The Red Phone Box of Gwytherin

Broadband – we can’t get enough of it. What was stunningly quick last year is now mind numbingly slow. Most of us will remember dial up internet connections that cost the earth and always lost the connection 10 minutes into an important 11 minute download – meaning another 11 minutes of waiting and paying. In this area of South Wales many homes can get 20Mb broadband meaning some pretty fast web speeds. And of course we all have mobile phones sprouting from our ears.

Surprisingly it’s not the same everywhere as there are some isolated areas of Britain where broadband looks to be many moons away. For instance one of the b&b’s that we use for those of our guests that want to get away from the pressures of the mobile phone and the PC Is The Lion Hotel in Gwytherin.

Gwytherin is a village of 200 people in situated near Llanrwst in Snowdonia, North Wales and is the setting for Ellis Peters’ first Cadfael novel “A Morbid Taste for Bones”. The Lion, a classy 6 roomed b&b and restaurant is also the village pub so a great place to meet up for a pint with the locals after a hard day’s walking or visiting the castles of Conwy, Caernarfon and Beaumaris .

The thing about Gwytherin is that not only does it lack broadband and a mobile phone signal – the normal phone reception suffers when more than a handful of the villagers use their phones at the same time. Little wonder that the red public phone box is also a meeting point for villagers. It’s also conveniently close to the pub and the only phone box that I know that always has a vase of fresh cut flowers.

This lack of signal must be a little annoying for the villagers but for the rest of us this is just perfect for a few quiet days.