What Does Everyone Have Against Borth?

From the time I got here, people have talked in less than appealing ways about Borth. The next town to the North was suggested to have nothing for any visitor, and the few attractions that Borth does offer are talked about derisively. Today, at a lecture by Professor Jane Aaron sponsored by the English department, I found out that Borth is the setting for several Gothic Welsh books, usually featuring sin-eaters (more on that in a moment) or zombies (in fact, the only Welsh book about zombies known to the speaker was set in Borth). Malcolm Price, which is a pen-name I believe, writes a series of detective books set in Aberystwyth, and in Don't Cry for Me Aberystwyth, one characters notes that too much time in Borth could lead to rickets.

Now, granted, I don't know much about Borth. I've walked there once, and walked through town, which was not necessary metropolitan. The train to Birmingham and London goes through Borth, and I have thought that the neighboring village looks a little grey from the train; but, what town isn't a little grey around the train lines? Honestly, as I crested the hill, using the sea front path to get to Borth, I thought it was really pretty, and certainly not too different from Aberystwyth. Yet, the general feeling is that Borth is a festering pit of degenerates, rummies and chronically unemployable people.

There are some good reasons for this. The biggest of which is the natural geography of the town. Really, in retrospect, Borth is built in the wrong place. Tucked between mountains and the second largest bog on the island, the town is the definition of inaccessible. Until some drainage pipes were installed, there was only one way into or out of the isolated little village. Also, due to currents, when people fall off the coastal path to the South, coming from Aberystwyth, they generally wash up on the Borth beach.

Being as isolated and inaccessible as it is, it is a natural selection for Gothic fiction. It's the Welsh equivalent of an abandoned plantation in Georgia. Also, because of it's isolation, Aaron suggested that it tended to stick to the more pagan rituals, separate from the spread of Christianity. So, when looking to "other" what you consider a backward, heathen society, where better to set your fiction than an isolated community with deep ties to paganism? To be fair to these writers, sin-eating was practiced in Borth for some time; people contracted to eat a meal off the coffin of the deceased believed to contain all the sins of the previous person life. The sin-eater, generally someone looked upon with scorn, would then walk the Earth for his remaining years with the sins of those who he was contracted to consume, as well as his own.

Aaron also suggested that this is why Borth was the setting for the only Welsh zombie fiction known to her: it was a way to show how the British did not understand the strange (unique, maybe) ways of the coastal Welsh. See: in the two books by the same author, the zombies rose from the bog after having drunk the black murky water. Interestingly, this water is known to have life-sustaining abilities, having kept some of the plants in the area alive for thousands of years. It has not been shown to do the same with people, yet. In one book, translated to The Bells, an Englishman comes in, drains the bog, and the zombies (all Welsh) happen to die. Aaron suggested there was a sense that the zombies were really representative of the colorful past of the Welsh, and their death at the hands of the English shows how that country has stripped the Welsh of their uniqueness.

I was pretty confused, though, as Aaron read from several books, both older and contemporary, that described Borth using shades of grey (quite literally suggesting that the entire town was grey). It seems to me that the same could be applied to the whole island. Since November, it has rained at some point almost every day. Most days are just a haze of various grays, depending on density of the cloud cover. Between May and early October, the sky opens up and the whole coast is drenched in sun, but for most of the year all of Wales is a sort of gray. Borth, besides the view from the train, hasn't seemed more or less gray.

In fact, the town, mostly comprised of Victorian houses and newer summer homes, was quite colorful. The beaches, especially, are some of the only sandy beaches in the area, especially more North of Borth towards Ynyslas. The beach is surprisingly level as the sea dumps into the bog surrounding Borth. Having the bog and estuary there gives an interesting landscape to the surrounding area. The land runs flat through the bog until abruptly lurching upwards into a series of steep cliffed hills (or mountains if you are generous). Once the drainage system dried the land out, it has become quite a nice place, and I imagine in the Spring and Summer, it's glorious on the beaches. If you like sand; I personally prefer the tiny pebbles because they don't find their way into ever crevice on your body.

There is a sense of hopelessness to Borth. Doomed by isolation, lack of natural resources and bogs filled with zombies, it has served, primarily, as a vacation spot. As vacations have grown shorter, and travel across the world has become easier, less and less people are attracted to Borth. One of the locals said that most of the work in the area involves fishing herring out of the sea (and, in one story that he told, killing ship wrecked Portuguese sailors for their boots). The railway was a blessing in disguise, bringing the hated British into Borth. While the townsfolk liked having money come in, they hated that it was the British bringing it it; the definition of a Catch-22.

As far as Borth's relationship with the English: it was rumored that the Welsh in that area, while fighting the Southern Welsh, reached out to the Saxon kings to help with the fight. Traitors to their own people, Borth is now forced to subsist on eating sins and English holiday money.

And then there is the Animalarium (the letter 'z' is missing from the Welsh alphabet; in case you find yourself looking for the Welsh word for zebra, it is sebra; sw is Welsh for zoo). As a tiny village, it really doesn't have the funds to run a proper zoo. The Animalarium was populated by sick animals from other zoos, and animals that are native to people's backyard (like a doll's house they populated with rats). Recently, upon discovering that the Animalarium doesn't have an exotic animal license, all the big cats and fun animals were sent to other zoos. Now, it stands as a poorly populated exhibit of local wildlife and farm animals. Sadly, that doesn't draw the same crowd.

It would be fair to say that Borth is a lacking the urban commodities that make bigger cities a draw to tourist, but I don't see why people, especially people in Aberystwyth, look down their noses at the tiny seafront community. In an interview Samantha Bee did for the Daily Show, she spoke to some secessionist living in Long Island, hoping that the appendage hanging off New York might become the 51st state. Clearly picking the bottom of Long Island's barrel, she asked the less than aware Long Islanders who they would invade first if they were granted Statehood. Without skipping a beat, one of the tanned and gelled gentleman said New Jersey. Samantha Bee waited a moment to let the absurdity of one state invading another pass before she asked, "Wouldn't that be sort of like fighting your conjoined twin?" The same question might be applicable here.