by Jon Bounds
'Do you know what you're looking for?' I ask Jon.
'Not really, was kind of hoping it was obvious,' he says.
I pause.
'Well, it's a problem with the ignition – are the spark plugs loose?'
He fiddles with something. 'No,' he says.
'Distributor cap on?'
'Yeah, how do you know so much?' he asks. I shrug. Truth is, although I couldn't point to the individual parts I'm naming, I do have a fair idea how an engine works. Having a family of people who used to build cars must have rubbed off somehow.
'It's probably just a flat battery. We've been charging our phones with the radio and a satnav on. The alternator's probably not charging it up properly between piers.'
Jon nods.
'We'll see if we can bump-start it – if we don't have the radio on or anything charging from the cigarette lighter, it'll then give the battery a chance to charge.'
'What if it doesn't?' says Jon, clearly going to the worst place in his head.
'Look mate, it's either a problem with the alternator or the battery not holding the charge.' Jon looks concerned. I wouldn't trust me either.
* * *
We could phone the AA, but we're in possibly one of the most remote places in the UK with no money and gathering clouds. Do we fancy a few hours on this featureless patch of earth only to be told that it's something terminal? I doubt the policy includes stop-offs at three piers around the coast of Wales before taking us back to Birmingham.
* * *
Midge shouts 'Ready!' out of the window, so me and Jon give the back a heave. I'm always surprised how easy it is to push a car. We push it while Midge negotiates the parking space. On the flat he guns it too early and the jerk hurts our arms.
'Not yet,' shouts Jon.
We heave once more.
'NOW!' shouts Jon, and Midge turns the engine over – it jerks, but the engine catches. All three of us cheer and quickly, so as not to break the spell, me and Jon jump into the car.
'Go, go, go,' says Jon, before our doors close.
* * *
I feel pretty inadequate suddenly. Dan and Midge knew what to do, and it was all I could do not to let myself panic. I'm not grown-up enough for this.
It's radio silence in the car. We're scared of running the battery down and scared to talk. It's a long time now since we've had anything to say to each other. Somewhere along the line I've discovered that Victoria Wood's brother has visited every pier in England and Wales, and written a book about it. I look it up on my phone: he got to 66 including Wigan. Failure piles upon failure. I curse that we didn't look this up before we left and give the whole thing up as something that had already been done.
Dark clouds loom after the Snowdonian hills and I fill with foreboding about our next stop. It will have to be before we get to Aberystwyth as we need petrol – to be paid for on my credit card. I try to beg Midge to make that stop in a built-up area, but he drags it out along tight roads. The petrol warning light is on for some time before we finally pull into an unmarked garage in the middle of nowhere.
* * *
'Do you think it'll start now?' asks Jon.
We've stopped for petrol in the green hills west of nowhere. The petrol station isn't branded and we could be pouring moonshine and sheep's piss into the engine for all we know.
'Probably, it's had an hour or so to charge,' I say.
Jon nods. I can see he's worried so I'm trying to puff up the little car knowledge I do have to reassuring levels to alleviate his fretting nature. We get in and hold our breath as Midge turns the key. The engine starts. There is no cheer.
'Do you think we should find a garage? There's got to be one close by.' It's clear Jon is worried about lasting damage to the car. Midge stares straight ahead, pretending not to be part of the decision-making process.
'We could do, mate, if you think it's worth it.' The unspoken part being 'if you think you can afford it'. Jon must be eating into his own money by now and going to the garage could cost time as well. I have no way of contributing. I'm being slightly cruel here: I know Jon isn't asking for an opinion, that he's really asking for tacit permission. It's what he wants to do, but the awkwardness of the money situation plus the guilt if there is something seriously wrong bears down on me.
'It'll be all right. It started, didn't it?' I say.
Nobody answers. Jon taps at his phone for a while.
'There's a Kwik-Fit a few miles from here, what do you think?' says Jon, showing me a map I can't see from the back. Midge says nothing. I shrug. Jon pauses for a beat and deflates…
Aberystwyth is another hour away, and nobody has said anything for the last 20 minutes. Jon unfolds his arms, reaches over and turns the stereo on. Radio 6 once again fills the car.
'That means it's not the alternator, so it's probably the battery not holding a charge,' I say lightly. Jon folds his arms and looks out the window.
* * *
The sun comes out almost on cue and it continues to cut through the canopy of trees as we drive around the top of a flooded valley. There's a sign to King Arthur's Labyrinth. It would be nice to go there, although I didn't know he'd moved this far from Glastonbury and it's bound to be just a tourist trap.
* * *
We get into Aberystwyth late, it's dark and we've yet to find the campsite. Midge, with pointed non-assistance from Jon, elects to park in an area of student houses. Occasionally bin bags have been left where someone has got the wrong day and in a couple of places you have to step around different patches of unusually coloured sick. Every September the town swells by 50 per cent as the students arrive, and like any university town it takes a while for them to settle into the allotted gaps, like sand in a jar of stones. As Midge is deciding exactly where to park, Jon offers one piece of advice:
'Park on a hill in case we have to jump it.'
