I AM NOT A NUMBER: A walk around Portmeirion

Had to go to Llandudno for a meeting this weekend. Despite the fact that it is only 200 miles away, it takes five hours to drive up the A470 so to get there in time for the meeting we had to set out on the Friday.

Me and me mate Squirrel decided set out early on the Friday and stop on the way and have a look around Portmeirion

Portmeirion is something of a folly. It is an Italianate resort village on the coast of Snowdonia in Wales, used as a location for many films and television shows, notably The Prisoner. Despite repeated claims that it was based on the real town of Portofino, Italy, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, Portmeirion's designer, denied this, stating only that he wanted to pay tribute to the atmosphere of the Mediterranean.

Williams-Ellis designed and constructed the village over the period from 1925 to 1975. He incorporated fragments of many demolished buildings, including works by a number of other distinguished architects. Portmeirion's architectural bricolage and deliberately fanciful nostalgia have been noted as an influence on the development of postmodernism in architecture in the late twentieth century.

Visiting it out of season has its obvious advantages in that you avoid all the crowds. Today was a beautiful winters day and although cold the skies were clear and the low winter sun cast some interesting shadows.

I have wanted to visit there for sometime and am really glad I have now been there, but now I have, beautiful as it was, I am in no rush to go back. Apparently the gardens are something else in full bloom, so if I do go, it will be in the spring/summer