Remember the dark days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when we couldn’t enjoy once everyday pleasures like going to a cafe? During the glorious spring of 2020, I cherished my regular bike rides – an opportunity to keep sane during crazy times. But I really missed my cafe stops, so I bought a Klean Kanteen flask so I could take a hot drink with me.
The photo above shows my tea stop by the Thames in Maidenhead, with its convenient bench, in June 2020. Another regular spot was Dorney Common on the road to Eton Wick near Windsor.
My most ambitious ride that summer was to Ivinghoe Beacon. After the steep climb from the B489 Tring-Dunstable road I savoured the view over the downs and across to the white lion that has guarded the hillside on which Whipsnade Zoo stands since 1933. Thanks to my Klean Kanteen flask I was able to enjoy a couple of mugs of hot tea with my picnic. The Ordnance Survey picnic ruck, featuring Bannau Brycheiniog (the Brecon Beacons) may have been geographically out of place!
Four years on, we no longer have to take our beverages with us: the cafes we missed during the pandemic lockdowns have long since reopened. But sometimes my cycling routes pass through cafe-free territory, and so on Saturday, for the first time in several years, I retrieved the Klean Kanteen flask from the cupboard and took it with me on a 62 mile ride through Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire, revisiting Ivinghoe on the way home. (Part of the ride followed Jack Thurston’s Chiltern Rendezvous route from Lost Lanes South.)
It was an unseasonably cold and windy day, and by the time I stopped at the entrance to Whipsnade Zoo I was gasping for a cuppa. I felt nostalgic seeing the families with small children, remembering visits with Owen when he was little. (“My favourite animals? The train and the bus.”) I filled my Restrap enamel mug with tea, but to my disappointment the drink was only luke-warm.
When I got home, I tested the flask to see if I’d unwittingly not fully boiled the kettle before the ride, but no – the flask no longer kept its contents hot. My pandemic ride-saver was destined for the recycling bin. But it served my well during those extraordinary times in 2020 and 2021. I’ll end this post with images from April 2021. I had a tea stop on Dorney Common before cycling on to Windsor to witness the media reporting on Prince Philip’s funeral that afternoon.
I was nervous. I was about to set off on my longest ever bike ride: almost 160 miles across Southern England. My butterflies reflected the scale of the challenge and the fact my previous attempt at this route ended after 86 miles because of mechanical failure.
The ride was training for the 400km (250 mile) London-Wales-London audax in May. I wanted to find out how well – or badly – I coped with an ultra-long day on the bike. I’ve completed seven century rides of 100 miles, but LWL is a far bigger challenge. On that aborted ride in 2022 I remember the feeling of foreboding as I grabbed a snack in Highworth, Wiltshire, knowing I still had 70 miles to go, including climbing onto the Downs. The mechanical problem struck just a few miles on.
My route
Yesterday was a fine day for a ride: the warmest this year so far. But there was an increasing headwind as I headed west, which became a real slog on the lovely stretch from Charlbury to Burford. I cursed as I cycled downhill at a mere 12mph! (Later, after heading back east, I’d routinely record 18mph on a similar gradient.) My grimace gives it away in the photo below, taken just after the long climb after Charlbury station.
It was a relief to reach my lunch stop, Burford, after 63 miles. I had intended to try Huffkins, recommended by Oxford Cycling Club in a blogpost, but as I looked for a way through to its garden with my bike I came across a lovely looking cafe, Nutmeg & Thyme, with tables in a sunny courtyard. I wouldn’t normally choose a vegan-only cafe, but I was so glad I did. My focaccia sandwich with fig chutney and vegan cheddar was mouthwateringly nice. Just what I needed to set me up for the next stage of my epic ride. The staff were lovely too.
I endured a mile or so on the A40 – endured because of the traffic and headwind – before turning onto the quiet B4425 road towards Bibury. I remembered this as a fast stretch from 2022, and so it proved again, despite that pesky headwind. (I loved driving along this road when I was living near Cirencester in the 1990s.) As in 2022 I stopped to take a photo of the Gloucestershire sign. I may not have got to Wales on this ride but I had reached a border county! Welsh Way recalls the days when Welsh drovers led their livestock from Wales to London. It is one of the oldest roads in Britain, dating back to the Iron Age. I used a length of Welsh Way to avoid traffic when I commuted to Cheltenham 30 years ago.
