Fleeting Blink: We're On Tour! Days 5 & 6 - Wales

We've been a little bit Lazy. Distracted by the beauty of Wales, we didn't manage to find any gig venues! Still, we had a right laugh.

First we went to Llangollen and rode on the Heritage Railway there - I'm not gonna try and cling onto any last vestiges of coolness and mystique, I'll readily admit I love my trains. Grace loves her history and together we lapped up the beautiful scenery and period costume.

The train compartments were just like in 'A Hard Day's Night'. Ironically, some gentleman settled themselves in our compartment and began having very loud and boyish conversations while we ruthlessly admired the scenery. Eventually they struck up a conversation about the tour. They asked as where we were going next and we said maybe the Centre for Alternative Technology in Machynlleth. At this one of the bearded old men leant in and whispered 'Have you heard about April Jones?'. We shook our heads. 'You've not heard about the little girl who got MURDERED?' - at this moment we went into a long tunnel and the carriage went pitch black. 'Chopped 'er up 'e did and burnt 'er on the log burner! 'E denies it to this day, but they found bits of 'er all over 'is farm...'

At this point we reconsidered visiting Machynlleth.

Nevertheless, later on we regrew a pair and made our way to Machynlleth and the Centre For Alternative Technology. Formed in the 70's in a disused quarry as a hippie co-operative, this was the place where many of the green technologies we now know were created.

Sadly, CAT is now a very different place. Although they do very good work educating people in green technology, it seems little research is now carried out there. It operates more like a university, with a CEO taking care of money, no longer does everyone get paid the same wage. Still, some of the stuff there was really cool, especially the water powered incline railway - based on a technology used in Victorian times. the whole place is powered with green technologies such as Solar Power, Wind, and water power, and one of the buildings had a garden roof. I was intensely proud of the solar powered lights in my van :-)