Lost but Found

Driving off in the campervan, our mood was one of eager anticipation at the prospect of a couple of weeks away and a mixed programme of activities – a brace of social engagements, plenty of time for un-planned bimbling and a background project, walking a few more sections of the Wales Coast Path to add to those we had already bagged. As if on cue, a rainbow appeared over the M6, a vivid, perfect arc of colours, shadowed by another, paler version above it: an augury, we agreed.

On day two of our travels, however, I lost my phone. Well, I didn’t lose it exactly, I left it in the back of a taxi and the next fare appropriated it. There is a certain kind of sinking feeling that accompanies the moment of realisation that you have lost something valuable – it used to apply to wallets but now that they are likely to contain nothing more than a few quid, a couple of unusable credit cards and old receipts, it’s more likely to be phones that are the cause of grief. Lost your car keys? It’s a negligible setback: call a cab to get home and fill in the insurance form for compensation. Lost your phone? Lost your life. I woke up in the night fretting about identity theft. Eventually I calmed down, reasoning that I had locked the phone with a password, my partner still had hers and, in any case, where we were going – the west coast of Wales – the chances of catching a cell signal would be slim. I resigned myself to being off-grid.

We had ticked off the social engagements and it was time to do some exploring – of the tame kind i.e. National Trust properties. First up was Claydon House, a vanity project which brought financial ruin to James Verney, partly because he employed Luke Lightfoot, a wood-carver but not an architect, to build it for him. Huge chunks of it were later demolished lest they collapse but it remains a grand house – with some extremely fine wood carvings adorning the interiors. The family’s descendants made a good bargain with the National Trust: they get to live there and have the maintenance taken care of in exchange for allowing the public limited access to the most spectacular parts.

Visits to such places are a snooper’s delight: they afford insights into the families’ intimate histories, as well as revealing socio-historical context. Llanaerchon is a good example. The manor house is at the centre of a self-sufficient country estate, the whole of which has been uniquely preserved by an accident of history. When the lady of the manor was widowed early she did not inherit the property but only the right to remain there as a tenant for the rest of her life and, as such, was not allowed to make any alterations to the place. She lived to be 104.

By the time we set off on our first ten-mile stretch of coast I had almost persuaded myself that I was free from digital enslavement. While my partner expressed periodic frustration at not being able to check email, or even text messages, I exuded an annoying disregard for the urgency of any such communication. ‘Be in the moment’ became my motto. The following day we tackled a 14-mile section of the path, from New Quay to Aberporth, where it rises and falls steeply between the sparsely-populated cliffs and river mouths. Porpoises and seals can be seen out in the sea, they say, but they were too elusive for us. We did, however, spot a radio mast atop a promontory and, for a while, even I became hopeful of a Vodafone signal. There was no such thing, however, and as we passed close by we saw the reason why: “Ministry of Defence Property. Keep Out.”

(In case you’re wondering, this post comes to you courtesy of Cardigan public library.)