As in 2022, I stopped in Highworth near Swindon to buy some more water for my bottles, and chocolate, which I ate in the sunshine on a bench in the square as I charged my Apple Watch. I was intrigued to spot this plaque commemorating a Great War hero, Reginald Warneford. I remembered his story from a childhood book called Airships & Balloons by Carey Miller. Warneford became a national hero as the first airman to shoot down a zeppelin in 1915. The book recounted that he tragically died soon after while taking an American journalist for a joyride. Both men were killed when his plane crashed – possibly in an ill-judged acrobatic manoeuvre to impress the reporter according to my 1970s book.
It was time to do battle with the demon that I never confronted in 2022: the hills between Highworth and the Thames at Streatley. To my surprise, I loved this part of the ride. I tackled the big climb at Ashbury onto the downs in my own good (slow) time. Once over it, I found pure delight in the quiet road through the downland, framed by soft hills. My mood soared as I raced along at 19mph thanks to the tailwind and lightly descending gradients. I knew that Lambourn was famous for training racehorses, so it was no surprise to see an equine hospital. I also passed RAF Welford, which incidentally is the ‘works unit’ referenced on the sign you see when travelling east on the M4 between Hungerford and Newbury. (The sign used to be in red, marking a military place, but is now in standard motorway blue.) It is one of the biggest American munitions depots in Europe.
Another hill… Buckham Hill, near Great Shefford
I was less impressed with the state of the roads. A sign gave a stark warning: ‘Raw sewage. Drive slowly’. What a damning indictment of Britain, although perhaps we should feel a twinge of gratitude that the authorities had put a sign up, rather than accept that it was normal or acceptable. It then dawned on me that drinking from my water bottles might carry a risk of falling ill, if the shit was literally hitting my bidons. For the next 30 miles, I squirted water into my mouth rather than suck from the bottles. I drank less as a result.
Another problem was road closures. One, at Coln St Aldwyns in Wiltshire, I was able to cycle through, but I lost time and added miles because the direct route between Aldworth and Streatley in Berkshire was shut. Streatley itself was isolated by a complete closure in the heart of the village, but I was able to wheel the bike to pick up the road leading to the bridges over the Thames to Goring. As I enjoyed a quiet moment taking photos on the river (seen above) I noticed tables of diners and drinkers at the riverside restaurant – I had a pang of envy, although I was content with my mission.
I conquered the inevitable climb out of the Thames valley and was bathed in the happy glow of sunset at the end of a fine day. It was a pleasure bowling along at speed through woodland towards Henley as the light faded, confident in the beam of my new Exposure Strada front light. (Chosen for its ability to last for hours on long night rides.) I was even happier with my two rear lights, insurance against distracted Saturday night drivers, who proved well behaved.
Henley itself came as a shock, with drunken revellers swearing at each other. But I was soon heading to that other familiar Thames town, Marlow, again at a decent speed. (Anyone would think I wanted to get home!) These miles passed quickly, and in no time I was on the familiar road though Bourne End. I always know a big ride is coming to an end when the mileage left is no more than an easy Sunday afternoon jaunt.
The last challenge was the brutal climb from Wooburn Green to Holtspur, Beaconsfield. London-Wales-London organiser Liam FitzPatrick says he gets the most hate mail for including this climb on the route when riders are suffering after 390 kilometres of cycling. In truth, though, there are no easy alternatives that don’t make it even further to the finish. (I reckon Wash Hill out of Wooburn Town is slightly easier, and certainly quieter than the main road drag. EDIT: ‘easier’ may a misnomer. Wash Hill is definitely steeper in places than the main Wooburn Green climb, but is a delighfully quiet and picturesque lane, so you won’t have cars racing past you as you suffer…)
The final tally
As I prepared to turn into our road, I saw someone standing at the junction. It was my son Owen. My mind flashed back to August 2019, and the delight of seeing him as I reached John O’Groats on the end of my ride across Great Britain. I was pleased with my average speed of 13.6mph, which marked a modest increase over the last 57 miles.
Reflections on my longest bike ride
1: Things can go wrong, but needn’t be the end of the road
I mentioned how my first attempt at this ride ended after 86 miles. The through axle had come loose, and I only later realised I could have solved this by the roadside with the right tool. Second time round, I suffered a puncture after 49 miles. I cursed my ill luck – was this ride jinxed? But as I prepared to mend the puncture, the tubeless solvent worked its magic and sealed the puncture. I rode on nervously, but it held for the remaining 108 miles. My last minute service with Jason at Dees Cycles in Amersham may have saved the day.
