My husband and I stay for a week most summers in Portmeirion, the strangest and loveliest ‘village’ in the world. Built amid 20 miles of woodland on the peninsula of Tremadog Bay in Wales, it was called ‘a home for fallen buildings’ by its creator Clough Williams-Ellis, a local landowner. It was opened in 1926, and George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell were early visitors; Noël Coward wrote Blithe Spirit here in 1941. I won’t try to describe it; if you’ve never seen it, just google it and prepare to be astonished.
But oy, the drive! In the past we’ve motored from Brighton through Birmingham, a trip of more than eight hours. This time, we stopped at a hotel near Shrewsbury created by Williams-Ellis for luvvies who couldn’t make it all the way without a dry martini or a wet wash: the Mytton and Mermaid.
The mermaid is the symbol of Portmeirion — but the Mytton bit is nowhere near as enchanting. ‘Mad Jack’ Mytton was a local squire who devoted his life to causing havoc; he took 2,000 bottles of port to Cambridge, predictably leaving without a degree, and his favourite dogs were fed on steak and champagne. He once rode a bear into his drawing room; she bit him on the leg and survived, but later attacked a servant and was put down. He killed a horse by forcing it to drink port; he threw his wife’s lapdog into a fire and died bankrupt in jail. Still, what a gorgeous place the hotel is! We sat in the grounds drinking martinis in the blazing sun by the river Severn before a lovely dinner at ‘Mad Jack’s Bar’.
It would take us just two more hours to reach Portmeirion, and we were soon driving through Snowdonia where, last year, a bunch of al-Qa’eda wannabes from Luton took several trips in order to prepare themselves for Afghanistan.
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