Back in 1965, a teenaged Scrobs was on a short holiday with his family in Wales, and we stayed in a converted chapel miles away from anywhere! It really was very bleak, and why such a fervent place of worship should be so far from the flock it was meant to administer, I've never understood! But anyway, I remember it clearly as quite a pleasant place, and incredibly quiet and peaceful.
My dad took a few photos, and when we cleared out their house back in the nineties, I kept them, as one does!
The tree line to the left is actually the River Severn, but merely a stream at that point!
Dad's Vauxhall VX490 TDY 175 parked further along.
Scrobs at seventeen...
It had a huge fireplace, and my mum had come equipped with several packets of John Player Mild fags, and dad had brought several of the new style Ind Coope beer cans - the sort you opened with a sort of triangular spanner! So all was well with the world!
Scrobs back then carried fewer ounces of course, and that was possibly going to change, but of course, he didn't know that back then, fifty-five years ago...
But...I could never remember the address of the place! I knew roughly the area (most of South Wales), and that was it!
Fast forward to the recent lockdown times - Scrobs is in the roof, clearing some of the usual dross which has accumulated over the years, and his old writing case appears from nowhere! A quick shufti through the contents brought forward some old letters, and lo and behold, a couple of these missives were from a certain holiday home to the west of Llanidloes! An internet search, however, came to nought, and I spent ages poking around country lanes, 'driving' past all sorts of barren landscapes, and getting nowhere!
Cue a chum here, Mr MC, (Morbid Curiosity - on the right), who immediately found a list of all the redundant chapels in Wales, and their locations! Superb deduction!
The rest is history, and here is the exact chapel, modified a bit around the front door, and clearly a happy home in the hills for someone who treasures such idyllic surroundings!
29 comments:
Glad you found it a last.
I wish it was as straightforward trying to find Jim Morrisons grave at Pere Lachaise cemetery in Paris. Took us half a day, 110 acres with over a million interred there including Edith Piaf, Marcel Proust, Frédéric Chopin, Baron Haussmann, Eugène Delacroix, Amadeo Modigliani, Camille Pissaro, Victor Noir, Gertrude Stein, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde, Victor Noir, Molière, Jean de La Fontaine, Honoré de Balzac, Isadora Duncan, Max Ernst, Sarah Bernhardt, , Marcel Mareau etc.
But an amazing place...very gothic, one place I would not like to be at night, the architecture of the mausoleums is fascinating
https://frenchmoments.eu/pere-lachaise-cemetery
A great little story, cheering as usual. Place looks much like places I pass in North Wales, they all seem to accumulate 'stuff' outside.
To my eye it seems to have been more idyllic then than it is now.
If you were 17 then, makes you same age as Alice Cooper, Robert Plant and Ozzy Osbourne ? and of course Prince Charles !
You should form an Ozzy Osbourne tribute band: The Blizzard of Scrob
Ha ha ha, MrMC!
Asamatterafac, I'm exactly the same age as Brian May! (In the pic, I was nearing leaving school)!
http://scroblene-webley-bullock.blogspot.com/2017/07/a-silver-sixpence.html
Have you seen Jim Davidson and Alex Bellfield with some version of Ozzy clambering about being hilarious?
I guess you're right, Mr H.
In the original pic, you can just see the boundary to the forest, in the new one, there's all sorts of writing, presumably in several languages...
Thanks Thud, I really can remember it quite well!
There was a sort of stage at the far end, divided into two bedrooms, but I slept by the fire on a camp bed! Now I wonder if the raised area was for a choir, or an altar!
Back then, my dad was told by his doctors to keep more than extra calm, as he was always getting high blood pressure problems, and wouldn't sit still, hence renting the place miles from anywhere!
Hav not seen that would love to
Anyway Something for the morning ? Marillion in Aylesbury Market !
2007 08 26 Marillion with Fish Market Square, Aylesbury Market Square Heroes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lID4e1CnKfQ&list=FL-8etUSLIShORNoSkhfqGEg&index=67
It's on his channel, and I seem to remember, about a few minutes in...
Good to see Fish on form! Steve R is putting on a few pounds isn't he!
Yes a little rotund !
Thanks for your JP link, I have now posted a "home video" as part of my travels in China which shows the nightmare traffic
BTW she crashed the car last week in England and looking at their driving styles the only wonder is how long it took
Oh that is gorgeous! Well done! I too have a Welsh holiday memory. I was 10 and we rented a VW camper and the family set off. It rained hard every day. I didn't enjoy camping again until much later when whisky, live music and herbal enhancements were involved.....
Not much chance of camping now, that Kids Company Charity founder, that Batmanddggkkkfff woman, looks like she has bought all the available tents for her dresses
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter performs Rikki Don't Lose That Number live at the NAMM Show 2016 TEC Awards in Anaheim, CA. Featuring Kipp Lennon on vocals, Nathan East on bass, CJ Vanston on keys and the Larry Batiste 2Cold Chili Bone TEC Band.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xN0hmNS_IU
Lils, that's marvellous to read! Wasn't there a special compartment in every VW camper van for such materials? It was placed under the dash on the passenger's side...
