See that? Know what that is? THAT is THE SCARIEST KIND OF ROAD IN ALL OF WALES!
Here's another view! A little less scary, but still? Quite the adventure.
THAT is a what is otherwise known as a C road. Picture yourself driving a foreign car, still getting your bearings, not used to the car or the rules or the signs yet, feeling totally lost. Which, okay, I felt alot...I kid you not, Nick is the navigator and fantastic at it but he liked to send me down things like this!
(While reading the following, imagine us both sitting here telling you all about this, as Nick has gone through what I wrote and added a bunch of stuff. You get to figure out what he added--kinda easy as it is all the navigation stuff and we write nothing alike...right? LOL. Enjoy the ride with us!)
C roads are narrow. Like...car-width narrow. They are also not one-way roads which means ANY SECOND around ANY TURN another car can come and get ya! Once, we were driving down one, and we came upon a woman walking her dog. She laughed when she saw us, this being a VERY VERY narrow C road (and believe me, I drove these roads at maybe 10 mph lol I was so sure we'd get hit). She pressed herself against the side, I think the dog between her and the bushes (on Nick's side, I don't know) until we passed. My stomach was always in knots on these roads! I was very very careful, believe me.
Needless to say, I rather did not want to wreck my pretty Skoda.
We ended up going down alot of those C roads (especially the next day when we headed for the Brecons and got on one that LOL took us in a circle, but you cannot TELL because of the lovely green overgrown bush that kept us from seeing who knows what, we sure don't know. Nothing but green, endless green...
This particular C road however led to the lovely little village of Merthyr Mawr.
Why did we decide to go there? To see the sand dunes, where the shots of Boeshane were filmed, of course. (I promise, not everything we saw was Torchwood-related, but this definitely was).
To give you an idea where in relation to Cardiff and Swansea that place is, right here:

Re: C roads, they are the small grey lines that look random on a map, and they are a bitch to navigate mostly because they are so small and unassuming and easy to miss from a B road or whatever. It's those small one-lane roads that have the tiny signs of "Merthyr Mawr ... 2" at the side of the road that are easy to miss, and it involved in the end a lot of, "look, we came this way, the street now curves this way, so we have to go left to go there," and it's hard to navigate because the map is really small and you can't ever really be sure what curve of the road you are on. (C adds to this: NO WAY COULD I HAVE BOTH DRIVEN AND NAVIGATED! NO WAY!)
One thing that you grow into while navigating is figuring out distances on map/actual road better. Wales is small. At first it seemed a lot bigger on the map and I kept missing exits/intersections (in Penarth for example, the first time we tried to go out to Bman's village) because I didn't expect the intersection to come up just then. After a while though you catch on to navigating with the help of map, road signs and markings on the street, because you cannot really rely on streetnames to guide you in a city, like Cardiff or Penarth, since half the time they are missing.
(C again--watching Touching Evil, and one scene was about that lack of sign! Young girl cop trying to get to serial killer's next meeting place and she reached a road with no sign--cop listening in had to look at map and tell her to take a left! Always an adventure driving over there, oh my. No street signs. Seriously. Maybe 1-2 for every 10 streets. WHY?!)
Anyway, after this trip out to Merthyr Mawr I'd gotten the hang of it. The difficulty was really figuring out what a road sign would be for that I needed to be looking for, and to give you an idea, this is the map I used since Merthyr Mawr wasn't part of my very detailed therefore way bigger on map Newport-Cardiff map book anymore:

This is going to be tedious now but it was the biggest 'no, I want to fucking get there adventure, so I'm going to tell you exactly how we got there', scroll down for the fun bits. The problem was that, when you look at the map, you see there are a lot of turns involved in very very small space, most of the time the road signs are only of help once you have a better overview of neighboring villages etc, so it was a bitch to navigate.
