Ceramics..and Cycling...

 

Ah, blogger is in backwards mode today!

Or not....!!

A good day seeing some carrying on, others setting up. Meeting old friends, making new ones..some of whom then turned out to have friends in common...and we are talking worldwide!!

Then down to the town centre with daughter and family to watch the British Cycling women's criterium championship..

1.6km round the town centre, hills, descents, corners, all different surfaces...and hard and fast! I only stayed to watch the women, as the men started at 8pm...for an hour's racing...and it is 40 minutes walk back up the hill from the seafront!!

We started watching from the library steps...this is the local cat who visits the library regularly 

Hoping to get out of the rain! Which thankfully didn't last long

Son in law and grandson getting the angles

Motorbike camera providing live action for the screen on the promenade 

Daughter getting a different angle

Grandstand view for an official photographer 

And a Scottish winner in both races!!

Train trip to Aberystwyth....lots of pictures !

 An early start...I was NOT going to miss that bus!!

I was out just before 7, having packed the night before and been up for over an hour!

The bus was on time...and at Ayr station I had the choice of a train straight away...or the one I'd been booked on ten minutes later....

So off to Glasgow...just under an hour...

And an hour to wait...

And then the train heading for London....but there are TWO...leaving three minutes apart...not stopping at the same stations....cue a LOT of people.. including myself...rushing from one to the other!!

This leg of the journey to Wolverhampton was just over four hours.

The upper reaches of the Clyde!

Another hour's wait for the train to Aberystwyth 

On the first half I had a lovely conversation about languages with a woman from Africa..whose first language was French, but she also spoke fluently half a dozen others and was brushing up her school Italian language with Duolingo!

Then half an hour's hot walk up Penglais hill to the Arts Centre where the International Ceramics Festival is being held ...a Biennial potters' Beanfeast, here since 1985 ( I was the treasurer on that one 😳)

Booked in, had supper in the café and walked over to my lodgings in the  Student Village. I'd never stayed in the part on the other side of the main road...and the maps were confusing...but found it in the end!

A simple room, not ensuite, but the shared bathroom has...a bath....bliss!!