It was the same story with the headwind. My first big ride was from Wiltshire to Cardiff in 1994. I didn’t realise at the time that the prevailing wind in Britain is from the west, so cycling in that direction is likely to be harder. (Unless you have an easterly wind.) I knew that the headwind would turn in my favour as I headed east and so it proved.
2: Mind over matter
Thinking of the road ahead: setting off
Long distance cycling is a physical challenge. We provide the engine for our progress across town and country. But the mind is just as important. I confess to feeling on edge on the eve of the ride, no doubt because of my failure in 2022. I was sure I would get through it, but lacking mechanical skills I feared being left at the roadside by a bike failure. It was irrational: I’ve ridden tens of thousands of miles with just that one incident requiring rescue.
Aside from mechanicals, I knew that I’d have to pace myself mentally as well as physically. The best advice is to relish the experience while not dwelling too much on how many miles remain. Look at a big ride as a series of mini rides, and treat each as an adventure. I was looking forward to lunch in Burford, and I wasn’t disappointed. Similarly, I took my time to recharge my batteries (literally and metaphorically) at Highworth, as I remembered the story of Reginald Warneford.
3: Talking of batteries…
When I started cycling seriously in my twenties, the only things that needed recharging were my lights. How times change: I now need to keep an eye on the charge levels of my phone, watch, bike computer, bike lights and GoPro (when carried).
The most troublesome gadget on this weekend’s ride was my Apple Watch. It needed charging after 85 miles, and again after another 30 because I didn’t have time to fully recharge it. The iPhone was simple: I charged it in my bag as I cycled. My Exposure light needs mains power, but has a setting that will last all night, making charging unnecessary for single day rides.
I didn’t have any of these challenges when I rode to Cardiff in 1994!
4: A wonderful route
Liam FitzPatrick has chosen a fabulous route for London-Wales-London. I was amazed how quiet most of the roads were – I frequently went a mile or more without a car overtaking me. And unlike many of the sportives I took part in during the 2010s it doesn’t add hills for the sake of it. Most of the route involves climbing an escarpment and staying on the plateau, rather than going against the grain. Liam may get hate mail for the Wooburn Green climb, but sometimes hills are unavoidable!
4: Am I ready for London-Wales-London?
Sitting by Reginald Warneford’s plaque in Highworth, I had a sinking feeling. I was weary after 85 miles, yet knew that I’d still have 165 further miles to pedal on London-Wales-London. Even as I completed Saturday’s ride successfully I didn’t dare think ahead to Saturday 4 May, and tackling the real thing. Yet now I feel more confident. Before this weekend, the furthest I’d cycled was 103 miles, on the old London Revolution sportive ride. Moving to 150+ miles was not an impossible step up for me. That’s a suitable balm for a nervous mind. I’m also dreaming of London-Edinburgh-London in 2025 but I mustn’t get ahead of myself!
As I cycled along the lovely Oxfordshire countryside, I listened to Emily Chappell talking of her endurance cycling adventures on the Cycling Magazine podcast. Emily won the Transcontinental Race across Europe in 2016, the first woman to do so. She’s a fantastic inspiration to anyone who wants to cycle long distances, with her mix of wisdom and humility. I am keeping her audio version of her book, Where There’s a Will for LWL.
5: Carmarthen isn’t that far away…
When I was at school in Cardiff in the 1970s, a friend mentioned one Monday morning that he’d cycled to Carmarthen over the weekend. Almost 50 years on I remember my reaction: “Carmarthen? That’s over 60 miles away!” He might as well said he’d pedalled to the moon.
When I discovered cycling in my mid twenties, I found that it wasn’t that hard to cover long distances on a good bike. In my early sixties I’m excited to keep pushing myself, while still enjoying my cycling. I’ve never been a racing rider, but seeing that mile number on my Garmin break new ground was a joy. Next stop: 250 miles…
6: Electrolyte tablets really helped
As it was the warmest day of the year so far, I took electrolyte tablets with me. For the first stage of the ride to Burford I drank plain water from one bottle and the electrolyte blend in the other. After lunch, I popped a tablet in both bottles. I can’t prove it, but feel sure this made a big difference to my condition over the last 70 miles, combined with the tailwind. I will definitely take a tube of electrolyte tablets on London-Wales-London.
It was one of my strangest dreams. I was in a chip shop in the Rhondda Fach in South Wales in 1985, watching miners’ leader Arthur Scargill sadly announce it was all over. The year-long battle to stop the mass closure of Britain’s coal mines had ended in defeat.