We got off the M4 in Bridgend. And I knew I had to navigate somehow straight down from the M4, without really knowing what the streetsigns would be saying (no, they don't say Merthyr Mawr when you get off the M4), and I didn't have a total clear plan on what would be the easiest way to get to Merthyr Mawr (as you can see it can be access from four separate entry points. We got off where it says 36, followed the red road south towards Newcastle (A473), then got off on the A48, only to turn onto the B4265 towards StBride's Major/Ogmore-by-Sea. Those are a shitload of small turns in a short amount of time, and needless to say I think we did manage to follow the A48 for too long, then turned around, took the B-road (B4524, and who the hell thought it would be smart to give them that many numbers) through Corntown and Ewenny (beautiful, if I remember correctly), then had to turn back towards Bridgend and then a swift turn onto that tiny white road there.
C had about a heartattack (YES I DID OMG!) at the kind of road it was (yeah, you see it in the picture), to the point where I missed the intersection because I hadn't yet grokked quite how fast we would be there, and suddenly we hit the A473 and I said, "oops" and only then figured out where I'd missed the intersection.
The little blue line on the map is water and this is what it looks like when you cross it:
C said no way is she going back the same way, so I took her that tiniest bit left and then straight down to Merthyr Mawr again. Same type of road. In Merthyr Mawr)(roundabout at the church you see below) we hit that intersection you can see around that small yellow dot. The problem was that I didn't know how much could possibly be hidden IN that small yellow dot that didn't make it on the map, but I pretty much said, "look, we came this way, so now we turn right."
I'm still not sure what that castle is. I think we might have taken a different turn somewhere that isn't even on the map. Going back we actually took the one road out we hadn't gone yet and crossed the water over another bridge.
But anyway, that's how you get to Merthyr Mawr. As you can see on the map, Merthyr Mawr isn't part of the Vale of Glamorgan district or whatever they call it anymore, but belongs to Bridgend.
Later, after I did a little research on Merthyr Mawr, I definitely regretted we didn't spend more time exploring there. Mistake mistake mistake as what we saw was like stepping back in time. LOL I read that there was a pub owner there who apparently was a murderer, and buried bodies in his back garden. What we did see was just lovely, but we apparently missed cottages with thatched roofs, flowers bursting everywhere...well actually we saw ALOT of that in the more remote-area villages...at least the flowers and old stone buildings. Loved loved loved that, the riots of color against the dark gray stone, some of the house mere inches from the roads we were driving down.
Anyway. Back to our quest. We weren't sure exactly how to get to the dunes. We knew they were there, but just not sure, so we parked our car to see if our limited information would help us. No, but as we sat in the car, two women on horses passed us. We got out of the car--had stopped in front of a lovely (dang I use that word alot) old church and decided to take pictures.
I think Nick commented several times (in amazement) about how difficult it would've had to have been for all the camera crews, trucks, etc., whatever they used for the filming to reach those dunes. There simply isn't easy access to Merthyr Mawr, just via the C roads. It must've been nuts to get all that set up through to the village. Nuts. Unless there was a way we didn't find...but from what Nick the Supreme Navigator said, no.
Nick took a picture of this which was on a wall outside the farmhouse opposite the church.
I think that was a hint not to bother the people in that farmhouse, don't you? So, we walked across the road (horses gone now, disappeared around a bend) and I debated the possibility that we shoulda asked those nice people on horses where the dunes were but oh well. I kinda suspect they suspected we were, sigh, stupid lost tourists. We NEVER got lost btw, not with the Supreme Navigator.
In silent agreement, we did not trespass on the graveyard site. But, leaning over, we could easily see the closest grave was a new one. A sad one, a very young man who lost his life in Afghanistan. Very young, so sad.
I really wish we could've walked in there, but yeah...didn't seem right.
After this, we jumped into the car again, not sure what to do. We drove forward slowly, glancing down the road where the horses had disappeared and Nick said, "Go that way!" I said, "No!" He said, "DO IT!" (Interestingly, Nick and I do not argue, but we did on this trip here and there--mostly him insisting I do something I was scared to do or didn't wanna and I was the pouty one...and then I'd give in and damn if it all didn't work out just like Nick said it would).
We also passed these guys and I made Nick take a picture. Ponies!
Shortly after that, we caught up to the two women on horseback. Fortunately, they seemed to be close to their destination. Me? I was just ready to get out of there and give up, but Nick wanted to soldier on, and I'm glad we did because...we were suddenly there!
