I don’t often shout very loud. or make much of a fuss. Or do anything whatsoever to bring too much attention to myself. Hence my throat and lungs were aghast when I bellowed out the most almighty call from a train stood at Platform 7 of Crewe station. Before promptly apologising to everyone on board. Naturally.

The trip was never in doubt. We had journeyed from Preston where another wonderful Avanti service came into the opposite platform to that advertised, triggering mass panic and stressed luggage wheels. Inevitably departing late, we enjoyed the short journey to Crewe wedged between our luggage and the toilet. This despite having seat reservations, which are about as much value as the paper they are not printed on anymore because everything has to be on another dysfunctional app.

With connection times getting tighter by the second the train did that thing it does when you think it is pulling into the station but stops just outside for no apparent reason. We inched forward at the pace of a geriatric snail, eventually lining up with Platform 6. Encouraging as 6 precedes 7 but annoyingly across the tracks.

In the melee, several passengers shot up the steps, swinging cases and coats and bags laden with sandwiches and fruit shoots. At some point over the bridge and down the steps Avery lost some ground, while I jumped onto the first open door of the train I could reach. She looked at the carriages, lost. A group of emo teens who might well have been on their way back from the Nantwich Loser Festival separated us. Please, look for the silver hair. “AVVVERRRYYYYYY!”

Of course what’s especially silly in retrospect is the high prospect of the train waiting for everyone to connect. It’s not like the Swiss railways or anything, where trains depart on the exact second of the exact minute of the exact hour. Besides, even if we missed it we’d have an hour until the next, which we could easily pass with tea and cake.

As it was, we settled down with luggage space pleasingly spare, ordered some scalding hot tea from the disgruntled trolley mandolly and ate gingerbread as the weather brightened and the borderlands rolled by. Footballer’s Cheshire, Escape to the Country’s Shropshire, Richard Ham’s Herefordshire and then a new country entirely. Prince’s Wales.

We arrived in Cwmbran, which is barely into Wales but feels very Welsh. It also feels slightly akin to Canberra in the way you can circulate the town for ages and feel like you have been here before. I know our accommodation was on the edge of town but have no idea on its relationship to everything else.

Still, some of the other relationships were a little clearer. Fathers and aunts and cousins and then I guess all manners of association by blood, breeding and beer. Coming together somewhere out of town for a renewal of vows and a hog roast. If I dare hazard to feel I have mastered marriage in 135 days, try doing 35 years.

A feature of our time in Wales was the supposed heatwave that was coming any day now. Ideal for catching up on laundry and finding it damp after a day in the cloud. Ideal for getting sunburn that catches you unawares in the mist. Ideal for packing shorts with optimism and never using them. And ideal for cooling off beneath waterfalls if you are local and/or socially influential.

It was a good idea to head to the Four Waterfalls Walk even if the reality was tinged with little annoyances. Like not so little steps and not so little an amount of people gawping like us at nature. The volume of visitors – of which we were admittedly an additional three – necessitated car park marshals, path closures and one-way systems. People-powered erosion is working at a faster rate than that prompted by the force of water. Only one is more captivating.

With such popularity, a trick is being missed with the absence of a good tearoom at the end of the walk; on a day such as this not only would the shortbread be millionaires. As it was, sketchy phone signal and scrambling detours led us to a potential opportunity that may well still be open, though it was touch and go along the single track lanes towards Pontsticill. The Old Barn Tea Room sounds just about perfect on paper and it delivered exactly what was needed. Warm sunshine in the garden the extra icing on the cake.

Perhaps this heatwave was finally happening after all. Certainly there was evidence of bathing along the banks of Caerfanell as we ambled up past countless cascades and swirling pools. There were people here too – including a party precariously firing up a barbecue on a 45 degree slope – but the mood was calmer and more ambient. And it felt like good grace from above that the final plunging falls of Blaen y Glyn were shared with us alone. We walked back through sun-dappled woodland lifted, hearts singing inside like the birds chirruping all around.

…………………………………………

The promise of shorts was finally realised on the Monday, a day in which Avery and I would leave Wales by train without too much drama. Of course, being borderline hot, the only condition was that air conditioning would invariably falter. Like Australia in the cold, Britain does not deal well with the heat.

Britain does do a good supermarket meal deal. Provisions aplenty for a picnic beside a Mediaeval pile. As a second choice (behind an under renovation Caerphilly), Raglan Castle offered everything one could wish for in such a facility: crumbling walls, lofty towers, regal thrones and cooling dungeons. Of course, a proximate cafe was too much to ask for but there is plenty of satisfaction in a £3.50 sandwich, snack and drink.

While not wishing to cut things too fine, our train back into England was still a decent stretch away so we were transported to the outskirts of Newport for a coffee and slice of cake. Unbeknown to me, Caerleon is a small town rich in Roman history. Think amphitheatres and baths and all those Latin excesses. This corner of the world truly has been hotly contested.

Nowadays, one wonders whether anybody would bother to ransack Newport. They may arrive thinking someone had already beaten them to it. Although having time to wait for the train is a luxury, now it cannot come soon enough.

For not only are we escaping Newport, leaving Wales and returning to England, we are also heading home. To the Westcountry, to Plymouth. Changing trains with time to spare at Bristol Temple Meads. Time to spare, indeed, to find Feathers McGraw outside the ticket hall. A neat and tidy conclusion to This Most Whistlestop Adventure.