Castro Verde (1): Surrounding Villages

Rural Alentejo and the Site of a Great Battle (Maybe)

Faro to Castro Verde

27-Sept-2022

Portugal

Castro Verde
Municipality

Returning to our Covid-interrupted practice, we prefaced our Algarve holiday with a few days a little further north.

Faro to Castro Verde is 105km and takes just over an hour on modern roads. Much to the irritation of our sat nav, we decided to use the old N2 instead, though it did everything it could to divert us. Once a nationally important north-south route, it is 10km shorter, but its twists and turns almost double the journey time.

North from Faro to Castro Verde

We crossed the Algarve's coastal plain, a land of tourist development, figs and olives, regimented rows of orange trees and occasional vineyards. From São Bras the road starts to climb, a slow twisting drive through cork oaks and, higher up, eucalyptus. By Almodôvar we had reached Alentejo where the Campo Branco plain allowed much swifter progress.

As usual Lynne was sceptical of my ability to find the hotel, but even before passing the 'Welcome to Castro Verde' sign I had spotted the tower of the building across the street. I had seen Casa Dona Maria on Google Street View and it would stand out in any Portuguese small town. Typically streets look like this…

Castro Verde

…while Casa Dona Maria is this.

Casa Dona Maria, Castro Verde. Photographed from our hotel room balcony

A Neo-Gothic/Moorish/Manueline fantasy, it was built in the 1920s by a wealthy farmer called Álvaro Romano Colaço who may, some suggest, have had more money than taste.

It’s a Sandwich, Jim, but Not as we Know it

Finding a cafe for a late lunch we shared the largest cheese toastie known to humanity - we would happily have shared the non-sharing size.

It's a sandwich, Jim, but not as we know it, Castro Verde

By the time we had checked in to our hotel it was 3 o'clock, and as we had left home over 12 hours earlier it was nap time.

In the evening we visited the nearby Restaurant Alentejano. All the meals (otherthan toasties!) from this and other Alentejo posts are gathered in The Alentejo: Eating and Drinking, a companion post to Eating the Algarve

28-Sept-2022

Castro Verde, a Concelho, a Freguesia and a Town

Castro Verde, in south-central Portugal is one of the country's 308 Concelhos (municipalities) and one of the 14 that make up the District of Beja (we visited Beja in 2018) - often referred to by its old name of Baixa Alentejo.

The Concelho of Castro Verde and its position in Portugal (inset)

The Municipality of Castro Verde covers 500km² and is divided into 4 Freguesias (civil parishes) – the map above shows 5 but Casével was merged into Castro Verde parish in 2013. The name ‘Castro Verde’ can refer to either the whole municipality (pop 7,500), or the largest parish in the municipality (pop 4,000), or the largest town in that parish (pop c3,000). Confusing? Yes.

Ermida de São Pedro das Cabeça

Castro V. Parish

We decided to spend the morning seeing the sights outside the town, helpfully listed in a pamphlet in the hotel. The Ermida de São Pedro das Cabeça, is clearly considered the most important.

The Ermida, near the village of Geraldos, is 5km east of Castro Verde down a series of ever smaller roads. The final and smallest turns a bend, climbs a hill and there it is, a chapel of little architectural merit, standing alone on a windswept hill top. The door was locked and through the grimy window all we could see was cleaning equipment.

Lynne and the Ermida de São Pedro das Cabeças

Despite the bright blue sky, the sun had yet to warm the air and the strong breeze had a biting edge for which I was inappropriately dressed. To the west the Plain of Ourique, stretched past Castro Verde to the town of Ourique itself, and beyond.

Castro Verde across the Plain of Ourique

Eastwards it continues as far as they eye can see.

Eastwards across the Plain of Ourique

The Battle of Ourique

In 1139 Afonso (without an 'l') Henriques, Count of Portugal, was busy fighting King Alfonso (with an 'l') VII of Leon, to whom he was, theoretically, a vassal. The rulers of the petty kingdoms and counties of northern Iberia spent more time fighting each other than fighting the Moors who controlled the south of the peninsula.

