Ty Gwyn by Mark McCrum

Ty Gwyn is a seventeenth century coaching inn on the southern side of the pretty Welsh tourist village of Betws-y-Coed. It’s a bit of a shame that the A5 runs right past the front door, as the pub-cum-hotel itself has definite charm. Not just low beams in the bar and crystal in the dining room, but an appealingly homey feel from the moment you step through the door.

We had booked late, so experienced a bad case of room-envy as we were shown to a little twin overlooking the busy road at the front. Double rooms to either side had big, four-poster beds and the quiet en-suites at the back looked particularly appealing.

A stroll into Betws itself made us feel that, despite the traffic, we’d made a good choice. The village is a Welsh Killarney, nose-to-tail with guest houses, cafes and hotels, many of which looked either more drearily corporate or tattier than our cosy base. Strung between the hostelries are a range of shops selling everything a visitor to Snowdonia could possibly need, from waterproofed boots to – in one emporium of kitsch – a full-sized imitation Labrador. A right turn off the main road brought us to a railway museum, full of middle-aged men in dark blue railwaymen’s caps puttering around a circular track on miniature steam trains, happy as sandboys surely were in the dim and distant past. Beyond the church we managed to lose the tourist pack. A footpath around the edge of the golf course followed the shallow, fast-flowing stream of the river Conwy.

Back at our hotel before dinner we found that our en suite shower veered alarmingly from cold to scalding, with no other temperature in between. Quaint reading lights above one of the beds lacked bulbs. Heading down for supper at quarter to eight we were disappointed again. The table we’d booked for eight was, the elegant lady behind the bar explained, a bit small, so we might like to wait for one of the other tables in the restaurant to come free. She was right. Our assigned table was barely two foot square, not laid up, right at the edge of a draughty corridor. So how long might we have to wait for a replacement? She couldn’t say.

We decided to sit it out. But after a long day’s driving, hunger and frustration mounted as we watched other couples and groups being ushered through to comfy tables in the candlelit paradise beyond. After half an hour of waiting we put in a question to our hostess. Might we perhaps be allowed to sit at one of the two large round empty tables in the bar, each furnished with comfy cushioned chairs? No, they were booked for eight-thirty, sorry. ‘I did offer you the option of waiting for another table in the restaurant,’ she told us, a touch crisply.

We were tempted to leave them to it and stride off and get fish and chips and a pint somewhere else in Betws. But the menu, with fresh scallops, Welsh lamb and partridge, looked all too tempting. We decided to order some wine, treat the whole thing as a comedy moment and take our allotted place at the miniscule table, which had now been laid with four sets of cutlery wrapped in maroon paper napkins.

Our squashed position on the corridor’s edge was hardly improved by a clear view of the empty tables in the bar being occupied by cheerful couples settling in on the cushions and placing their orders. Plates of steaming moules arrived to the larger table just next to us. Aha, here at last was our lady to take our order. Seeing us perched round the postage stamp she gave us a sympathetic glance, reassured us that the couple opposite would surely be finished soon and then we could have their table. But they were young and in love. Their bottles of Magners were being sunk all too slowly.

We sat in the breeze wondering where we’d gone wrong. Was it our clothes, our accents, the fact that we’d booked our table a mere three days ago that had landed us in this tantalising position? Did Ty Gwyn want its residents to consider ever staying again? It wasn’t clear. Just as we were about to take our bottle of wine and go and sit by the river with a couple of breadsticks stolen from the next door table we were saved. A charming maitre’ d appeared from nowhere. ‘Would you like a table in the restaurant?’ he asked. We would, we said, as one, and hurried after him like two grateful lapdogs.

That we had to move table yet again and wait another fifteen minutes for our starter was neither here nor there. The wine was in the glasses, the candles flickered in the big mirror. Interesting framed originals and prints crowded the walls. Once the rush had eased, the waitresses were charming and attentive. The scallops were fresh, the Welsh lamb tasty. Upstairs in our room, the traffic had died to a trickle. I woke to birdsong in the valley. The shower was still scalding or freezing but there was a bathroom down the hall. Our breakfast was delicious. Perhaps last night had been a bad dream and we could join the other guests in the guestbook and write what a lovely time we’d had and how we’d definitely be coming again.