Juliet, Llanidloes, 18 September 2020

Dad, Richard, Sally, Andrew and I had another full day to kill on Mum’s farewell tour, so we decided to spend it revisiting old haunts.

Dad and I drove from Tal-y-Llyn to Tywyn, every place name on the way arousing old memories: Abergynolwyn, Bryncrug and Dolgoch Falls. We didn’t have time to go on the Talyllyn Railway (inspiration for Thomas the Tank), which runs through Tywyn. A mechanic at heart, Pop was really interested in the railway and we think he donated to it when the original narrow gauge mining railway was repurposed as a tourist attraction.

We drove down to the prom in Tywyn. It’s still as down-at-heel as ever, but a few people were out enjoying the hazy September sunshine.

We went on to Aberdyfi via Nana and Poppa’s old holiday house, Marconi Bungalow. It was half of an old radio station set up by Guglielmo Marconi in a bid to transmit the first messages across the Atlantic, but he eventually abandoned it in favour of a location in Ireland.

The bungalow had a massive attic full of dead bluebottles that we used to play in. It probably originally held the radio equipment. I couldn’t drive right up to the bungalow, which my parents sold in the 1980s, but we could see from the new dormers that the attic has now been coverted to a proper top floor.

Next stop, after passing the farm where I used to help out during school holidays, was the sand dunes where we used to swim.

We met up with the others in Aberdyfi and spent a pleasant afternoon doing nothing in the sunshine. ‘Aber’ means river mouth and Aberdyfi is an estuary town.

The place is still full of holidaying Midlanders. Brummy accents abound. My grandad was just such a midlander when he came to Wales from Solihull in the 1920s. His family owned a garage and, as owners of some of the first motor cars in town, they also drove wealthy families to the seaside.

One of their customers was Louis Wain, a popular cartoonist. I still have one of his books. It was given to Mum when she was 6.

Poppa met Nana when visiting Aberystwyth, probably working as a hired driver with his own car. He used to tell me that he spotted her on the beach playing with a dog and a strand of seaweed and vowed “that’s the girl I’m going to marry”.

Our last port of call was afternoon tea at the Trefeddian Hotel. I was all for staying for a G&T, in fact I would happily have moved in, but the wind got up and it suddenly got chilly so we went back to Tal-y-Llyn, swapping one gorgeous location for another.

Next day, Richard took Dad back to Derbyshire and I drove back straight through the middle of Wales to Cardiff. My route took me back through Llanidloes, Nana’s birthplace. Amazingly enough, I’d never been so I stopped off for lunch and wandered around for a couple of hours.

The trip prompted a lot of questions and half-remembered anecdotes: a great aunt who “died from sitting on a cold doorstep”, Uncle Bonkie (real name Bonsall) who was shell-shocked in World War I… and my great grandfather swinging a dead cat round his head at a political meeting. Chartists, Dad thought, when I spoke to him later.

I visited the churchyard to see the George family graves, but couldn’t go in with Lottie.

I think I might have found a new lockdown hobby – carrying on Mum’s work of researching her family tree. For starters, Nana was born Ellen Maglona George in 1896, one of eight brothers and sisters…