Back to the Gower

When Doctor Emmett Brown's plutonium powered DeLorean DMC-12 reached 88 miles per hour it produced enough energy to activate the flux capacitor and travel through time.  

I don't have a flux capacitor.  

I certainly don't have any plutonium.

But on Sunday evening I went back in time in a blue Mazda 3, at about 35 miles per hour.

With Jamie at the wheel and his wife Sarah riding shotgun, I sat in the rear of the little Japanese hatchback as we veered through the narrow streets of Swansea, jamming to Bob Marley.  We hung a left on to an avenue with a Welsh name that had too many consonants and not enough vowels for me to even try to pronounce, but you can give it a go if you like;  "Cwymbwrla."  Yeah... I know.  There must be some RIDICULOUS high scores in a Welsh game of Scrabble.

The road continued to narrow, almost beyond reason.  We drove up a two-way street that was about as wide as one lane in North America.  Every time we passed an oncoming car we must have been only inches from taking off a side mirror.  Perhaps I should have felt a little tense due to these near collisions, but Mr. Marley's reassuring voice was telling me not to worry about a thing, because every little thing was gonna be alright.  And I believed him.  So, I sat back and enjoyed the view out the other side.

It didn't take me long to notice that things were looking a little different.  Everything looked older.  Not run-down, but as if from another era.  

"Jamie," I asked.  "Where are we?"

"We're in the Gower."

"Oh.  Lovely."

The "Gower" is how locals refer to the Gower Peninsula- a beautiful stretch of coast in the South of Wales.  So beautiful in fact, that it was one of the first places in the United Kingdom to be officially designated an "Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty".  Another nickname for the region could be "The Place That Time Forgot", because everything looks exactly as it must have 100 years ago.

Our destination was the village of Port Eynon.  At one time this little port town was booming with oyster fishing, crabbing and lobstering, but the community also has an infamous smuggling history.  At the far end of Port Eynon Bay is an old, derelict Salt House that was once used to extract salt from the sea water.  It is commonly thought that even the Salt House was set up as a cover to smuggle goods (think of it as the Welsh equivalent to an Italian restaurant in New York).

It was here that I turned into a ten year-old boy again.  The ruins were like a playground that I just had to climb.  And climb I did.  I ran ahead of Jamie and Sarah like an excited little kid runs ahead of his parents and started to mount the stone structure.  I climbed over walls and under walls.  Through a window and down a chimney.  My surrogate parents stayed below and took pictures.  I reached the highest part of the ruins and looked out across the bay, humbled by the beauty and vastness.  After a few minutes I looked behind me and realized that the Salt House was just the beginning.  Looking down at "mum and dad" I declared:

"I... have got... to climb that."

 

To Be Continued...