Moorish incursions led him to disengage with Alfonso VII to safeguard his Southern boundaries. On the 25th of July, after God came to him in a vision and promised a great victory, he attacked and destroyed a much larger Moorish force led by five princes, all of whom were killed. This was the Battle of Ourique, after which Afonso Henriques was acclaimed King of Portugal – then just a modest area around Porto. He was crowned by the Archbishop of Braga in 1142 and recognised by Alfonso VII the next year. Ourique was the start of the Reconquista which would see the Moors driven from what is now Portugal by 1249. In Spain the Emirate of Grenada resisted until 1492.

In the late 16th century, the popular King Sebastião I (see Lagos for his story) visited this hillside and commanded the construction of ‘a very sumptuous building’ to commemorate the battle. He must have been disappointed, even by 16th century standards the Ermida is hardly ‘sumptuous’.

Other Battle Memorials

Behind the Ermida is a memorial pillar erected in 1940. Next-door in Spain, dictator Francisco Franco (ruled 1936-75) successfully used myths of the Reconquista to bolster his nationalist/fascist government. This would never quite work in Portugal but dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar (ruled 1936-68) was still keen to be seen as a legitimate successor of Afonso Henriques.

1940s Pillar Memorial to the Battle of Ourique

Behind that is another memorial erected in 1989, on the 850th anniversary of the Battle. Although behind the 1940 memorial, its brightness makes the dull pillar easy to ignore. Marcello Caetano, Salazar’s successor, was overthrown by a military coup on the 25th of April 1984, the Carnation Revolution which eventually led to Portugal becoming a liberal democracy. The newer memorial, colourful, original and with a joie de vivre that Salazar would never have tolerated, presents the new democratic government as a legitimate successor to Afonso Henriques.

1980s Memorial to the Battle of Ourique

But What is the Truth?

Some problems: across the whole vast plain no one has ever found evidence of a major battle – and Ourique is too far south for Afonso to have been dealing with a border incursion. He may have led a raiding party who were intercepted by a Moorish force, but that would have been skirmish, not a battle.

The chroniclers were unfamiliar with the area; there is a Vilã Cha de Ourique near Santarém which could be a possible location, but there is little corroboration in the Moorish chronicles.

The vision before the battle, the five dead princes - whose shields still adorn the Portuguese flag and are very clear on the 1940 memorial pillar above - and the victory against great numerical odds give the story an air of unreality. There must be a kernel of truth, Afonso Henriques did become the first king of an independent Portugal, but there has been some serious legend making.

São Marcos da Ataboeira

S Marcos, Parish

The pamphlet suggested we next head for São Marcos da Ataboeira, the ‘Parish Seat’ of Castro Verde’s easternmost Parish (or Freguesia). It promised only a church where the ' buttresses were in perfect harmony with the tower', but we went anyway.

The village is off the main road and straggles a remarkable distance for a place with a few hundred inhabitants. We eventually reached a small square with the church of São Marcos on one side. We got out of the car, observed that the church was locked and lined up a photo.

Square, São Marcos da Ataboeira

A middle-aged woman emerged from one of the nearby houses and marched towards us. I hoped she was coming with a key and an offer to unlock the church. 'Bom dia,' I said. She didn't answer, but stopped a couple of metres away and stared. Having run out of Portuguese small talk, I smiled and said it was a nice day. She continued to stare, and then she stared some more. I have not been stared at so hard or so long since we were in rural China. With my 'North European on holiday' look, I am obviously not a local, but surely I stood out much less than I would in a Chinese village.

After a while she turned and marched off. ‘Probably gone to fetch the men with the pitchforks,' Lynne mused.

We were not overly impressed by the harmony between the slabby buttresses and the stumpy tower - perhaps the writer had his tongue in his cheek - but we admired the bright blue paintwork. Then, as there was no sign of anyone with a key - or a pitchfork - we returned to the car and left.

Church of São Marcos, São Marcos da Ataboeira

São Marcos da Ataboeira to Entradas

The village of Entradas is in the northwest corner of its parish and a minor road from São Marcos takes a direct route. Right at the start a sign described the road as ‘submersíval’, not a difficult word to translate, but a surprise when all we could see was parched grassland.