The two women on horses were apparently headed for Boe too.
There was another car with a guy and a girl who looked like they were going to run in the dunes (which in my research after proved to be a popular thing, though it is very easy to get lost there). To ride a horse there you have to have a permit, btw...
Anyway! WE FOUND BOE!!!!!
We parked the car, and mind you, we were surrounded by trees, but we could see the sand before us. We followed a short trail and emerged onto this!
The one thing we quickly realized? Boe STINKS!
Yes, it is true. The, uh, aroma...omg...it was not overpowering, but it was like being on top of a swamp in the middle of a cow barn full of old nasty cow dung. Moldy cow dung. Seriously. Stank, stank, stank.
BUT WE WERE ON BOE!!!!!!
It was weird to look across that and not see water, btw. But, true, it wasn't there. Instead, the sand sloped upward, and behind the big expanse broke into choppy hills...hard to describe. There were bushes and green grasses and such but it was like big shovels scooped out between the bushes and green grasses and left deep furrows of sand behind. It was bizarre (and stinky) and thinking about the horses and the runners going up and down all over? I can see why people easily get lost in that mess.
Okay, this is a map at the parking lot of Boe:

We were at that parking lot sign and walking just a tiny little way towards those green/sandy dunes. The dunes extend toward the coastline, but there was no way we would walk that far. Oh apparently the elusive castle was the other side of the parking lot. Whoops.
C here, I looked up the castle we did not see: Candleston Castle, once a 15th century fortified mansion house on the edge of the Sahara-like dunes of Merthyr Mawr Warren. It is now an ivy covered ruin that was the centre point of the village of Treganlaw Sad we missed that but the dunes enticed us away.
We were both keenly aware of the possibility of getting lost, because there were no landmarks whatsoever, only the very hilly up and down of dunes,so we decided to play Grey and Son! (C'mon, we don't know Jack's name from then, right? Of course, his dad called him Son.)
Scene Reenactment One:
"Don't let me go, Nick! Nooooo!!!!"
Scene Reenactment Two:
"I found a stick! Stick's are PRECIOUS! Practically more precious than gold!"
Scene Reenactment Three:
"Hide Nick! Hide from the Creatures! Not in plain sight!"
Nick followed this with, in a bewildered voice, "C? Where are you? C? C!? C!!! WHERE ARE YOU! CCCCCCCCCCCC!!!!!!!!!!!!" (complete with running from his hiding place, looking all tragic)
I was standing right there but you know, playing apparently Grey at that point, or something. I meant to look this up, watch ADAM again and see for sure, but we think this is the tree and roots that Kid!Jack hid behind. Somehow. Camera shifting...not sure the angle they actually shot from, but we're sure it was that tree...but I kept forgetting to check that.
We'd strolled down a hill and up a hill and decided at that point to stop--that fear of getting lost thing--so I took another stick (not so scarce here) and wrote this, so everyone would see we really were where we'd claimed. See? Proof!
But of course, Nick was not satisfied with my efforts, and decided to improve upon it, complete with a very special message to
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And at that point? We were sick to death of the stench and decided to go, and Nick the Navigator decided we should go to Barry Island. So, that is up next!
That night, Nick told me he wanted to go on a day-long drive. I stared at him.
"You want me to drive ALL DAY IN THAT CAR ON THOSE C ROADS?" Panic ensued! No! I can't! I can't drive that strange car through all those roads again! I stomped my foot! "NO!"
Nick said, "YES!"
And I said, "Drive 9 hours? That is not fun!" Nooooooo!!!! "I don't want to!"
"But Carolyn!"
Sigh.
So, the next day, we headed out on a day-long road-trip that Nick planned out that night. Port Talbot, Swansea, Gwbert, other places I can't remember yet but will when I start writing that post. It was a six-hour and eighteen minute adventure, and it truly was amazing just how much one can see of Wales in a day. Amazing things.
More on that later. Hopefully, there won't be as long of a lag between this and the next post, part 9. Good stuff coming up, I promise you. Lovely lovely! I just hope I can remember everything. If I can't, Nick will though, I am sure.
