Jonathan Meades on writing, televison and Blaenau Ffestiniog

It must be a good couple of days since I linked to an interview with Jonathan Meades, so here is one from Scrawl:

“I hate the word ‘broadcaster’… I am a… writer and… er… writer. I write books, I write journalism, I write films. I appear in those films but I wouldn’t call myself a ‘broadcaster’ – it’s a deathly sounding word, some terrible fool waving his arms around and speaking a script that’s been written by someone else.

More importantly, the great man says: "I love Shropshire."

Conwy

From Blaenau Ffestiniog I took the railway to Conwy, a perfect walled town with a huge Medieval castle:

The first time that visitors catch sight of the castle, commanding a rock above the Conwy Estuary and demanding as much attention as the dramatic Snowdonia skyline behind it, they know they are in the presence of a historic site which still casts a powerful spell.

Conwy, constructed by the English monarch Edward I between 1283 and 1289 as one of the key fortresses in his 'iron ring' of castles to contain the Welsh, was built to prompt such a humbling reaction.

It is equally impressive glimpsed across the river as the train takes you to Llandudno Junction.

Blaenau Ffestiniog

At the other end of the Ffestiniog Railway from Porthmadog stands Blaenau Ffestiniog. This little town is dominated by the relics of the slate industry and is now trying to make a living from tourism, even though it was pointedly excluded when the boundaries of the Snowdonia National Park were drawn.

The slate industry must have been enormously profitable at one time. The little railways that traverse the landscape of North Wales were built to service it, and the standard guage Conway Valley line that links the town with the coast almost at once dives into a two-mile tunnel.

The Ffestiniog Railway

I left Porthmadog by way of the Ffestiniog Railway.

Last time I travelled on it, in 1977, the line was open only as far as Dduallt. The last stretch into Blaenau Ffestiniog had been lost when the Central Electricity Generating Board created the Tanygrisiau reservoir in 1954. The railway people finally won compensation in 1972 after one of the longest legal cases in history. Weren't nationalised industries wonderful?

The Ffestiniog was even more spectacular than I had remembered. I will have to go back one day to try the Welsh  Highland, which sounds more remarkable still.

"We were lost, but we knew where we were"

To get to Portmeirion I caught the Ffestiniog Railway across The Cob and got off at Minfford, the first station up the line.

On the way I chatted to a retired man. He said that he could join the railway society for a few pounds a year. This meant that if the fancy took him after he had come into Porthmadog for a coffee, he could take the train to Blaenau Ffestiniog and back for no extra fare.

He had grown up in Porthmadog and he and his friends used to play in the extensive woods around Portmeirion as a boy. "We got lost. Well, we were lost, but we knew where we were."

There is something profound about the nature of play in there somewhere.