COASTING AND CASTLING

So where we are, the TV is tuned to Wales for some reason (glacial movements probably). This has inadvertently led to a little ‘treat’ for the Intrepids thanks to Welsh Channel S4C.

Who knew this? At night when there are no Welsh-language programmes to show, S4C puts on footage of the Welsh coastline with a soporific backing track of Welsh music. The helicopter slowly tracks around Wales to the gentle harps and vocals of traditional Celtic tunes.

It’s fair to say that the Intrepids are riveted: I mean edge-of-the-seat excited, about what might be coming up next! Abertawe! the Mumbles! Three Cliffs Bay! Oxwich! - all the places from previous holidays they’ve been on over the years... from the air. They’re glued to the telly.

“When we see Worm’s Head,” my Mum just said, referring to a particular outcrop of rocks on The Gower, “I’m going to bed.”

I’m not sure it’s the best sign when a highlight of your current holiday is an aerial tour of all your previous ones.

Especially when today, the weather actually brightened up! The overnight rain eased and blue skies greeted us on the road to Dunster. By the time we got there, it was really hot.

Dunster’s a small medieval market town. At one end of the high street, the octagonal Yarn Market sits squat in the middle of the road, at the other, the tree line rises to a great castle that overlooks the town. Between them, the long street stretches with timber framed buildings of painted colour stone, and low fascias, housing modern coffee shops and curio-sellers, Tudor jewellery stores and old-fashioned sweet shops.

I think it’s been used for quite a few TV shows. You can see why. The street is very picturesque. The turrets and windows of the castle face the pretty little town below for a reason: on the hill, the owners, down below, the villagers. Est. c~1066 along with the rest of the feudal system.

The Intrepids wanted to visit the Dolls Museum, so I sat outside on a bench, enjoying the sunshine, somewhere between the Castle and the market. Blue sky, warm sun, white clouds and shade. It was a beautiful moment.

At some point, the descendants of the landowners up there, ran out of money. One died without a will, leaving crippling death duties on his son, who then had to sell off half the village just to stay afloat. Eventually, in the 60s, the castle was left to one old lady, who dwindled out her last days there as the last of a long chain of landlords before her, and then the National Trust took over its running. It is a thing that’s happened to a lot of old places.

We went up the very steep slope to Dunster Castle. The path wound gently round the hill through exquisite grounds - gunneras and gerberas, black grass and alliums, fronds and flowers, hollyhocks and pokers of red and yellow and blue, all sprang up along the circular route that twisted up to the castle.

There at the top, with the finest views of sea and village, was the magnificent building. Stone towers, arched windows, arrow-slits, flags fluttering - all intact and looking splendid in the afternoon sun.

It’s not the original Norman castle. Oliver Cromwell blew that one to pieces for reasons of military precision I won’t go into. Since then, it was rebuilt, and then subsequently altered over the next three centuries to become the grand castle it is today.

We went inside. It’s really well done. Libraries and private studies, bedrooms, bathrooms, the drawing room, the inner and outer halls, the breakfast room, even a room full of plants. A lot of it Is exactly what you’d expect: dark green Victorian wallpaper with gold feathering, mahogany bookcases, plush chairs and sofas by a head-high marble mantelpiece, a grand piano tucked into an alcove with bronze busts on high shelves. There are paintings and wooden floorboards and grand staircases with banisters carved exquisite from elm, there are long, tall windows set into the stone facade that look out onto the pleasant grounds and of course the sea. High backed velvet chairs surround polished wooden tables and lamps stand on plinths like statues in the corner, all under ornate and shapely ceilings. It is all delicately grand.

“What were your impressions?” I asked the Intrepids as we blinked back out into the sunshine.

“That’s a lot of house for one old lady,” said my Mum.

We fancied an ice cream after that, so it was back to Minehead for a cone of afternoon sunshine by the seafront. Inexplicably I chose ‘rum ‘n’ raisin’ while honeycomb and mint choc chip were also available. Call it a spirit of adventure. The sticky ice cream dribbled deliciously down my hand as I licked the raisins out of the cone.

I was really glad the sun came out today. That made things look a lot brighter, and a lot friendlier. We’d managed to pick a moment once again when the tide was far out, and that always makes the channel look so much less inviting. Nevertheless, further along at Minehead, the beach does still turn a little sandier, and I expect more summery when the flat waves start rolling in and the sun sparkles from the sea like diamonds.

Tomorrow, the weather should be sunny again, so we do wonder whether it might be much more of a picnic-chairs on the sand day. I like those because I usually get a lot of reading done, listening to the waves. I guess the Intrepids like those because they can sit and think about how far round the coastline stretches and whether one day, they might see this narrow stretch of very same beach... on a TV channel that doesn’t have anything better to put on.

Honestly, they were absolutely riveted.