The dream was just that. But it reflected the painful reality of that March day in 1985. The miners of Maerdy in the Rhondda Fach marched proudly back to work, but we all knew that the Thatcher government had won a bitter struggle.
The strike began forty years ago on 6 March 1984, after the National Coal Board announced that 20 mines would close, with the loss of 20,000 jobs. Scargill said that the government would close far more mines (ultimately he was proved right in the years after the strike ended).
The battle that followed was Britain’s last great industrial confrontation, which left many of us with deeply conflicting emotions. The British people had long admired the miners, enduring one of the hardest and most dangerous ways to earn a living. (I blogged about some of the tragedies that struck South Wales in this blogpost.) They also sympathised with colliery communities such as Penrhiwceiber and Maerdy. These isolated villages existed to serve the coal trade, and faced a bleak future if Thatcher axed the coal industry. The women of those communities were magnificent in the grim months of 1984 and beyond, fighting for justice and speaking with eloquence.
In 2002 and 2019 I cycled the length of Great Britain. Over the past few weeks I have been reliving some of the most memorable moments of those tours – in my kitchen, on my Wattbike Atom smart training bike.
It was inspired by an email from Wattbike about a series of rides on the Rouvy indoor training app. I’d tried Rouvy very briefly last autumn but this seemed like a good reason to give it another go. There was a competition to win Wattbike goodiies but that was less of an incentive – I never win these contests.
Rouvy has taken sections of seven stages of the Babble Ride Across Britain Land’s End to John O’Groats ride (LEJOG), which takes place this September. I’d ridden two of these routes in my 2002 LEJOG, and four on my 2019 one.
The first ride was across Bodmin Moor in Cornwall, which I remember as a very tough ride as a horribly undertrained rider in 2002. I remember the respite of a lunch stop in a village cafe in Minions – and the moment I saw that very cafe on the Rouvy app was the experience that made me a Rouvy fan.
It’s hard to believe that my grandmother, Nan, died 30 years ago today. It’s seems like yesterday.
She was the perfect grandmother (and great grandmother) – a deeply caring person who loved the company of the younger generations. We in turn were thrilled to spend time with someone born during the reign of Queen Victoria, years before the first aeroplane flew.
I loved listening to her stories, which went back to the 1890s, including her memories of Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee in 1897. More poignantly, Nan recalled fetching oxygen cylinders by hansom cab for her dying father in 1912. That was the year she turned 21, just days after the Titanic sank. Her life milestones seemed to coincide with historic events: Nan got married in 1919, the week Alcock and Brown became the first people to fly across the Atlantic, landing in a bog in Ireland. She herself took her only flight at the age of 92 in 1983 – the short hop from Cardiff to Bristol.
Nan delighted in telling me how her husband Frank, the grandfather I never knew, insisted that one day there would be radio with pictures. Frank almost certainly never saw his prediction come true as television, unless he happened to come across a rare demonstration set in a London store before the outbreak of war in 1939, when the BBC’s fledgling TV service closed for the duration.
With Nan at her centenary party
Nan is the only person I’ve known who lived to 100. Her centenary party in Cardiff in 1991 was a marvellous celebration of a special person, with everyone who loved her crowding the capital’s County Hall.
Cycling journalist Ned Boulting’s latest book, 1923, is the story of how the purchase of the fragment of a newsreel report about a century-ago edition of the Tour de France led to an obsession with the forgotten rider seen on the film crossing a spectacular bridge. But this is far more than just another cycling book. It tells the story of a Europe still riven by tension and hatred five years after the Armistice.
The story begins when a friend pointed him to an item for sale in an online auction:
Lot 212. A Rare Film Reel from the Tour de France in the 1930s? Condition unknown.”
Ned bought the film for £120, and began a fascinating journey (literally and metaphorically) of discovery. The question mark over the date in the auction house listing was appropriate. The film, just over two minutes long, actually featured the 1923 Tour de France. Boulting found that the early Tours after the Great War followed exactly the same route, so he resorted to reading old newspaper articles, and even searching for weather reports, to establish that the stage from Brest to Les Sables d’Olonne featured in the film took place on 30 June 1923.