In Grassland!

A little further on we followed a low embankment and passed another sign, identical to one on the road beside Portimão dock. There it accurately describes what could happen to those driving carelessly but here it looked a little melodramatic.

Our 10km journey crossed empty, rolling grassland, sometimes described as pseudo-steppe. About half way, it crossed a wide gully and the first sign, at least, began to make sense. It had not rained for months, but a sudden downpour would turn the gully into a stream and the road into a ford, if it was even passable.

Great Bustard, Photo Andrej Chudy*

Spain and Portugal are home to 60% of the world’s surviving great bustards, and the large ground-nesting birds live on such grasslands. The last British great bustard was shot in 1832, but they have recently been reintroduced on the grasslands of Salisbury plain.

We saw none during our drive, but the bird dominates the arms of São Marcos da Ataboeira while Entradas prefers a sheep, a turkey, poppies and wheat.

Entradas

Entradas Parish

Entradas is a larger village than São Marcos and was once strategically important, being on the main route from the river port of Mértola (see Mértola and Alcoutim, posted 2017) to the interior of the Alentejo Baixa. Later, Entradas was the entry (entrada) to the Campo Branco, the grazing grounds of which the Plain or Ourique is just a part. From the 14th to the 17th centuries drovers brought cattle and sheep, including the royal herds, here for seasonal grazing.

Entradas now sits on one side of the major road from Beja, but apart from access roads at each end of the village, it has turned its back on its former life-line. As the parish arms suggest the current economy is rural and based on sheep, cows, wheat, cork and olives.

Museum of Rural Life, Entradas

The village streets were never designed for cars. Several cobbled streets ran roughly parallel to the main road, with occasional cross streets, but this was not a grid plan; there were kinks and variations in width in the ‘parallel’ streets, one of which came to a dead end. We were aiming for the Museum of Rural Life, and passed a sign at the entrance of the village. We followed the arrow and, as there were no further signs, kept as straight as possible. We were soon at the other end of the village, where a ‘Museum’ sign pointed back the way we had come.

Turning round, we found our way to square which may have been the village centre…

Village square, Entradas

…and just beyond it, the museum.

Museo da Ruralidade, Entradas

It turned out to be a very good museum of its type, and free, to boot. Many of the exhibits have photos showing them in use. A wooden plough with a medieval look….

Wooden plough, Entradas Museum

…was in use when the photograph below was taken.

Wooden plough, Entradas Museum
The text concerns the change from wood to metal in the early 20th century

There was a horse-drawn sit-upon-harrow that would have provided the bumpiest of rides across the arid, hard-packed local soil.

Sit-upon harrow, Entradas Museum

Pottery was on display beneath a picture of the same pottery being sold.

Pottery, Entradas Museum

A reconstruction of a shelter…

Shelter, Entradas Museum

…was adjacent to a photograph of a similar shelter in use. The photo is dated 1959. I know I am old, but I was amazed this photo was taken in western Europe in my lifetime. I made a joke about pitchforks earlier, but this is a modern museum with a modern lay-out and technology; rural Portugal is very much part of the 21st century. The changes we have seen since our first visit 40 years ago are immense, in northern Portugal we had seen people collecting water from the village pump, in the Algarve the ladies of Vilarinhos (between Loulé and São Brás) still did their laundry in the communal wash house, but even so the Portugal of 1959 was barely recognisable in 1982, which in its turn is so unlike today. The whole world has changed, but Portugal has changed faster than most.

A shelter in use, Entradas Museum

There was also a threshing machine as every rural museum needs a threshing machine.

Threshing machine, Entradas Museum

Back to Castro Verde

We returned to town, passed the roundabout where sheep may safely graze, parked near our hotel and walked to the northern end of Rua Dom Afonso Henriques. It was not very far; Castro Verde is a small town.

Sheepy roundabout, Castro Verde

The town’s two most important churches sit beside or above this road, the Church of Nossa Senhora dos Remédios….

Nossa Senhora dos Remédios

….and further down, the Royal Basilica of Nossa Senhora da Conceição.

