Andrew Simpson: A little bit of Italy on the coast of Wales ……. Portmeirion on a hot July day

Monday 19 July 2021

A little bit of Italy on the coast of Wales ……. Portmeirion on a hot July day

Now, my Wikipedia tells me that “Portmeirion is a tourist village in Gwynedd, North Wales”.*

And like many people it is a place we keep going back to, which puts me in good company because Noël Coward wrote Blithe Spirit while staying there and George Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells were also early visitors.

In 1956 the architect Frank Lloyd Wright came, and other famous guests included Gregory Peck and Ingrid Bergman and the Beatles.

Their manager Brian Epstein was a frequent visitor, and Paul McCartney, spent his 50th birthday there in 1993.

I can’t be quite sure when I first came across it, but it might have in in the late 1970s, after John had built a boat in the back garden and took it down to Porthmadog, where for all I know it might still be.

And on one of those escapes from the city to see him and the boat we will have called in and the rest as they say is a series of visits.

We have been there in the spring when the sunshine belied how cold it was, traipsed around the place in the rain and yesterday melted as the sun cracked the paving stones.

True to form I never read the guidebook and only this morning refreshed my skimpy knowledge by going online and discovering that “it was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village, and is now owned by a charitable trust.

The village is located in the community of Penrhyndeudraeth, on the estuary of the River Dwyryd, 2 miles south east of Porthmadog, and 1 mile from Minffordd railway station. Portmeirion has served as the location for numerous films and television shows, most famously as "The Village" in the 1960s television show The Prisoner”.*

As you do I took lots of pictures, but resisted the temptation to go “noir”, after all one of the stunning things about the architecture is the bright and vivid colours they have been painted.

Rosa who is from Naples and on holiday with us had to agree and was as impressed with the gardens as well as the buildings.

So that is it, my Wikipedia, offers up a lot more interesting information, but never having been one to hoover up other people’s work I shall just suggest following the link to the article.

Leaving someone to responded with "I am not a number", which will be almost incomprehensible to anyone other than those who watched the Prisoner, or was a fan of Patrick McGoohan.

The Prisoner began in 1967, ran for 17 episodes and finished the following year. It was for some a bewildering show, but for a 17 year old it was required viewing and marked you off from the grown ups who broadly speaking found it a puzzle.