That £120 purchase could have had disastrous consequences. The company that made Boulting a digital video out of the ancient reel told him that the original was a nitrate film, and so highly flammable. Ned didn’t admit to the film restorers that the item had sat next to the radiator of his house after popping through his letterbox after he won the auction. If you happen to have a very old film reel at home, do check that it isn’t nitrate…
Théophile Beeckman leads the peloton over the bridge at La Roche-Bernard. Photo: Ned Boulting, 1923
This is one of the defining images from the 1923 story. It shows the hero of the book, Théophile Beeckman, racing ahead on the bridge across the river Vilaine at La Roche-Bernard. As the subtitle of the book, The Mystery of Lot 212 and a Tour de France Obsession, suggests, Boulting became obsessed with uncovering the story of Beeckman, a man so obscure that he has all but vanished from the records. (As Ned discovered, there was virtually nothing about the rider online until he published 1923.)
It wasn’t to be. Lowly Newport County came back from 2-0 down against footballing royalty Manchester United, but it was the Premier League side that will play in the fifth round of the FA Cup next month, winning 2-4 at Rodney Parade, Newport.
Photo via eBay
Perhaps justice was done. Almost half a century ago, the Manchester club gave Newport a helping hand in its fight for survival. Tommy Docherty’s side played a South Wales XI at Cardiff’s Ninian Park. I presume Dad went to the game, as I have a copy of the programme somewhere in the loft. As I blogged in 2013, County’s desperate plight in 1976 was headline news, and BBC Wales Today filmed the club chairman Cyril Rogers playing the piano (rather well, as I remember) to ease the stress of the survival battle. The Welsh X1 won 1-0, as the BBC noted this week, and Newport lived to play another day, narrowly losing a European Cup Winners Cup quarter final to Anderlecht five years later. But it was a case of fate postponed: County went bust in 1988, three years after my only visit to their old Somerton Park ground, when I saw them beat my team, Cardiff City, in a league cup tie. (I started my very first job, in Newport, the previous day.)
Newport County was reborn soon after that 1989 collapse, but the Football Association of Wales forced them to play their games in a different country. The FAW reasoned that it they wanted to play in the English league they should play in England. So the phoenix club had to play its home games in, of all places, Moreton-in-Marsh, an English town better known for its Cotswold charms than football. Eventually, as the BBC reported this weekend, County won a High Court case against the FAW, after the judge concluded that the FAW’s imposition of exile was “unlawful and an unreasonable restraint of trade”. This BBC report explains how County’s rebirth was down to one man, David Hando, the club president who died last year.
He would have been thrilled so see his beloved club give Manchester United such a scare.
It’s a story that even Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, Hollywood owners of Welsh rivals Wrexham, might have found too far-fetched…
When I started blogging 18 years ago I chose a tagline: ‘Rob Skinner shares his thoughts with the world’. Then I reflected that seemed rather boastful – the world wouldn’t care what I thought. So I added a tongue in cheek qualification. The final line read, ‘Rob Skinner shares his thoughts with the world – or his dad’.
It proved a fair reflection of my limited audience. Dad and I often discussed my blogposts, and I was delighted when he started his own blog as the first Covid-19 lockdown began in 2020. (We later turned that into a Kindle book, as the BBC reported.) One of his own last blogposts, the month before he died, about cinema, was prompted by my reflections on childhood cinemas.
After Dad died last February, I occasionally thought the old tagline was poignant rather than apt. But I was reluctant to remove it. But now, 11 months after Dad passed away, and a year after that father and son blogging double act, seems the right time to do so.
Dad (Bob Skinner) in 2005 outside the house he moved to when war broke out in 1939
Like most people who have lost a parent, I miss the chance to ask Dad a question about a hundred and one things. For example, when I blogged recently (Echoes of 1939) about his evacuation from London to stay with his aunt in Splott, Cardiff, at the outbreak of the second world war, I realised I had no idea how he got to Cardiff. Train? Coach? Alone or with his mother? Sadly, I will never know. But I have a lifetime of memories, not to mention Dad’s written memories and archives.
PS: for the record, a screenshot of this post with the old tagline, before I retire it.
Postscript
Ahzio’s lovely comment on this post – that I should keep the tagline mentioning my father – prompted me to change it to a dedication to both Dad and Mum, former journalists who inspired my love of writing.
You wear a bike helmet to keep safe. So it is a shock to find a faulty helmet design that could actually make things worse in a crash.
I bought a Giro Escape urban helmet in 2022. I wanted a lid with integrated lights for my weekly commute across London. After a few months, the strap came loose, and the helmet fell to the ground as I got to the office in the City of London.
Giro were very good, refunding me without quibble, and I bought a second Giro Escape, assuming the first helmet had a manufacturing fault. I loved the fit and the bright LED lights – just what I needed cycling home along dark country lanes after getting off the London train.
