Our last morning in a tent for a while dawned with a slight hint of miserable weather, the first in what seemed like an age. It had rained during the night, but nobody seemed to care much. All our girls were in light dresses and flip-flops or sandals, on the basis that if they got wet feet, who cared? I remembered the old Scouts camping adage that site dress should be shorts and canvas plimsolls, on the same principle. I somehow doubted that people at Everest Base Camp would concur, but it worked for a typical British Summer.

Our route was a loop, literally all the way back to Chepstow, but passing above it on the old bridge before joining the M4 for Cardiff. I had three initial stops planned, only one of them explicitly for Maz, and the third one a real exercise in nostalgia.

Number one was a visit to Gloucester cathedral, which is a lovely building. I stayed clear of the main part of the town, as I didn’t want to get snarled in traffic, but I realised I would have to find new memory cards for those cameras in younger hands. I’d spotted a W.H.Smith’s the previous evening, so I made a quick stop as we left Ross on Wye, which brought a slightly smug look from our son.

“These days we use our phones, Dad”

“Where are you storing the pictures, son? Phone or SIM card or Cloud? How much space have they got? How much are your data charges? Et bloody cetera”

He still used his card, and his phone, the sod, as I hadn’t realised he had a plug-in adapter to increase storage, the little sod.

Stop two was Slimbridge, where I volunteered child-minding duties; while Maz took the other two around the ‘wild’ part, I walked her around the captive stock, Kawan on her back, allowing her to read out the exhibit labels to me and the bear., before settling down to a pot of tea and two Cokes.

Oh, yes. We, um, had ice creams as well.

The other three were back just as I was looking at the puzzles I didn’t like, LC asleep next to me on the grass, the day having dried out properly. Maz looked absolutely smug, even more so that Ish had.

“Should’ve come with us, Mike! You wouldn’t have missed it if you had”

“Missed what, love?”

“The bittern we all saw. Ish even got some video”

“Yeah, Dad. Phones do that as well these days”

“Well, son, your sister saw something none of you did”

“What?”

“Choc’n’mint Cornetto. I called out ‘Would you like an ice cream, Ish?’ but you didn’t reply”

I did buy them their ice creams, of course, for I am a soft touch where my family is concerned, before urging them into the car for stop the third, which was my own nostalgia trip. I tried to explain it as I drove.

“I used to come over to Wales quite a bit, and I mean South Wales now, with the old climbing club. There are caves near the Beacons for lunatics like Neil, and there’s climbing near where we were yesterday, or way, way out in Pembrokeshire. There was only the one bridge back then, and it’s usually windy, so if I was on the bike, I’d stop at this next place to psych myself up. Used to be a separate, cheaper place for what they called commercial drivers, so I’d just say I was a DR—despatch rider—and eat there”

Clara asked if it was good food.

“Nope. Usually crap, but it was warm and dry in there. Pity about the milk”

Ish looked round at that apparent non-sequitur, and I shrugged.

“Before your time, son, or rather in the wrong place. It was always UHT, a different sort of treatment to what we get, Made the milk taste awful, but gave it a massive shelf life out of the fridge. You got used to it, but I never got to like it. This used to be the main route into Wales, used to be toll booths going both ways, then they changed to charging you to leave Wales. All gone now”

I chuckled at a surfacing memory.

“Steph once, when she was a bit well-oiled and feeling mischievous, said she used to joke about with passengers, telling them they’d need to have their passports ready if they were going into Wales, and I am sure her oppos in Pembroke Dock and Fishguard did much the same. Just, it’s a couple of times, years and years ago, when I was lining up for the tolls coming out of Wales, and I was behind an obvious hire car, and the driver passed up the toll money and a couple of passports”

Clara snorted.

“What did the man in the toll booth do?”

“Um, opened them, checked the photo matched, then handed them back with a nod”

“NOOOOOOOO!”

“YESSSSSSSSSS! Anyway, this place is on a long distance path called something like the ‘Severn Way’, and you can walk a little way out to a viewpoint overlooking the bridge. Daft thing is that we will almost be able to see yesterday’s lunch spot; it is only a mile or so away from the bridge. Right. Got to concentrate a bit here”

The place looked much the same, but behind it was a Travelodge and what looked like a corporate GQ or similar. Inside the services, the facilities were a little different, but the atmosphere only needed rain on the windows to have matched my memories.

“Dad?”

“Son?”

“Why is that burger place using the Hungry Jack’s logo?”

“Long story, son. Short version: two businesses decided to work together, then decided they didn’t And they then hired lawyers”

“Messy?”

“Oh yes. Same sort of food, really, except BK won’t put beetroot on your burger”

“Why not?”

“Son, when that sort of burger first arrived in the UK, people would throw away the slice of pickled gherkin. Local tastes. Clata’s lot eat seaweed, for example”

She immediately hit back with “So do you! Don’t you eat sushi? Anyway, it’s not really time for a meal, is it?”

I nodded agreement.

“Yup. A snack, and a coffee from that other place, just so we can justify the parking, then out to the viewpoint”

Another blast from the past caught up with me as I sorted our drinks, and pieces of cake, as I remembered that old joke about motorway services: ‘Two for the price of three’.

The tide was out, showing a lot of mud as well as a few ribs of the rock that had served to support the bridge’s two immense towers, and I was able to point out some of the places across the brown sludge that is the end of the Severn, in essence, and the start of the Bristol Channel. The viewpoint was a pretty grim concrete area with a couple of those coin-operated telescopes, making the ambience even grimmer. We still took a load of photos.

