100 Faces of Port Talbot - Under my umbrella - ella - ella

100 Faces of Port Talbot - Under my umbrella - ella - ella

How I crouched in a doorway, under an umbrella, to produce one of my latest sketches

It's July, so there should be no problem in striking our on a Saturday morning to make another urban sketch, right? Well, if you know the UK in general, and Wales in particular you'll know that this is by no means a given. Yesterday dawned grey and wet, but I couldn't allow that to daunt me from my purpose. I drove a few miles out of town, and huddled in a doorway, under a golfing umbrella (so called because it has 18 holes in it - I'm here all week, ladies and gents) and produced this sketch of the Royal Oak pub in Bryn. Bryn is a small community, situated in the Llynfi Valley, just before the border between Port Talbot and the county of Bridgend. Bryn means hill, and that makes it a very appropriate name for the place. In the course of playing in the Bridgend Quiz League, at least once a year I've driven from Port Talbot to Maesteg, which means passing through Bryn. Apart from the lovely rounded end of the pub, the really intriguing thing about it is that if you come from Maesteg, it's at the bottom of a long, open downhill road, and this large pub seemingly sits in the middle of nowhere with nothing around it. Of course there are houses hidden behind it and just down the road around the bend, but even so it's a striking sight. 
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