Wales - Swansea & the National Wool Museum

In the morning we wake up because there is movement around us. And we notice once again: the nicer the pitch, the more dog owners show up early in the morning for a little walk.

There are a lot of dogs out today. Ergo: last night we found a beautiful pitch in the dark.

I enjoy my first coffee - instead of sitting in Felix wrapped in my cuddly blanket - on the sunny beach while watching the waves lapping in the morning.

Soon we lace up our hiking boots, shoulder our backpacks and hike a little way along the Coast-Way. The cliffs are unique, the weather brilliant. In between we notice that autumn is coming here too, the colours of the bushes are more colourful, warmer, more autumnal.

On the way to Swansea, where we plan to spend the next few days in the office, I see a sign: "National Wool Museum". Well, if that's not a destination for an excursion.

We stop, are almost the only guests (there are a few other visitors, but they seem more taken with the café) and stroll through old and ancient machinery. Here, too, we notice that museums in England have a different, shall we say friendly, undercooled entertainment and learning culture than in Sweden or Norway. 

Nevertheless, I(we) enjoy the machines and all the old stuff. There is even a young man fiddling around with a machine, he seems to be repairing something. Of course we ask him what he is doing here. He collects old looms and is world famous in the museum business, he laughs mischievously.

When asked how a young man gets such old machines and how he learns to do that, his funny eyes flash and he tells us about a witness protection programme, the Wool Mafia and so on. We laugh and ask for the real story. Okay, he is actually a very famous actor and this is just his hobby here.

We will probably never know the real story, only that he is really good. He explains the machines to us, remarks that one can indeed earn really good money with museum piece maintenance and that he actually has his own weaving mill in London where he sells hand-woven fabrics. On his website - so much research is necessary - we later discover that at least this part of his fabrications is true.

What fascinates us most about him is his enthusiasm for craftsmanship, for technology, for joy and the tactile. And, quite honestly, we could have listened to his stories, whether true or imagined, for hours on end.

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Merci for "travelling with us

We are thinking about taking another break from travelling in the summer and visiting our families in Germany and Switzerland. One of the ideas is to organise a Lecture about our long journey to the Persian Gulf to prepare. If you would like to, what would interest you the most? We will also tell stories here that don't find a place here on the blog. We're thinking of the Bern and Berlin area - simply because we have family there. But other places are also conceivable. Feel free to write to us.

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