Thursday, August 24, 2006

Cardigan Bay


'Now, I am quite prepared to believe that other countries can offer more obviously spectacular scenery. Indeed, I have seen in encyclopaedias and the National Geographic Magazine breath-taking photographs of sights from various corners of the globe; magnificent canyons and waterfalls, raggedly beautiful mountains. It has never, of course, been my privilege to have seen such things at first hand, but I will nevertheless hazard this with some confidence: the English landscape at its finest- such as I saw this morning- possess a quality that the landscapes of other nations, however more superficially dramatic, inevitably fail to possess...What is pertinent is the calmness of that beauty, its sense of restraint. It is as though the land knows of its own beauty, of its own greatness, and feels no need to shout it. In comparison, the sorts of sights offered in such places as Africa and America, though undoubtedly very exciting, would, I am sure, strike the objective viewer as inferior on account of their unseemly demonstrativeness'.

Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day at 28-29.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Such lovely sights in Wales... so near and yet so far for me, LOL! 3 weeks left in Cymru for me, so doubt I'll have the opp to go and visit Cardigan. But thanks for the reminder that I must come back and do the rounds over this side of the world!

Blabarella said...

Ohh.. gorgeous. I could just sit on that cliff the whole day with a book, 2 bagels smothered generously with cream cheese and a big flask of coffee.

Jane Sunshine said...

lightbulb:Yes, all the reason to do more sight seeing!

Blabs: It was such a lovely, peaceful retreat. Away from it all.

Anonymous said...

dear jane, i absolultely could not agree more. such is the timeless beauty of england, a place i shall always call home

Anonymous said...

Cardigan Bay in Wales!!! a place that i always wants to go back.....soo unreal, so far away....