Mr Uhdd has taken the return journey to Wales today, by rail, to collect the car. We made sure (several times) that this time, he had in fact got the car keys upon his person. The railway station in Wales at which he wished to alight was a request stop, and the name of the station?
This is of course the longest place name in the Welsh language, or any other for all I know, the name, Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch
means
So why didn’t they just say so. (I’ve posted before about my inability to get a handle on Welsh place names.)
The user friendly version of this tongue twister of a Welsh place name is Llanfair P.G, which is just as well, because otherwise Mr Uhdd may well have missed his stop. And then he wouldn’t have got back home in time to find some leverets down the field this afternoon. I may have to have a little peek myself, from a discrete distance with a long lens. I’ll keep you posted.
Uphilldowndale 
While I have thehugest respect for the Welsh in their determination to keep the language alive, I cannot type a Welsh address with any speed. I have to copy it letter by letter, then check it! Some of the spell-check suggestions are good for a laugh, though.
I’ll look forward to pictures of the leverets. I had no idea hares were threatened until I followed that link. Growing up in the country, they were something we saw regularly, and mainly ignored.
It was a quiet sort of afternoon at the Writing Studio and Bait Shop–a lazy bee buzzing sort of afternoon–when I opened this post and burst out in such a laugh that both dogs were startled into barking, Miss Puss fled to the deck rail, and the neighbors roused themselves from their sunning. Request stop indeed! Oh my, I’m going to start laughing again.
When Mr Uhdd showed me the photos this afternoon, my first thought was, ‘Gerry is going to love this!’
How DO you write out the address?
We’ve been up that way ourselves a couple of times lately, in fact just last week. We were based in Chester and bought ourselves a North and Mid Wales Flexi Rover rail ticket to travel around on.
Because these tickets are not marked for a destination, the ticket inspector always asks us where we are going in case we want one of the request stops. It’s actually a very sensible system as anyone would know who has had the misfortune to be on a train in England that didn’t stop at his station…
Unfortunately I have not yet had the opportunity of waiting at a request stop and putting out my hand to stop the train. Now that would be fun.
We didn’t go to LlanfairPG this time but we did get to Blaenau and Betws-y-Coed.
I was intrigued by the request train stop idea when on my way to Barmouth for the son’s wedding a little while ago. Living in the south east where it’s all “get on/off this train as fast as possible, we won’t wait” it seemed remarkably civilised. Although for many of the stations I think I’d have to just show my ticket!! My tongue’s just not able to manage that many consonants in one word.
lol! I can’t believe they didn’t shorten it for the signs. Imagine the cost of getting all of that on each sign.
I’ll have to bring my husband over to see this. I think he’d enjoy it.
That ‘phonetic’ version beneath is not quite how my Taid used to say it. But then he was from Denbighshire not Anglesey.
He always maintained the station name was made up. The village website tells me he was right – the village was called Llanfair Pwllgwyngyll. It was renamed in the 1850s specially as a tourist attraction on the new railway! They also claim the longest URL…
I love request stops – I had to signal the train to stop when visiting my friend who lived just outside Exmouth – it felt very weird to stick my hand out like a bus!
Over here in Wellington (NZ), we have a number of stops where the train will only come to a complete halt if they know you are getting off (you have to tell the guard when they collect your fare / check your ticket – no ticket barriers here), or if the driver sees you standing on the platform. Fortunately, they do *crawl* past the platform to give you time to dash out from the shelter when it pours with rain!
We also have:
Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiwhenuakitanatahu
which means:
The summit where Tamatea, the man with the big knees, the climber of mountains, the land-swallower who travelled about, played his nose flute to his loved one
(you can hear the pronunciation on the Wikipedia site: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateapokaiwhenuakitanatahu)