Saturday 6 August 2022

Friday 5th August 2022

Bad night's sleep...woken around 0130 by the extractor fan in the bathroom making a sort of screeching drone-like noise...it went on for about an hour-and-a-half! I eventually got up and shut the bathroom door, then stuck a pillow over my head. The remainder of the night seemed to be taken up with vivid dream sequences...but I couldn't recall much on waking in the morning. The only snippet that resurfaced was as I walked out of a dark pedestrian tunnel into a verdant park, I happened to meet a lady dressed in white coming toward me...she had bare feet, and was holding her white shawl up to her face...when she got within two metres of me, she started walking backwards, maintaining the two metre gap, still holding the shawl to her face, and said "You look like a brown turd". Charming! Alarm at 0730. Went downstairs for breakfast, then packed up and checked out. Needed to get on the road fairly promptly. The inspections took me up the Tawe valley, then across the Heads of the Valley road and down to Porth, near Pontypridd, then on down to Barry. Got held up by a lorry fire just off junction 33 of the M4, so was a little behind schedule by the time I finished in Barry. Drove down to the beach at Barry Island to find some lunch. What a dump it is! Tatty old buildings barely more than shacks, a noisome fairground, and it was heaving. Had to walk the length of the Promenade to find the loos, then bought an uninspiring ham and cheese panini and a chocolate muffin for lunch. I was going to sit on a bench and brave the dive-bombing seagulls, but it was very windy, so I ate in the car in the car park, then set off for the M4 and home. Stopped for a brief rest stop at Reading services, and got home at 1900. Aki had cooked a tasty chicken tagine for dinner.

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