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Date: 2009-08-09 01:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-09 01:24 pm (UTC)As you can see, all he has to do is LOOK at me and say, "BUT C!!!!" and I do it.
Sigh.
Will get started on next one today--while the memories are fresh! So much more to share!
How's the head today, better I hope?
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Date: 2009-08-09 01:50 pm (UTC)I'm all for preserving the Welsh language but especially if you aren't familiar with the double namage (even if maps also do that) it's easy to miss that two names mean in fact the same village and not two different villages.
So that was an extra complication, really, especially when you juggle all the other information from maps and things on the road (this lane for B4565, this lane for A365, this lane for B7536). I ended up actually using the numbers a lot and they are good putting them on signs, helped with orientation certainly better than names of towns did, even if 4 numbers still strikes me as overkill.
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Date: 2009-08-09 01:26 pm (UTC)That church was beautiful. Just beautiful. Thanks for sharing it w/ us! Thanks for sharing your whole trip, really. I feel like I just went to Wales.
And I'm w/ you, C -- those roads look wicked scary! Did you call them C roads b/c that's what they are, or did you guys name them C roads b/c you loved them so much?
*hugs you both* Yay for travel posts!!
ETA: And PONIES!!! I want to meet the ponies! Pretty ponies. My little, pretty, ponies.
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Date: 2009-08-09 01:44 pm (UTC)No, they are really C roads. There are A roads, B roads, and C roads, and if there are D roads? I never want to see them!
Glad you enjoyed! YES I could kick myself seriously, after reading later that if we'd just found the village square we would've been treated to a real beautiful little village scene. Idiots! Well, next time. Yes, I want to go back there. Even though Boe STANK.
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Date: 2009-08-09 02:13 pm (UTC)I do agree that the C roads are not for the fainthearted and you definitely need to be able to reverse confidently before venturing along them. :)
I'm surprised the graveyard had a private sign on it. They're normally regarded as open to all, as long as one behaves in a quiet and respectful manner.
I eagerly await the next post in due course. Our son and his wife live in Port Talbot, so you must have passed near their house.
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Date: 2009-08-09 02:18 pm (UTC)Our problem was lack of time--we had pretty much 3 days or so to see everything, lol, but at least now we know where to go back. I shall brave those C roads again, just for this village... :)
I liked Port Talbot. I will write about why later, but it seemed a very friendly, likable place.
Thanks for reading! We both miss it, very much. I would be quite content to live there and explore different places on weekends. I was AMAZED at how little fuel my Skoda actually used--it was a diesel, and our entire trip from start to finish we used slightly less than two tanks. Freaking amazing--I want THAT car again next time! LOL.
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Date: 2009-08-09 02:39 pm (UTC)Now, then....
YOU FOUND STICKS!!!! ON BOE!!!! HOW EXCITING!!! (Of course Boe stinks. Hart and T could have told you that. Then again, Doe stinks, too. And Poe smells of bird shit. Foe smells of gunpowder. I could go on but I won't. Only Moe is sweet-smelling. Just ask T. LOL!)
There is no way I would have taken the wheel on that trip. If it had been me, we'd have stuck to cities and major highways. You, C, are amazing. Even if you did have the Supreme Navigator.
How old do you think those one lane stone bridges are?
You ought to collect your travel posts and put them in a book, even if you keep it only for your own enjoyment. They are excellent.
p.s. Finished the novel. I wish you'd kept going. I really loved the characters. Did you MEAN to name the love interest Nick or was that just a wild coincidence?
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Date: 2009-08-09 03:04 pm (UTC)I woulda told you this. WHAT ARE YOU, NUTS? YOU ARE INSANE!!!!! To get from THAT point to THIS? HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA LOLOLOL NOOOOOO!!!!!!!
Here we are.
The funny thing is? My m/m with Loose-Id? The main character is also Nick. I am extraordinarily fond of that name, and I knew my Carolyn Rogers world and my Carolyn Gray world would NEVER mix, so... Nick it was!
And then, the very day before my husband died, yes, trufax, I met Nick online.
My sister finds all this highly amusing. For her it was the Russians for me it was the Germans. "Where's my Russian?" she wants to know (though Robert might shake his head lol). She did study the language for awhile...