Midge turns a corner into a street with an almost vertical incline and struggles into a gap three-quarters of the way up. Without any trace of irony, Midge says, 'That all right?' I catch Jon's eye, and we both smile.
Getting a little bit lost we wander the streets of 'Aber'. It could be a Friday or Saturday night, because it seems that everybody is out at the pub. It's easy to tell the locals from the students, not just by affluence or the stubborn use of Welsh, but by attitude. It's clear the students are louder, more uncomfortable, not quite used to the personalities they decided upon on the journey here in the back of their dad's car. The locals are more tribal, stick together in groups and wince at every cheer and student whoop.
* * *
We have to reach the end of the pier via a snooker club, where you can watch football and get free hot dogs at half time. We step out of the fire door on to crosshatched metal, probably little more than a smoking area with pub-beer-garden tables. Sitting out the back by the air vents, a couple huddle as the wind rips across. They say nothing to each other and I don't think we feel right breaking the silence. A glance at the sea, and then back at the building which looks like a tatty mobile home. I jerk my head and we turn back inside.
ABERYSTWYTH Royal
Opened: 1865 (Architect: Eugenius Birch)
Length at start: 700 ft (213 m)
Length now: 300 ft (91 m)
Burn baby burn? Major storm damage, in 1872 and again in 1938 and in 2015.
Opened on Good Friday 1865, the same day as the town's railway station, it was the first pier to open in Wales. The pavilion still has plenty of amenities: a nightclub (Pier Pressure), a takeaway pizza shop, an ice-cream parlour, a snooker club and the Inn on the Pier. The inn advertises itself as 'the only 24-hour pub in Ceredigion', and on Thursday nights offers 'ALL BEERS, BOTTLES AND SPIRITS ONLY £1.50!'
The town of Aberystwyth is lit by long orange streetlamps along its front. The tide, which is fairly close to the barriers, picks up the orange and mixes it with the blacks and blues of dusk. I can pick out some people, a surf school, wringing the last drops of fun out of the end of the day's
breaking waves. I imagine the satisfying, cold, wet exhaustion they must be feeling, along with the satisfaction of being part of a landscape older than language and communing with a power greater than law.
* * *
We put our coins in a Love Test machine. There's something thrilling about the way these pieces of crap haven't even had the most cursory update: they're stuck in the belief that electricity can just tell what we're like and there's been no concession to modernity, no allusions to DNA or even pH. I'm 'Wild', Danny is 'Cold', the machine is 'Wrong', and Midge 'Doesn't want a go'.
The piermobile shudders to life as we freewheel down a hill, a car coming up the road thankfully giving way. We nearly have to push the damn thing back up the other side. I'm tired and I want to go to bed.
Bed is at the Aberystwyth Holiday Village, a tarmacked, ordered kind of place just off a track from damp suburbia. All of human life is here, but really we just retreat to the warmth and electricity of the on-site social – the Asteroid Club.
* * *
At the campsite the car park is empty, but the only hill is slight and to park at the top of it our bumper needs to hang over the path to the reception building. Nobody is about so Midge writes a note explaining our situation and underlining how early we would be away in the morning. I'm dancing from foot to foot. I want to put the tent up and get into the bar that I can see is still open. Midge puts the note into the window and the very second we take a step away from the car we hear shouting:
'Oi! You can't park that there!' the thick Welsh accent softening the barked direction somewhat, but still sounding very stern.
'The battery's gone,' Midge calls up to the barmaid hanging out of the door of the club. 'We'll need to jump it tomorrow.'
'Well, you can't put it there – there's a funeral here in the morning!' she shouts before going back into the warm, as if funerals at campsites are standard practice. Too tired to argue, we push it down the hill and camp next to it.
'What are you doing?' I'm calling to Jon in the tent.
'Putting a fresh T-shirt on,' he shouts back.
'You've got fresh clothes left?'
'Yeah, one of the shirts I bought at Primark,' he says as he comes out of the tent pulling the T-shirt down.
'Mate,' I say.
'What?'
'It's the same,' I point.
'What's the same?'
'The tent on the T-shirt is exactly the same make and model as the one we've been using for two weeks.' I look again, and yes, okay the one we've been using is a bit creased around the edges from not being packed away properly, and leaning awkwardly from not being pitched with any real enthusiasm, but the tents are exactly the same. It doesn't seem much looking back, but at the time it seems almost magical. Like fate. To be perfectly honest, I think if any one of us at any point today had said 'let's just go home', we would have done. Two piers to the end or not, we would have happily sulked back onto the motorway. But, at this moment, that simple coincidence makes everything seem worth it.
