Sabbatical Diary – Day 47

Burry Port Lighthouse. (The scene of a significant event in our relationship. In Welsh! About 8 years ago.)

Windy today! And showery. It was lashing down before we set off, but dry as we left. We went through Llanelli and on to Burry Port, then Ferryside, then round to Llansteffan, which is just across the Tywi estuary, but 16 miles by road. It then started to rain and I started a lengthy fight with my satnav, which proven unable to distinguish between roads and grassy bridleways, and as I tried improvising a way forward, kept telling me to turn around. However much, and however loudly, I told it I wasn’t going to turn around, it just ignored me. Very annoying.

View across to Llansteffan from Ferryside.

Eventually found our way back to a road with two lanes (which happened to be the A40) and continued to Tenby. Fantastic view from our room towards Caldey, where I am due to visit tomorrow if the wind dies down.

As we were leaving Burry Port, I saw Mr Whippy again. Brought back memories of our conversation all those weeks ago. But we had just set off, so I didn’t stop. Before heading off to Ferryside, we went round to the other side of Burry Port Harbour. Only a couple of hundred yards, but a mile or so by road. And I saw the strangest thing. Mr Whippy was round the other side of the harbour already. He couldn’t possibly have got there before us. I couldn’t work out what was going on. Was this an imposter, pretending to be Mr Whippy. All very odd, and a little sinister. I began wondering about whether any of the other ‘Mr Whippys’ I have seen might be imposters. I went over to investigate. I took this photo.

If you look carefully in the background, to the right of the van in the front of the picture, you can see the real Mr Whippy’s van. Same colour van. Looks like an imposter has built a copy of Mr Whippy’s van, painted ‘Mr Whippy’ on the back, and was going around pretending to be him. I knew something was odd because I could see them both at the same time. The imposter is either very brave or very stupid to attempt such deception so close to the real Mr Whippy. Then, I noticed that the man in the front of this van was really quite young. Makes sense now. It’s Mr Whippy’s son! So, if you think about it, he is also Mr Whippy. What a relief. No imposters after all.

I thought later that, in fact, it was kind of cool that they had the same vans, and had presumably arranged to meet at the harbour on Father’s Day. But one had gone to each side. Maybe their satnavs misled one of them. Odd that they hadn’t seen each other though. The vans are clear enough to see from a long way off. but then he was sat in the front and obviously couldn’t se his Dad behind him.

If I’d worked all of this out while we were there, I’d have gone over and told him his Dad was round the other side, but I guess they figured that out sooner or later. Probably had a good laugh about it. Hope they didn’t argue.

Anyway, I’m a bit tired now.

Good night. God bless.

Mike