Back in early 80s, there was that sad advert from the Welsh Development Agency for bringing your business to Wales. It had a Welsh male voice choir singing a song about all the businesses that were thriving in the land, and ended with the phrase 'made in Wales'.
Not the Nine O'Clock News delivered its own version of the ad... in fact three versions. I remember them all as if they were yesterday. There was 'Laid in Wales' (Rhonwen, Dilys, Glenda etc), 'Failed in Wales' (a litany of light industrial disasters), and (my own personal favourite) 'Made from Whales'.
It's been a troubled land, devastated by the closure of the mines and not helped in the public image stakes by the fact that we have all had a very wet holiday there. But maybe the times they are a changing. The Gower peninsula is, frankly, drop dead beautiful, and it's beginning to feel like provincial might one day be cool again. It wasn't so long ago that suburbs were aspirational, and house prices may be turning gentrifiers into pioneers once more.
And you could do a hell of a lot worse than live half an hour from Llangennith:
The good part is, it's inaccessible, empty, cheap and friendly. Most of the people we saw were people who live in South Wales having a grand old time in South Wales. Which (as someone who grew up on the coast herself) is how it should be.
The bad part is that City boy surfers have discovered that the Gower is just as close as Cornwall and much cheaper. Which is probably good for the local economy, but bad for those of us without SUVs and mountains of disposable income.
Still. In the meantime, it's fab. I don't even *like* the great outdoors and I loved playing out this weekend.
joella
joella
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