A cat is incredibly curious as to what we're doing for a short while, until it realises we're putting up a tent. For a cat that lives on a campsite that surely must be a commonplace event, so he sods off into the club, throwing us a look to make sure we know where it is once we're finished.
Later, as we are retiring to bed, it joins us in the tent and looks like it's ready to spend the night until we clear it out in case it eats Midge.
* * *
The next morning, I try to count up the number of piers we've visited with the guys in the car on the way. We've seen a few extra – bonus piers – on the way, so it's probably approaching 60.
'Just two more to step on,' I say, to fill space.
'Well, just one if you read The List,' Danny tells us. I haven't really read The List for some time. 'Mumbles is closed for refurbishment.'
* * *
As I slam the boot down to trap in our kit that by now isn't packed with any sort of Tetris-style precision, more like ugly force and stubborn laziness, Jon looks over.
'Well, it's the last time we're going to have to do that,' he says.
'We?' I mumble. It's early, but with today being the last day you can tell we all want to get it over with. And we want to get out of here before the funeral arrives. Nobody needs to see that, bad juju all round, sceptic or not. Me and Jon push the thing to a jumping start and jump in the car without it having to slow down with the easy precision of a bobsled team. The car is dirty but comfortable, like sleeping in a friend's unmade bed.
Yesterday, you can tell, has exhausted us all. Jon has stopped reaching over to turn the indicators off for Midge, and Midge can't even summon the effort to mumble swear words about the other drivers. Enough piers, enough of this car, enough. But I have postcards to write.
* * *
Despite being closer to the end, in a way the drive to Swansea and then to Cardiff suddenly seems long. Long and depressing. The List, however, is king.
* * *
We're heading to Mumbles, near Swansea. Mumbles could have got its name from several things: the water against the rocks sounding like people mumbling, the Old Norse for 'snout' or, my favourite, in reference to a round-shaped hill, the Latin for 'breast' – although most hills are breast-shaped really, when you think about it. There's a rhyme about Mumbles which goes:
Mumbles is a funny place,
A church without a steeple,
Houses made of old ships wrecked
And most peculiar people.
When we get there, there is no real sign of any peculiar people, and the houses all actually seem to be exclusive, boringly designed apartment buildings that line the marina. Mumbles Pier was opened in 1898 and is the only pier on the whole trip we never see. The entrance is closed by massive gates for building work, and the angle of the coastline means it isn't accessible any other way. In the bathroom of an arcade near the entrance, a dad in shorts is standing at the only child's urinal, squatting his legs sideways so as not to cover his bare legs in piss. I use one of the other urinals, all of which are unoccupied. Peculiar people indeed.
MUMBLES
Opened: 1898 (Architect: W. Sutcliffe Marsh)
Length at start: 835 ft (255 m)
Length now: 835 ft (255 m)
Burn baby burn? A small fire in 2012 damaged some of the decking.
It was the terminus for the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, opened in 1807 as the world's first passenger railway.
I strain to look down the decking through a builders' fence, but see nothing.
A member of staff, in a sweat-stained, light-blue shirt that once matched the paint job, is bending over and resetting the Rock 'n' Roll 2p falls. It's gaping open, and the temptation is to nudge him so it all collapses, or to grab a fist full of coins – anything to make something happen here.
Nothing does, so we execute a pushed three-point turn (not for the first time, happy that Midge is small and light) and head for pier number 55.
* * *
It seems that a typical pier will go through a number of disasters, so it's kind of fitting that our last pier has weathered more than most. Penarth Pier nearly never got built in the first place when the builder went into liquidation just after construction had started. After it was finally opened in 1895, it enjoyed a period of prosperity, being included in an Arthur Atkins painting and benefiting from the building of a beautiful art-deco pavilion at its entrance. Then in 1931 a fire broke out in the pavilion, with 800 people on the pier, some of them trapped at the wrong end. A massive rescue mission was launched with local yachtsmen enlisted to help ferry the people to safety. No one was killed, but it took three days for the fire to die out.
We plod up from where we've parked the car in a state of reverie. We walk past a restaurant called The Fig Tree. I'm hit by the smell of garlic and pasta. A reminder of civilisation, home. Where food isn't just something to stop you getting light-headed when you get out of the car. Where sleep isn't something to do while we can't drive,
and conversation isn't something just to interrupt the silence.
The pier comes into view and I'm surprised not to be disappointed. The art-deco pavilion is lovely even in its rundown state, perhaps because of its run-down state. My taste has always run to the somewhat gothic. We stand looking for a while. When we have reached each pier it has never been a group activity. Midge would normally have wandered off; me, enticed by the amusements, would already be looking around; and by the time I reached the deck I would normally have found Jon looking out to sea making notes. But this time is different. All three of us stand there, almost scared to go on.