And, as an aside, I found an old address book from the 1960s the other day, and your name appeared from an address in Windsor!
Surely it wasn't you, or was it?
If so, it'd be an even more astounding conicidence than finding out that you really were Bunty!
MC - Kids Company - a false flag for Cameron's ineptitude, and a nasty person getting money for nothing!
Thanks for the link about SD, now it's warming up, I have an unfinished tape in the shed...
Scrobs
I used to do similar work with kids at risk of offending and diversionary projects, at one time reducing offences by 40 % in a town on tha school Xmas holiday break up day, by putting on a proper gig. Cost us about £400 and some officer time (first time I put on a "rap band" never again they turned up at 10pm 5 hours late with a scratched CD to sing along to, never ever happened wth the rock bands I used to put on)
My point is that funds were limited (non existent now) and as a local authority I had a duty of care (moral duty I felt) to get best value often by thinking outside the box, and there were also volunteers willing to help as I did on weekends ,
Never ever heard of someone getting paid £90 000 to do this, that Batman bingo wings woman is disgusting like many of the left the first and most important thing is looking after number one and getting very well remunerated FIRST before they lift a finger,
" I too have a Welsh holiday memory"
Mine goes back to 1987 - I spent a week staying at a rental cottage in the wilds somewhere near Dolgellau. It so happened to be the time when "Pirate" radio stations in Ireland were facing the axe, due to new legislation. I took the opportunity to make some recordings for posterity, and spent many hours on the hillside overlooking Fairbourne with radios, tape decks and a home-brewed directional aerial. I just dug out the cassette storage box to check the date, and really must have a listen to them once more. One song was being played to death at the time - Rick Astley's "Never Going To Give You Up". I have to admit (slightly embarrassing though it may be) that whenever I hear this song it instantly transports me back to that hillside, and happier times...
Nice one, Microdave!
I didn't realise that the Irish stations were still going as recently as that!
I did hoever record a Radio Caroline (I think - Tommy Vance was presenting), concert back in 1979 and still have the reel-to-reel in the roof...
(Actually, just checking and the Wiki article is too long for now)!
MrMC will now present several versions of your Rick Astley song, and transport you back to the valleys...
NOOOOo oooo oooo
The difference Between Rick Astley and a row of milk bottles, you can get a decent tune out of the milk bottles
Aw gwaaaan - you know you want to...:0)
Actually, Microdave has hit a chord, and here's one I made earlier...
https://scroblene-webley-bullock.blogspot.com/2019/07/about-this-time-of-year-scrobs.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcOOp7QsI3U&ab_channel=doowopbob44
There's a blank on the post...
Have you heard this ?
Robert Fripp & Peter Gabriel - Here Comes The Flood (1979)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weSQcz-UyDM
That's one of my favourite PG songs ever! I've never heard that version - thank you!
Another one coming up later...
The Irish "Pirates" I referred to were broadcasting on the domestic FM band, hence the directional aerial and needing to be on a hillside several hundred feet up. I think there are still some weekend shortwave stations about, but thanks to a neighbour with a "Powerline" internet extension adaptor (and the ensuing horrendous interference), I don't often fire the SW radio up these days.
I've got a dozen or so reel-to-reel tapes on the shelf in front of me, including one containing the entire Radio Caroline Easter Weekend Top 500 broadcast. This was done using single track @ 1⅞ IPS tape speed, giving 6 hours per side (1,800 ft). My old Philips N7150 is getting decidedly dodgy now, and I keep meaning to digitise this collection, but although lockdown gives a perfect excuse it has also destroyed any enthusiasm to get started.
I can recall my Grandad's old portable valve radio, which had a tiny spring-loaded pin concealed in the side of the case, such that opening the lid switched it on. I also had a mains powered valve set with the ubiquitous "Magic Eye" tuning indicator. Then the age of the transistor arrived, and we had what I think was a "GEC Transistor 16", although a Google search doesn't confirm this description. It had a special "Bandspread" section of the MW band, specifically to make reception of the Offshore Pirates easy.
That reads like an A-level requirement for 'The Thirty-nine Steps', Microdave!
I've got an old reel-to-reel in the roof (chum-bought from a boot sale - 50p), with a Tesco bag of tapes, from 'The Goons', through Crosby and Nash, a live concert by 'America' (Horse with no name), to the first ever recorded 'words' of a few-months-old daughter - c. 1974...
Really must get them down and copy them...
Just reading the biography of that charming chap Peter Grant, the Led Zeppelin manager, who had a habit of assaulting various people.
One of his favourites was to attack anyone in the audience with recording apparatus. At one venue he smashed up the equipment and dragged the individual backstage for another beating to find he had attacked the local aurthority noise monitoring officer.
I would have liked to see his next council rates bill..
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