Kindness of strangers

First the bus left me behind in Cardiff, after a wonderful but tiring day touring the White Castle and Castle Coch with Zoe. It just passed me by... wait! I've got a ticket!...You were supposed to stop here!!! It's late! It's dark! I don't know where I'm going!!! I expressed my despair to another bus driver from a different company... he wouldn't see me stranded and took me for free. So kind! Then he forgot to tell me where to get off, and it was my own intuition that saved me. Found my way in the dark to The Oyster Hotel on Oystermouth Road in Swansea, up many flights of a stairs to a room loud with traffic noise... Slept with earplugs and a pillow over my head. In the morning I saw the view out the window of lovely seaside, and went for a walk on the beach. At my request, the owner, Cynthia, moved me to a much quieter room the next night so I was able to sleep. Again, so kind.

Today I've spent the morning in the library in Port Talbot where my father was born, with an enthusiastic young archivist who tracked down all the ships that brought my family to Canada from Wales in the early century. I wouldn't have thought of this myself, but the bus driver from Swansea thought it a pity that I'd come all this way and didn't know the actual address of the family. So he got out of the bus at the station, and kept his lineup waiting while he gave me directions to the local library.

There were quite a few trips between Wales and Canada because when Grandma found out she was pregnant, she went back to Wales to have the baby. And it looks like some of the family went with her. Dad was born in May 1914, a month before the war started, so they then stayed until 1919. Next I'm on my way to Cwmavon to visit the house where my grandma was born in 1890, 9 Hazelwood Terrace. It's still there, one of a line of connected houses that they called cottages.

It's wonderful to hear the rolling Welsh accents all around me... since I'm so close to where my father's family originated, they really do sound the same as my aunts and uncles.