Yet after six months the same thing happened to the replacement. As I set off on my commute the helmet felt very loose, and I wondered how I could have forgotten to do it up. Then I found the two sides of the buckle were firmly attached: it was the strap that had come loose.
I contacted Giro, and was surprised by its response:
This is not something we have had reported to us often, especially 2 in a row for the same customer.
We would recommend that you reattach the clip and set the strap to the correct length. A small stitch through the loose part of the strap may stop this from happening.
Giro customer support by email, 16 january 2024
In other words, we expect you to redesign our helmet to make it safe to use.
To be fair, when I pointed out how unreasonable this response was Giro quickly agreed to refund me. But my second incident showed the dangerous design fault in the Giro Escape helmet. If I bought a third helmet, the same thing would happen again.
The fatal flaw
Let me explain the fault. The right side Escape strap is attached to the buckle by a very loose rectangle of soft plastic. It simply isn’t secure or tight enough to stop the strap working its way out of this loop and detaching from the buckle. I have made a video showing how easily this happens:
Within a day, another Escape user commented that they had exactly the same problem.
I then discovered that the design flaw isn’t restricted to Giro’s Escape helmets. It had recalled Merit helmets in North America, Australia and New Zealand because, in Giro’s words, quoted by BikeRadar, “the helmet strap may detach from the helmet when “pulled with relatively little force, posing a risk of injury to the user in a crash”. That’s exactly what happened to my two Escape helmets, happily without a crash.
So, Giro, how long are you going to continue selling the unsafe Escape helmet?
My father Bob Skinner with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, 1977
I was delighted to discover this photo of my late father with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas, one of the most illustrious Welshmen of the twentieth century.
Wynford was a wonderful broadcaster and writer. His first prominent role was as the BBC’s Welsh language commentator at the coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (later the Queen Mother) in 1937.
His most famous broadcast was from a Lancaster bomber on a raid on Berlin in 1943, an experience he told Michael Parkinson in 1981 was “the most terrifying eight hours I’ve spent in my life”. Like his BBC contemporary John Arlott, Vaughan-Thomas had an almost poetic way with words, which isn’t surprising given he was taught by Dylan Thomas’s father. He recalled that burning Berlin was “the most beautifully horrible sight I’ve ever seen, like watching someone throwing jewellery on black velvet, winking rubies, sparkling diamonds, all coming up at you.” He went on to compare the Berlin searchlights with the tentacles of an octopus.
The BBC radio programme Archive on 4 devoted an intriguing episode in 2013 to the raid with audio from the original 1943 broadcast, Vaughan-Thomas’s recollections and most movingly the memories of a survivor of the raid who was a Berlin schoolgirl in 1943. She tells how her mother risked death by going back into their collapsing home to rescue her teddy bear. Her interview brought to mind the terrible human cost of the Allied – and German – bombing raids of the second world war.
When I rediscovered the photo that opens this blogpost amongst Dad’s photo collection. I assumed that it was taken at an Institute of Public Relations dinner during the time Bob was chairman pf the IPR (now CIPR) Wales group in the 1970s. Sure enough, I found confirmation in a box file of Dad’s speeches and articles: the notes of the speech he gave that night:
“The champagne voice of Wales” – how apt!
Bob wrote a short history of the IPR in Wales in 1995, which was launched at an event in (I think) Newport. It includes this photo, which shows that my mother Rosemary also attended, and that the dinner with Wynford Vaughan-Thomas took place in November 1977, a day before Dad’s 51st birthday. Arwyn Owen, seen in the photo above, who ran PR for Welsh Brewers, kindly supported my application to join the IPR in 1990.
Wynford Vaughan-Thomas was a leading figure in Welsh broadcasting, and was one of the founders of Harlech Television (HTV, now ITV Wales). Not long before he died in 1987 he co-presented a wonderful television history of Wales, The Dragon Has Two Tongues. His sparring partner was the equally loquacious Gwyn A Williams, and over 13 episodes the two Welshmen argued passionately about the interpretation of the past. By common consent Williams won the debate, and Vaughan-Thomas was reduced at one point to dismiss his fellow presenter as “a Marxist magpie”.
Sadly this entertaining series has never been repeated in Wales for copyright reasons, although it has been broadcast in Ireland. It was accompanied by two contrasting histories, Wales: a History by Wynford, and When Was Wales? by Alf.
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