the train to haverfordwest takes us past little villages (stop on request only), through rolling hills, past the sea with fantastic colours and eventually into haverfordwest: a small station but (!) — as promised by our b&b landlord and landlady — a bus station with the next bus leaving at 15:10 for st davids. while we wait in the sun, a young lady comes up the lane in front of the bus station, pulling a rainbow coloured, striped trolley suitcase, what looks like a bundled up duvet, and — a didgeridoo. she’s almost past us when she asks where we might be going in case we’d be interested in sharing a taxi — she’s a bit surprised when we reply with the information that we are waiting for the 15:10 bus to st davids, and is even further surprised when we answer her question how we know that there is a bus going from here by pointing out that this place not only looks like a bus stop but also has a bus timetable to proof it. it transpires that she’s missed the train from carmathen to fishguard (the one that we were travelling on from cardiff to carmathen) and had just been told by a taxi driver at the other end of the station that there was no bus service and a taxi ride to fishguard would be £50. as we are fairly certain that there will be a bus at 15:10 (which is ascertained by the fact that the bus timetable tells her the same thing) she decides to wait for the bus as well. eventually the taxi driver drives past, stops and hands her his business card — “in case the bus does not come” — and declares that the lowest he can do for fishguard is £30 and to give him a ring if she wants the ride. just a little while later our 15:10 bus does arrive and we all board: the trip to st davids is just £2.50, the trip to fishguard turns out to be £2.60!

haverfordwest is a nice little town and the ride to st davids takes us through newgale (impressive wide beach with fantastic scenery and views of the coast curving around the bay) and solva with a nice main street with lots of old and colorful houses and a rather impressive harbour (”a bit like a norwegian fjord” one of the fellow travellers, an old man, points out to the irish young lady sitting on top of her bundled duvet on the first bench of the bus, and, “where are you from?” — “ireland” — “well, it’s much nicer this side of the sea” — “well, our side is pretty nice, too!”). just as we get into st davids i spot a sign for our b&b, the waterings and we disembark together with the old man, who very kindly points out how far back we need to walk, and, slapping mrs d on her shoulder, then makes his way across the road to the pub.

we turn around and follow the road back up the hill and then turn into the road sign-posted for the waterings. it’s about 100m away from the street and looks very nice — much nicer than on its website, i’ve to say. we check in and are shown to our room: suite consisting of a bed-room and a large bathroom, situated around a court yard with nice benches to enjoy the good weather.

excellent.

the welsh train network (still operated by arriva wales) has not yet heard of a coordinated train timetable — the 11:23 train from cardiff arrives at 13:05, the next train towards haverfordwest and milford haven doesn’t leave until 14:09 — but could have left straight away as it’s standing all the time at carmathen station. so, it’s a bit of sunbathing and newspaper reading before our last train leg of our trip to st davids begins.

the 60 bus takes us right from our b&b to cardiff central station — where we find a kind note from arriva trains that, no, they regret, but “due to security concerns” there are no left luggage facilities (in the old days, back then when…, we called it left luggage lockers not “facilities” — pretty much everything is “facilities” nowadays; if you inquire in a hotel or a restaurant where the facilities are, you probably won’t get shown to the lockers, though…makes you realize that it’s actually probably a blessing in disguise that arriva trains at cardiff central does not offer left luggage facilities). however! there are left luggage facilities provided by the cardiff tourist information at the old library which are “just a short walk” away. now, “walk” in the UK can mean anything from a short stroll to a whole day, strenuous expedition into the wild, so i thought it wise to queue at the help desk to get directions a tad more precise than “just a short walk away”.

the lady at the help desk was very friendly and even produced a copy of a city map complete with instructions on how to get to cardiff TIC. so, off we went, having contemplated taking the next train in the direction of the west coast, to have a look at what the left luggage facilities would look like (and whether they were open on a sunday morning in the first place). following the route indicated by the friendly help desk lady we left the station, turn right towards mary street (first open pub with a couple of blokes having a pint), turned left and — started our slalom through broken glass, dubious things on the pavement (wet and otherwise) and past further pubs already doing business. ugh. enticing. positively scintillating. yikes. at the first arcade opening into the general direction of the TIC we turned into it and emerged on the other side at a — yep, a building site. oh, and more broken bottles and more broken pint glasses and more dubious stuff on the pavement. my motivation for actually doing a bit of sightseeing (and possibly having lunch before taking the 14:03 train to carmathen) was going down faster than the hindenburg at that fatal night in new york. checking the mood of the rest of our travel group, i learnt that mrs d was feeling likewise. the next half-decent looking arcade back to mary street was ours and we started back on our way to the station — only interrupted by a cup of tea and a coffee laté at a nice looking cafe right inside the arcade.

at the station we stock up on newspaper (today’s observer), some fresh fruit (golden pineapple) from marks & sparks, and then make our way to the train to carmathen.

the pub yesterday night, cayo arms was a decent pub as pubs go. it was even listen in the good beer guide 2007 — though not really for it’s food, which was ok-ish. but the beer was good (and, yes, i did take a local ale and not just my usual guiness

we slept rather well, the british “double” bed as always takes getting used to again (there must be a little side entry in the magna charta or some such ancient document spelling out that rule that a double shall always be an oversized single with just a single cover sheet). breakfast was ok-ish and we are now packing our stuff again and am still deliberating what to do sightseeing-wise here in cardiff: clearly the construction area around the station is not really the cat’s whiskers tourism wise, the hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus sounds like a quick and painless way of getting a glimpse of cardiff beyond the construction fences, but we’ve yet to figure out where to leave our luggage — we didn’t see any facilities for that yesterday at cardiff central… we shall see.