the norm here. So far, so weird. The place’s cool credentials come from being the location where The Prisoner, that fabulous piece of 1960s British SF starring Patrick McGoohan, was filmed. This allows the bizarre and grotesque to also be strangely familiar. It’s a cool, if strangely bizarre place, with groovy The Prisoner merchandise.

From there it was a fairly easy drive back to the TL. L has insisted on driving, giving me plenty of timee to look out the window and marvel at the Welsh countryside. Water pouring from everywhere, great fast-flowing clear mountain streams, sheep, great Victorian stone arched bridges. It’s a pretty amazing place really. One I’d like to come back to and explore further. Thanks, Mum, for dragging my sorry arse to this wonderful land.

Dinner tonight was again pretty fantastic. Not a lot of wow, but a big pile of yum. Another fine amuse bouche, including half a scotch egg and a small creamy laverbread tart, with a Californian Zinfandel on the side. Soup starter was a lovely pumpkin, with bits of roasted chestnut. Entree was vincisgrasse, like a little lasagne without meat and bechamel, but with yummy porcini and truffle. Main was a festival of pork, trotter, belly layered with black pudding, fillet, and something else really yummy. I’d have to take a mark off for making all that pork without any crackling, but is was pretty good otherwise. Dessert was the chocolate marquise, a delightful layered rich chocolate experience with creme fraiche and a fabbulous vanilla burnt toffee icecream. The marquise was good, but the icecream was better, I would have been happy with a bucket of that.

So altogether a pleasant day, ending with a full belly. Was tempted to have a bath but don’t actually have a physical book to  read. I’ll see if I can rectify this in Edinburgh tomorrow, once I’ve worked out where I’m up to with Inspector Rebus. I have been doing a bunch of reading on my laptop, and have more books to get on with, but I’m feeling a bit weird not having any paperbacks in among my packings. Fix that tomorrow.

And now we’re up to date.