Basilica of Nossa Senhora da Conceiçã

Both were closed, but the garden by the Basilica had one of the more enigmatic memorials to the Battle of Ourique,

Battle of Ourique Memorial, Castro Verde Basikica

I also liked this house near the basilica.

House near the Basilica, Castro Verde

It was now lunchtime and as this post has now gone on long enough, I shall close it here, conveniently leaving enough material for the next post. As I started with a toastie, I will finish with a toastie; different café, different filling, and not sharing size, though it was sufficient for the two of us.

Toastie

An Afterthought

There are 25 photographs in this post. Apart from a couple of indistinct figures in the distance, there is no living human being in these photos other than Lynne and myself. This was not intentional, but it is a bit odd.

Other Alentejo Posts

Évora (2016)
Mértola and Alcoutim: Strongholds by the Guadiana River (2017) - also under Algarve
Beja, Capital of Baixo Alentejo(2018)
Castro Verde (1): Surrounding Villages (2022)
Castro Verde (2): Castro Verde and Ourique (2022)
Serpa (2023)
The Alentejo, Eating and Drinking (2024)

Newtown, Powys

The Birthplace of one of the 19th Century's Greatest Social Reformers

Newtown? Where and Why

Wales

Powys

Lynne chose Newtown as the destination for her birthday sojourn. It was not an obvious choice, but there was a reason.

During the years our daughter spent at Aberystwyth University we travelled regularly from North Staffs to the Welsh coast. Crossing the border near Welshpool we either took a northerly route through Mallwyd and Machynlleth or tacked south through Newtown and Llangurig. Either way the 100-mile journey took around 3 hours, the roads are narrow and there was a good chance of finding yourself in a queue behind a tractor winding its noisy way through the quiet hills of Mid-Wales while flicking gobbets of mud and cow dung at is unwilling followers.

Mid-Wales
Shrewsbury is 35 miles from home, Newtown is another 35 miles southwest

‘I have driven through Newtown many times, and never stopped there,’ she said, ‘so I would like to visit for my birthday.’ ‘There might be a reason no one stops,’ I thought, making a token show of resistance before meekly acquiescing.

Wales

Newtown is the largest town in Powys, Wales largest county. That almost makes it sound important, but although Powys covers a remarkable 25% of the Welsh landmass, it has only 3% of the population. Newton has some 11,000 citizens, twice as many as Llandrindod Wells, the administrative centre, and ten times more than Montgomery, the other Powys town I have ‘honoured’ with a blog post.

Its name does the town no favours and is hardly unique; Wikipedia lists another 80 Newtowns (and almost as many Newtons) across the Anglosphere. In England it prompts memories, for those old enough, of the ‘challenging’ Newtown in ‘Z Cars’ or comparison with real new towns, like Telford or Milton Keynes with a reputation for many thousands of identikit 1970s dwellings and concrete brutalist centres. Actually, I like Milton Keynes, I find it well planned and user friendly, but it does have an (unwarranted) reputation

Newtown, Powys, is not like that. It may have undergone relatively recent expansion, but it is a surprisingly old new town.

Castell Dolforwyn and the Origins of Y Drenewydd (The New Town)

The A483 follows the Severn Valley southwest from Welshpool. 5 miles before Newtown a sign to Dolforwyn Castle points to a narrow side road climbing diagonally across the hillside almost parallel to the main road below. After a mile, opposite a small parking area, a footpath strikes up the hillside towards the castle.

The path up to Dolforwyn Castle
There is nothing Lynne enjoys more than a steady climb

Working its way round the end of the hill, it turns towards the summit and suddenly you are surrounded by old stonework. This area, just outside the gate, was once occupied by the village that grew up to service the castle

Dolforwyn Castle entrance

To assert his claim to be the most important among the Welsh rulers/warlords/princes, Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, Prince of Gwynedd needed a presence in the strategically important Severn Valley. His successful invasion of 1257 and subsequent consolidation led to the Treaty of Montgomery (September 1267) where Henry III recognised him as the Prince of Wales. To confirm his control Llywelyn constructed a castle at Dolforwyn between 1273 and 1277.

