Too hard to refuse
Quaff a pint
Where the Iron Duke took his booze
Yes, day two of the school holidays, and with no family commitments I went off to follow my nose and see where to sketch today. I mentally flipped a coin and it came up heads, as in let's head off East. I've been meaning to pay a visit to Cowbridge to make a sketch or two for a while, and so that's where I went.
Cowbridge is an interesting place. It has retained a lot of fine buildings dating from the Victorian and Georgian periods. There is a story, possibly apocryphal, that the reason is because the town's elders refused to have the railway. Back in the early days of railways in South Wales, so the story goes, Cowbridge was a far more important town than Bridgend, and the builders of the main line from Cardiff to Swansea wanted to build a station there. Supposedly the town elders refused, and so the station went to Bridgend instead. That's why Bridgend became the large and important town that it is, and why Cowbridge stayed the absolutely charming place that it is. Well, that's the story I was once told, anyway.
There is actually a blue plaque on the front of the Duke of Wellington. This commemorates the fact that the building dates back to the 17th century, and has been an inn throughout this time. There is also a story that the Duke of Wellington himself once stayed there overnight during a visit to the town.
One thing I can say for certain. Up until maybe 6 or 7 years ago there used to be a very good quiz on a Wednesday evening which took place in this pub. My dear friend John and I used to play every other week. Why only every other week? Well, thereby hangs a tale. I think that we've probably known each other long enough, dearly beloved, for me to reveal a little of my ill-spent past. From the start of 1988 onwards I became more and more serious about quizzing. I was lucky to have a friend through whom I became involved in quiz leagues, and came to play for the best team in the local area. Although this petered out in the early 1990s, through a combination of circumstances I started playing for a tea in Neath in about 1995, at the same time as which I became of the regular question setters for the weekly quiz in the Aberavon rugby club.
As I said, I became more and more serious about my quizzing, ad eventually even started applying to appear on some serious TV quizzes. In 2007 I won a very prestigious (although into at all lucrative) BBC individual quiz show, which involved winning a heat, a semi final, and a grand final.
Over the next few years my best quiz friend, John and I came to learn that whenever we found a new pub quiz that we liked, we'd often be welcomed with open arms the first couple of times we played. However, if we started wining on a regular basis - which we often did - then the welcome would often turn to bad feeling from some of the rival teams. Hence we only went once a fortnight, which ensured that, at most, we would only win once every other week.
Unlike a lot of other places, bad feeling didn't actually drive us away from Cowbridge, merely the ending of the quiz on the Wednesday. So I still have a lot of affection for the Duke of Wellington. As regards quizzing, well, when anyone asks me about it now I tend to tell them that I am semi-retired. I no longer play in any quiz league, and only attend one quiz a week, which is the quiz in the Aberavon Rugby Club, where I still take my turn setting the questions now and again. The only serious quiz I ever play in now is Brain of Mensa. Thankfully I won that a couple of years ago, and so I can just play for fun now.
Which is why I stopped playing in the majority of quizzes. It just wasn't fun any more. The other teams in the league in which I'd played for 6 or 7 years weren't getting any better, and there was a significant amount of bad feeling towards my team which came out from time to time. Not fun. One pub quiz we attended in Bridgend saw us win 4 times in a row, after which they cancelled the quiz. Not fun. In the last pub quiz I played other than the rugby club, having never lost we turned up to find that we only had 4 questions wrong all evening, and yet still came last. Not fun.
All of which is rather ironic considering it's Thursday, and therefore quiz night. Should be fun. I'll maybe let you know if it's not.
