Article written by Dylan Dawes
Borth 1: Summer - hectic. People, noise, streets jammed (back in the day); miles and miles of lush sand; 'Sunburn' treks to Ynyslas; never seeing the same person twice. The back of the house covered in Cors Fochno's finest on those rare Easterly-wind days. Earning well below minimum wage working in a caravan park (perfecting my Brummie accent).
The mid-air 'bang!' as the lifeboat crew were called up - time to go rescue someone stuck on the rocks or up at the Dyfi estuary. Don't these people know what tides are??
Finding half-buried bottles on the beach from Norway and wondering how they got here. Ancient-looking buried breakwaters that *started* about half way out to sea. Very puzzling. Surfing - starting out by the Golf club and before you know it you're down by the lifeboat station. Now *that's* what I call longshore drift!
Borth 2: Winter: You could lie down and go to sleep in the middle of the road without being bothered: it was that quiet.
Preposterous wind. Really - Borth's winter winds are so strong, you have to lean forwards just to stand up straight.
I lived in permanent fear on those nights that the roof was surely going to cave in. For one long winter I even delivered newspapers, on an early-morning paper round up on the cliff houses. Earning £4.60 a week for a series of epic blow-dries. I still feel bad about the state some of those people's papers were in at the end of the route (mostly a grey sludge) - all I can say is, if you couldn't actually read them, blame the climate.
Sea Salt: blanketing windows and slowly killing all the cars. Seeing anything clearly out of our house's front windows was just impossible. Windows were cleaned every couple of months, but fogged up again as soon as the man had put the ladder away. The haze of memory is not nostalgia, but salty windows.
School Bus next to the newsagent at 8.10am - bright green Crosville Double Decker. Just blown my dinner money on comics, standing there wondering how I was going to eat that lunchtime. Steamed-up windows and fights (not me of course).
11 minutes by train to Aber (or Forever on the bus). Standing on the platform watching the train heading West from miles away - a tiny steel toy crawling along, Cader Idris towering behind, the flat, blank Cors Fochno in front.
Keeping a close eye on the tide tables, crossing fingers hoping for a 'seventeen footer' ("Seventeen??? And the rest!") Then up to the prom, watching the high tides hammering the concrete with rocks and thunderous waves.
Looking at Borth from Talybont / Taliesin it seems so completely flat, almost unnatural; surely all it will take is a slight cough from the sea and it will be engulfed. Finish off the job it started with Cantre'r Gwaelod, maybe. Won't be long before we hear "Visit Talybont: wonderful sea views!"
Borth itself is like an improvised series of attempts at a coastal village hindered by the slight problem of being sandwiched between a hostile sea and an implacable marsh. It might not be the most attractively-built place in the world, but it's a special place anyway. It's awesome in Summer (when we get them), and if you can live through the worst Borth Winter, then anywhere else in Wales is just a breeze.
Article written by Dylan Dawes