The side of Dolforwyn Castle overlooking the Severn Valley is the remains of Llywelyn's stone work

Edward I

Unfortunately for him Henry III had died in 1272 and his son and successor Edward I was less tolerant of upstart princelings on his borders, particularly those who built a castle without his permission. Construction had hardly finished when Roger Mortimer and Henry de Lacy arrived from Montgomery with an army and laid siege.

After removing the villagers, they sat down and waited until the defenders ran out of water and the siege ended.

Roger Mortimer largely rebuilt the castle, remembering to include a well in case of another siege. Dolforwyn remained in Mortimer hands for three generations before it was abandoned. By 1398 it was described as "ruinous and worth nothing." It is now in the safe hands of Cadw, the Welsh Government’s historic environment service.

The side of the castle most rebuilt by Mortimer - including the well

Edward I had his faults, but he ensured the lands he grabbed were well governed. Driving the native Welsh princes from the Severn Valley pacified the borders and the castle’s displaced villagers felt confident enough to move down to the flatter land beside the river. Three miles from Dolforwyn they built Y Drenewydd (The New Town) or simple Newtown beside the River Severn.

Robert Owen

The Statue

Walking from the large car park beside the Severn towards the bustling town centre we passed a statue of Robert Owen, Newtown's favourite son. Designed by Gilbert Bayes and erected in 1956 this rather sentimental statue of the Newtown-born industrialist and social reformer, stands in the tiny Robert Owen Memorial Garden.

Robert Owen (1771-1858)

Birthplace and Museum

Central Newtown has sufficient self-important buildings to ensure the town is not mistaken for an over-grown village. The HSBC building is a typical HSBC design, cut down to fit the corner plot, once occupied by Robert Owen’s birthplace.

HSBC, Newtown, on the site of Robert Owen's birthplace

The Cross Building on the junction of Broad and High Streets, was built to commemorate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee in 1897. It was financed by Sarah Brisco of the Pryce family (of whom more later) who donated the clock to the people of Newtown in 1900. [Update: Barclays Bank were tenants from the start. They closed this branch just weeks after our visit].

The Cross Building, Newtown

Across Severn Street is Sarah Brisco House and the Robert Owen Memorial Museum.

Robert Owen Memorial Museum, Newtown

Born in 1771, Robert Owen had little formal education but was a voracious reader. Leaving school aged ten, he was apprenticed to a Lincolnshire draper and by the age of 23 was a partner in a Manchester mill.

Robert Owen's birthplace may have gone, but the museum preserves the doorknocker!

In the early 1790s he started thinking more about how workers were treated, developing progressive moral views.

Robert Owen

In the late 1790s he met David Dale, a Scottish entrepreneur and philanthropist, and the builder of the New Lanark mills in southern Scotland. We visited New Lanark, now a UNESCO World Heritage site) in 2021 (click here.) In 1799 he married Dale’s daughter and in 1800 took over New Lanark. Dale had been considered a model employer, but Owen went much further, putting limits on the hours and ages of child workers and ensuring they received an education. He introduced a standard eight-hour day and lobbied to have his reforms put into law. Prime Minister Robert Peel sympathised, but his ideas were too radical for the time.

Robert Owen and his reforms

Despite (or because of) the way he treated his workers he made a great deal of money. He sold New Lanark in 1825 and although his subsequent projects met with less success, his contributions to the founding of the cooperative movement and to trade unionism were of great importance. He was a visionary and a man ahead of his time.

St Mary’s Church, Robert Owen’s Grave and More

Although he lived most of his life in Scotland and England, Owen returned to Newtown at the end of his life and died here in November 1857. Despite declaring himself an atheist in 1817 and becoming a spiritualist in his 80s he was buried at St Mary’s Church a short walk from the museum.

Robert Owen's grave, St Mary's Church, Newtown

Nearby a plaque commemorates Thomas Powell, a chartist leader born in Newtown in 1802. Described as a ‘disciple of Robert Owen’ and ‘a fighter for political rights and equality’, he was imprisoned for his trouble in 1839-40. He died in Trinidad in 1862.

