12 Sep. - Llandudno

Image: Cable tram ascending the Great Orme

Llandudno - Victorian seaside splendour!

The endless wall of elegant hotels, the promenade so wide, the pebble beach so still - facing the Irish Sea + distant ranks of wind turbines, the fun pier - tawdry + half 'Closed for Business' but replete with ice cream, candy floss, hot donuts, rides + fair games, tacky souvenirs, a bar + tea room - twins on the 'T' at the end + flanking the dodgems + anglers.
Best of all 'Zoltar' (from Big) canvasing for his own customers.

And then the Great Orme - ancient limestone, tall + immovable, resisting aeons of the wind it creates, but scarred by man for millennia - bronze age copper mines, iron age roundhouse hill-forts, neolithic cromlech lonely + abandoned by all, bar donkeys - but among it all, 'Happy Valley' + the cable tramway - filled with frail pensioners, remembering perhaps the ice cream + sun of youthful summers past?

Notes: Is there anything so poignant as neglected splendour? The Japanese concept of 'wabi sabi', finding beauty in the acceptance of transience and imperfection, seems apt.