“They go surfing here, son”

“Where?”

Clara answered for me.

“It’s the tides, cariad. When a really high tide comes up THIS way, it meets a massive river going THAT way, and there’s what they call a bore. Big wave that rolls upriver for miles and miles. People surf it, or ride it in canoes”

‘Cariad’? Shit. I knew that bit of Welsh. I realised I needed to keep eyes and ears even more open around them.

It started to rain.

Back to the car, then, LC wearing her jacket unfastened, so that the only bit on her was the hood, the rest of the coat draping over Kawan. I negotiated the roundabout once more, putting us back onto the approach road for the bridege, and once we were climbing towards the span’s summit, I waved to the left.

You can see the new bridge over there. Lot longer and lower than this one, and takes most of the traffic. This used to be a nightmare on a motorbike, with loads of lorries and always a really, really nasty sidewind. And I can’t really remember a crossing when it wasn’t raining. Now, Chepstow’s coming up on your right, and there’s another little bridge--- this one. That was the Wye afain, and we are back in Wales. You can say ‘Yay’, Clara”

“Yay!”

“Now, you have a job, girl. Two, really. First is to ring whoever is organising our stay and let them know where we are, so they can tell us, nicely, where to go. Second is to actually do a little navigating for me. I know the roads past, but not the city itself”

“On it!”

We skirted Newport, which is always best avoided, and then hit the edges of Cardiff. I followed Clara’s instructions, finally parking in front of a Costa Coffee place just off a massive roundabout.

“There he is, Mr Rhodes!”

We all stepped out, Clara running to a tall man, possibly in his early forties or late thirties, and threw her arms around him, which set him laughing happily.

“Easy, woman: you’ll make the Missus jealous! Introductions, please, but put me down first.”

“Sorry, Paul. Mr Rhodes—Mike, Maz Rhodes, Carolyn Rhodes”

“And Ish?”

“Yes”

“I see Gemma isn’t the only one who likes then big”

“So do Di, and Candice, and…”

“I know. You forgot to introduce me, love. Now, I am Paul Welby, and I’m a copper, so if you need to know the time, I’m officially allowed to tell you. And, to avoid awkwardness, I know what happened. Do you take hugs, handshakes, that sort of thing?”

LC astonished me just then, for she held out her bear to him.

“Kawan does”

Paul did the honours, and then did the rounds, alternating Warm Hug with Manly Shake, then pointing to a well-worn white Ford Focus.

“We had a brainstorm about where to fit you. There are two rooms near Deb’s, but they are in separate buildings, and one’s a pub, so not ideal. The Suttons are keeping their pair apart until the little lady stops repeating her meals, and The House isn’t really the place for lads. My other half offered. Her idea, even though I fully agreed. We have a three-bed semi, and no kids, so that’s two bedrooms, and a sofa or camping mat if necessary. I’ll drive, you follow, and I’ll give you the address before we go”

It was somewhere called Wordsworth Terrace, right in the middle of the city, so I had Ish track our route on his phone just in case. The traffic seemed to suffer a lot from something I heard called the ‘Whatsapp Gap’, where a lights change or movement of the car in front is only responded to after a few seconds, as the idiot driver lifts his attention from his bloody phone screen. We got there in the end, though, and it turned out to have an odd mix of houses rather than the surrounding endless rows of terraces. It was on-street parking, but there was space, and as I finally turned off the engine for the day, a slim woman came out of a front door to kiss a welcome home to Paul, which was when a story I had heard from Lexie came to mind.

Shot, both of them, next to Di in each case. Smile nicely and change your thoughts, Rhodes. I extended my hand to ger after stepping out of the car.

“Mike Rhodes! Maz, Carolyn, Ish, and I assume you know Clara”

“I’m Paula. Yes, I know. Get the bad jokes out of the way while I pour the tea? And what’s the bear called?”

LC held him up.

“He’s called Kawan, Missus”

“Does he drink tea?”

“He likes Coke”

“I do believe we have some. In you all come—it’s in the conservatory, darling”

The place proved to be rather like the Cow in Bethesda, in that the slightly narrow frontage had been extended some way back into what still remained as a rather long garden, complete with a slightly smaller version of Steph’s conservatory. All this on a copper’s wage? We were shown to our rooms, Paul indicating a separate, smaller room of the type I would have called a ‘box room’.

“We weren’t sure where Carolyn would want to sleep, so Paula cleared this one for her, just in case. We have a couple of those folding sun loungers, so she could have one for a bed. Just need to know where works best”

LC was listening closely.

“What’s that?”

That, little lady, is a folding stool. See?”

He set up one of those minimalist bits of kit where two rectangular frames are pulled apart to stretch a rectangle of fabric.

“Dad?”

“Yes, love?”

“Kawan’s bed?”

Paula had also been listening closely, and she took over smoothly.

“He will need sheets and a blanket, then. Shall we get some?”

As Maz, Ish and I hauled in our necessities, Paul set up a sunlounger in the box room, ready for LC’s sleeping bag, and when the two girls returned with the bear, Kawan received his own bedclothes, consisting of two tea-towels, a bath towel and a large bath sponge for a pillow. Our daughter was as open as I had ever seen her, explaining in her own version of a Mum-voice that if the bear messed his bed, he would be beaten with the rattan.

Fuck, yet again.

“Carolyn?”

“Yes, Dad?”

“We don’t have any rattan, and we don’t beat people. And Kawan is your friend”

There was a little flicker there, but she nodded, thank god.