I havent been able to get on to the website for a while because I have been so busy in school. As always the summer months are a particularly busy time. I am sure it is the same in America. As teachers approach the end of the school year there is so much that needs to be done and everything else, like normal life, takes a back seat. But at last things have started to calm down and I have been able to get out into the countryside once more.My wife Liz went up to see our daughter in Chester and I travelled to the half way point to meet Laura and her family and bring her home. That half way point, right in the middle of Wales, is Llandrindod Wells.It is an unexpected place, a Victorian town that seems to erupt unexpectedly from the beautiful isolation of the green countryside around it. As the name suggests, Llandrindod is a spa town.It owes its status to the medicinal waters from a spring with the wonderful name of Ffynnon Llwynygog- which means The well in the cuckoos grove. This was a saline spring, though some of the others in Wales were, and remain, much more pungent. Many of the spas across the country provide water which is rather unpleasant and sulphurous but is widely believed on little real evidence at times to be very good for you, apparently based on the premise that the more vile it is the better. The most southerly of these at Llanwrtyd was very smelly indeed. The spring was in fact called Ffynnon Drewllyd which means stinking spring.In Wales there are a number of spas, all very close to each other at Llandrindod, Llanwrtyd, Llangammarch, Builth now all include the word Wells in their name. It is Llandrindod Wells that is the only one which is still commercially operative. You can still take the water by the glass in the Pump Room.The saline spring was in use in the 17th century. In the next century Mrs Jenkins discovered sulphur water close by and started offering cures. Some verses which appeared in The Gentlemans Magazine in 1748 started to attract interest and soon people were travelling to the developing town.The real boost to visitors however came in the 19th century, with the development of the railway. A line linking Llandrindod to South Wales was opened in 1865. So, where there were about 180 people living there in 1817 by the end of the century there were over 80,000 visitors. The town flourished and became a fully-inclusive holiday resort. There was musical entertainment from early in the morning, exercise and visits to the spa. You could even sit in radioactive mud if you wanted. All the time you were surrounded by those beautiful Victorian buildings.In those days the water was a penny a glass. However, since it was generally believed to be necessary to drink as much as a gallon a day, it was better to buy a day ticket. For a small fee you could then drink as much as you liked. Some authorities felt however that it was better to bathe in it.There were warnings though. On no account should visitors take the water in the afternoon, since it had, shall we say, a purgative effect. It was certainly more than capable of ruining your evening.What it offered was an apparently natural remedy for a whole range of complaints including skin disease, kidney trouble, rheumatism, bladder disease and gout.There was a genuine belief that taking the waters worked and I suppose in the end that is what mattered. Personally I find a glass of champagne to be far more effective in all circumstances, but perhaps I am just weird.I had a pleasant walk around the pretty town whilst I waited for Liz to arrive. It was quiet and calm. The hotel guests were sitting on the verandas enjoying the warmth and the soft evening light, as people have done since the waters became important. It seemed a very civilized sort of place. In the past it was a much racier, full of fashionable gamesters and libertines. On summer evenings like that one it was hard to imagine it was ever like that. And although its grandeur appears to be fading, I think I prefer it as it is.