Thomas Powell's plaque, St Mary's Newtown

The Charter from which the Chartists took their name demanded six radical reforms:

1) A vote for every man aged twenty-one years and over.
2) A secret ballot.
3) No property qualification for Members of Parliament (MPs).
4) Payment of MPs enabling persons of modest means to become MPs.
5) Equal constituencies.
6) Annual Parliamentary elections.

Chartism was at its peak 1839-48 but faded away thereafter. All their outlandish demands were eventually met except No. 6 which still sounds outlandish.

St Mary’s Church served Newtown for 500 years, but being beside the river, flooding was a continual problem. Eventually, a new church was built and St Mary’s was abandoned in 1850. It is now a ruin, but has been stabilised.

St Mary's, Newtown

From St Mary's to the Textile Museum

Beside the Severn

Newtown’s textile museum was a 250m walk away. We set off from St Mary’s strolling along the bank of the Severn. The River Severn, shared between Wales and England, is Great Britain’s longest river, but at Newtown it is little more than a stream, being barely 30km (18 miles) into its 354km (220 mile) journey to the Bristol Channel.

Beside the Severn, Newtown

The Long Bridge

We crossed the river on the Long Bridge. A wooden bridge was built on this site in the 15th century and maintained by bequests in the wills of Newtown’s leading citizens. It survived the great flood of 1795 and was still in use, though somewhat rickety, in the early 19th century.

Long Bridge over the Severn, Newtown

In 1820, maintenance of roads and bridges became the responsibility of the County and the present bridge was constructed. It was barely adequate for the traffic of the mid-19th century and is even less adequate now – signs declare its feebleness in two languages. Drivers of heavy vehicles will be relieved that there is a modern bridge a short distance downstream.

Long Bridge, Newtown in 1880

The photo above was taken from the bridge looking past where I was standing. Newtown, give or take a line of parked cars and some signs, is still recognisable. The photo was borrowed from CountyTimes.co.uk and is part of the Powys Digital History Project.

A Scary Road Sign

Whether it is a 'Weak Bridge' or a 'Pont Wan', this long exiled, monolingual anglophone Welshman applauds the efforts made to keep the ancient language alive and well. Monolingual as I may be, I was brought up, mainly in England, by Welsh parents, and Lynne is Welsh, so I generally approach place names with reasonable confidence. I am unfazed by Llanelli (where Lynne was born), Ystradgynlais, Tonyrefail, or Machynlleth but the sign just over the bridge gave me pause for thought.

Scary sign, Newtown

Bilingual signage is inevitably asymmetric; all towns and villages have Welsh name (though some have been invented quite recently) but many places have never had an English name. Bettws Cedewain is no problem, ‘w’ is a vowel (sometimes) and ‘Bettws’ is pronounced ‘Bettus’ (simples!) but at first glance Llanllwchaearn appears to have six consecutive consonants followed by three consecutive vowels. By breaking it down into 3 syllables, remembering ‘w’ is a vowel, not sweating the terminal vowels - and pronouncing ‘ll’ as a voiceless lateral fricative (and we all know what one of those is) I triumphed-ish.

Newtown Textile Museum

Newtown’s Textile Museum occupies a weaving factory built in the 1830s. The lower storeys consist of three pairs of back-to-back weaver’s cottages. The upper storeys, were used for weaving, the large windows giving light to operate the hand-looms.

Newtown Textile Museum is the 4-storey red-brick building

Weavers' workshop, Manchester

There were many such factories here in the 19th century. Newtown was a weaving town, so Robert Owen’s switch from being a draper to manging mills seemed quite natural and the few surviving weaving factories in Manchester are similar in design. In Manchester and Lanark Owen was weaving cotton from the Americas, in Newtown it was locally sourced wool.

The lower floors give an idea of the basic, and rather cramped living conditions of the workers and their (often large) families…

…where women could earn money by spinning…

Weaver's cottage, Newtown Textile Musuem

…for the looms above.

Looms, Newtown Textile Musuem

There are also education facilities for guiding school parties through the whole process from sheep to cloth.

