Are you going to Abergavenny?

 

Ah, passing the time with paradise people

Paradise people are fine by me

Sunshine forever, lovely weather

Don’t you wish you could be……..

here comes the sun?

So goes the second verse of the immortal song sung by Marty Wilde (piece of trivia – he is the father of Kim Wilde).  Needless to say we arrived to be greeted by a monsoonal downpour.  My lovely husband led me past the line of waiting cabs and said that we would walk to our hotel as it was not far.  We donned our full hooded raincoats that we had not worn since Vietnam and headed off down the hill.  We arrived at our destination totally soaked leaving a trail of water in the bar.  We were staying at the Kings Arms Hotel, a late 16^th century coaching inn, which was charming.

See they do exist

Lucky for us the next day dawned without a cloud in the sky and we could get out and explore the town.  My grandmother was born in Abergavenny, which is why we decided to spend a few days here.  It is an old market town, nestled in a valley, and we were warned that it would get busy on market day.  Busy – it turned into a massive throng of people, most of them over 60 years of age.  The market was much larger than you would imagine for such a relatively small village.  It was great fun looking through the different stalls and listening to the lovely Welsh lilt.  We didn’t hear many Welsh accents in Cardiff as it is quite a multicultural city.  Abergavenny however was full of them.  We even heard a little Welsh spoken among some of the older residents.

Abergavenny was such a relaxing place to stay that we extended our visit by another night.  Michael was working but I managed to explore the area, which was full of interesting shops, pubs and restaurants. There was even a sheep sale yard located behind our hotel.  They also had cinema, which we decided to attend one evening.  The movie was showing at 8.00pm so Michael and I went to buy the tickets at 7.30pm only to be told that they don’t open the ticket office until 15 minutes before the start of the movie.  Off we went to the pub down the road to bide the time.  At exactly 7.45pm the entire pub clientele, all eight of us including Michael and I, rose as one and headed the cinema.  What a hoot!

Millennium Tapestry