Please watch out for the satirical footnote!
Author Archives: Paul Christopher Walton
The Editor and The Colonel outside The Barn at the Barmouth launch event
Steve had led the guests on a wonderful tour of the headland and Farchynys estate discovering a gazebo, a fire box and old boathouse.
Marians and Van der Graaf Generator Reunited
This picture dates from 2005 and features Babs and I and three great Marian friends: Rog, Malc and Dunc, of whom at least two joined me on trips to Farchynys.
The Mawddach bonding must have been powerful because 40 years after we made the trip, I was able to persuade them to join me at the Royal Festival Hall for the reunion concert of Van der Graaf Generator, a band which was the Marmite of British 70s rock and not particularly famous for moments of easy musical mindfulness. We had a great night.
And today in 2017, it was wonderful to see the banter and the warmth as strong as ever amongst us.
Floreat!
Walsall Market, 1971
Just a hundred miles from the Mawddach estuary, you will find a very different landscape: the sooty, gritty borough of Walsall, where Queen Mary’s school was first established on Church Hill, overlooking the ancient town market. In the early 1970s, I became very familiar with this hill, escorting the fair Babs to Bluecoat School.
From the logbooks
A Field Day Menu from the mid 1980s
From the Farchynys timeline #15
1404 Owain Glyndwr captures Harlech castle and holds a parliament
From the Farchynys Timeline #14
1911: Mines excavated under The Coach House and at The Boat House cliffs
Welshpool – Are we there yet?
In the early days of trips to Farchynys and before the M54 was finally completed in 1983, the journey from Walsall to Farchynys could take at least three and half hours, at first on slatted seats, so a pit-stop and a leg stretch was essential.
Welshpool, or as it is known in Welsh, Y Trallwng, lies on marshes near the Severn just over the border and the perfect place for a re-fuel. Its High Street soon became a popular haunt of the minibus and its Marian passengers searching out morale boosting supplies.
For some years, one of the most sought after emporia was Langford’s, purveyors of pies and sausages which fed and raised the spirits of many a Marian on the Mawddach. Sadly, all good things come to an end and the demise of Langford’s was reported in The Shropshire Star.
50 Years ago this week I went to Mayfield
It was fifty years ago this week that I became a Marian and went to the funky new buildings at Mayfield to begin my career at Queen Mary’s Grammar School.
It was one of the defining events of my life.
In Form 1Z with Mr Philips, I was to meet Paul T and Steve T, and Malcolm W who would become life long friends. We learned how to conjugate latin verbs, to compose a lecturette and make a scrummage and very soon we would be packing our bags for Merioneth.
From the Farchynys Timeline #13
A Gothic Weekend
Farchynys early acquired a reputation for austerity. As The Marian noted in 1965, “A weekend at Farchynys is to a large extent getting by without it; ‘it’ being some of the luxuries of home and the delights of Babylon.” But I wonder what that writer would have made of the spectacular Gothic experiences shared by A- level English students at The Coach House in an appropriately spooky November 2011?
Taking the long view, Gothic experiences are nothing new on the Mawddach. In the early nineteenth century, the area was popular with many writers and artists. Samuel Taylor Coleridge climbed Cadair, Percy Bysshe Shelley visited in 1812 and perhaps inspired by this our latter day Goths were a party of A level sixth formers intent on days of “exploration and transgression” as one them recorded. A suitably sybaritic and uncanny programme included readings of Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto and Marlowe’s Dr Faustus in The Coach House, of Dracula in the Gazebo by torchlight served with popcorn and a performance of The Woman in Black in the suitably ghostly atmosphere of the Church of St. Mary and St. Bodfan, Llanber.
Marians on The Mawddach 