The top floor has the workshops of other forgotten occupations. There is a clog maker’s…

Clog makers, Newtown textile Museum

…and a draper’s shop, or is it a haberdasher? I looked them up. Draper: A person who sells textiles. Haberdasher: one who sells, needles, thread, buttons etc. (North American usages are different).

Drapers or Haberdashers? Newtown textile Museum

I am generally wary of textile museums. Across the world people are keen for us to watch them weaving, and even keener for us to buying something. Unfortunately, I have little interest in textiles, but they are often poor people, so we buy a gift for someone who doesn’t really want it. Newtown Textile Museum is not like that, it brings to life a period of the town’s history and is well worth a visit.

Newtown and the World of Retail

Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones

Pryce Jones was born near Newtown in 1834 and apprenticed to a local draper in 1845. He took over the business in 1856 and then started a new company under his own name, dealing in Welsh flannel. With an established national postal system and the arrival of the railway, he was able to set up a mail order business in Newtown, that not only numbered Florence Nightingale and Queen Victoria among its customers, but eventually shipped Welsh flannel across Europe and to America and Australia. In 1879 he built the Royal Welsh Warehouse which still stands next to the station. He became MP for Montgomery in 1885 and was knighted two years later as Sir Pryce Pryce-Jones. Apart from being the Jeff Bezos of Mid-Wales, in 1876 he patented the ‘Euklisia Rug’, the world’s very first sleeping-bag.

The Royal Welsh Warehouse, Newtown

Laura Ashley

Laura Ashley, whose designs are invariably described as ‘quintessentially English’ was actually Welsh. With husband Bernard Ashley she opened their first shop in Machynlleth in 1961 and built their first factory in Newtown. Then from Newtown to the world.

Dinner in Newtown on a Tuesday

Google maps suggests Newtown is replete with restaurants, but eliminating cafés, coffee shops and takeaways greatly reduces the possibilities for a drink and a sit-down dinner. On further investigation the remaining establishments were largely ‘closed: next open, Thursday 7 pm’.

One Italian restaurant was, apparently, open. After walking right across central Newtown (a short hike!) we found it too locked and unlit. Wandering around, we found several drinking-only pubs – once the norm, but no longer elsewhere – multiple takeaways but no restaurants. One pub sported a somewhat unappealing menu outside. We entered. It was large and not particularly crowded, but most unoccupied tables were piled with uncleared dirty dishes. We exited.

We hovered outside an Indian restaurant, but it appeared to lack a licence, and Lynne deserved a drink on her birthday. We popped into a Spar convenience store and purchased a bottle of Rioja, intending to pick up a takeaway and return to our B&B. Setting off on our quest, the proprietor had said we would be welcome to eat in the breakfast room and use their plates and cutlery. It had seemed an odd speech at the time, now we understood.

Fish King Souvlaki

Fish King is a chip shop, but we had seen has some positive comments about its Greek food on TripAdvisor.

Fish King the following morning with friendly proprietor toting a broom

By 7.45 the fish’n’chip rush had gone and the proprietor was happy to run us through his Greek options. We ordered a chicken souvlaki and fried chicken (the choice was chicken or chicken). Returning to the B&B felt like a defeat, it was too cold for the outside tables but he had one inside table. Sitting in splendour in the corner of a chip shop, we ate our chicken, drank our wine from borrowed mugs and provided a talking point for later customer.

Dining in Newtown's exclusive Fish King

It was wholesome, reasonably priced, and had some genuine Greek flavours. Being a chip shop, our meal came with pita bread and chips; the younger me would have eaten it all, but maturity means I  cannot manage so much carbohydrate so I left most of the chips. I had assumed the proprietor was a Greek Cypriot - there are many in the Fish and Chip trade - but he was actually Romanian and had learned to cook during a ten-year spell in Cyprus. An affable young man with a gift for languages and an entrepreneurial spirit, he deserves to do well.

In Conclusion

Despite initial misgivings there is plenty in and around Newtown to fill a day, and the people we met were all very pleasant. Do go and visit, but if you don’t fancy eating in the corner of a chip shop, go at the weekend.