I wanted to keep going, but Silver Dagger killed all the mystery authors. They are a part of Overmountain Press which is a folklore, Appalachian whatever (you can look them up) publisher that does very well...the owner decided she wanted to edit mysteries, so decided to start a mystery line. Problem was, they had NO idea what they were doing with it, and failed due to lack of knowledge, and then once they realized what it took--such as, the authors would want to publish AT LEAST a book a year, hello? They gave up.
Very sad, as Sheri, the editor, was a damn good one. She put this pony (lol) through her paces! (and I know they weren't ponies, but it is more fun to squee PONIES! than HORSIES! more mature and all that).
So I got alot out of the experience. I got to be at cons as a published author, I sat on panels, I gave workshops, I met people and signed books and helped out others and happily played as Mighty Published Author...and then...Kel got sick. BOOM.
Suddenly, nothing but my family COULD be important. My son had a very very rough time--Kel's surgery, his recovery, his chronic illness, his death, were very hard on him. I spent alot of time trying to keep my son from falling apart. I spent alot of time doing everything. It was, however, during this time I found slash fiction! And wrote the first version of Red! (A Red-Tainted Silence, the Loose-Id book). It ended up almost 300k because I could not let it go. LOL. Sanity? Escapism? Lifeline? All those.
So I'm glad you liked HOME. I am THRILLED you got it through your library. I am VERY sad I could not do more with those characters, though I have the rights back now. So much of it was drawn from my life--my daughter lol, her middle name is Lauren and that was my kid in there (she loved that!). The PT stuff? I went through all that, just had in fact, but wasn't shot in the leg mind you. So you thought I did the first person okay? Both books I published were in first person--it is my preferred POV and I've gone back to it at last and damn it feels good. Really really does. I let too many anti-first person POV' naysayers stick into my brain. Seriously did.
Now I've got a new mystery in teh works, my POV character leaped out of a nap yesterday, she doesn't have a name yet (Kayce jumped into my head for some reason, not sure on that yet though) and it is the first female POV I've written in forever. But--I think it is the right thing to do, the right thing for me. There'll be a lot of me in her, that's for sure! As there was in Rachael. :)
Oh and do not know how old anything was--just OLD! And I have to say, pretty flowers against that old stonework, the houses and everything? GORGEOUS!
(I like driving there now! I love roundabouts now! I've got driving in the UK DOWN, baby!)
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Date: 2009-08-09 03:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-09 03:38 pm (UTC)And yay, that IS the tree! So nice to get all the confirmations!
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Date: 2009-08-09 04:04 pm (UTC)OH MY GOD.
YOU TWO IS CRAZY. ILU BOTH SO MUCH.
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Date: 2009-08-09 04:26 pm (UTC)LOL! You would do it too, I know it! You coulda played one of the Creatures!
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Date: 2009-08-09 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-09 04:41 pm (UTC)Glad it wasn't a real vampire...though how can murder charges be brought for killing the undead?
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Date: 2009-08-09 07:31 pm (UTC)That just... made me laugh, so hard.
HORRIBLE CREATURE PARKING ONLY. ALL OTHERS WILL BE TORTURED UNTIL THEY GROW UP.
I loved the pics and the reenactment.
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Date: 2009-08-09 08:12 pm (UTC)We missed that sign! If we'd seen it, I would've taken a picture for you! Maybe next time?
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Date: 2009-08-12 03:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-10 01:19 am (UTC)The pictures are lovely as usual. And that church looks spectacular.
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Date: 2009-08-12 03:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-08-10 06:59 am (UTC)Awesome pics, btw, of the roads, the graveyard and the ponies. I want to go and feed the ponies, now.
Your re-enacting made me giggle. *ggg*
And that tree totally looks like the one in the series! *nods*
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Date: 2009-08-12 03:31 am (UTC)LOL we had SO much fun, so much fun. :)
YES THAT WAS THE TREE!!!
Grin.
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Date: 2009-08-11 11:58 pm (UTC)And dang. You guys found the tree!
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Date: 2009-08-12 03:30 am (UTC)