A Very Big Step

A Memory of Caio.

My wife and I went to Caio some 6 months after we married. I was recalled into the army 2 days after our wedding due to the Sues crisis although I was only away from home for 4 months it was long enough for me to loose my job and so soon after the Sues crisis there was a lot of unemployment and I was the end of the queue. After some weeks we were offered three jobs with the Forestry Commission. One at Newcastle Emeyn , one at Llanwrtyd Wells, and one at Caio. Not having any idea where any of these places were we struck for Caio probably because we could spell and pronounce Caio easier than the others. Came the day of the move, the little bit of furniture we had left in one of Pickfords vans the night before followed by us in father-in-law’s little A35 car early the next morning. A very heavy pregnant wife in the front and mother-in-law and me squeezed in the back as we headed for the unknown. What would we find? We found Caio, a place that at that time was not on most maps. On the plus side lovely village with lovely people. On the minus they all spoke Welsh.
On our arrival we were met by our next door neighbour Mrs Davis and her husband W R Davis always known as W R he was a foreman with the commission. Mrs Davis welcomed us all with a hot dinner. [Enough to feed an army] and treated us as if she had known us for years while W R and friends unloaded what furniture we had. There were a lot of charaters living in the village then people like Willy Tom Rees. Rees the blacksmith, to name just two.
Our son David was born in Llandovery hospital on the 10th of May of that year and we started our real family life, but by September the following year we had had enough of those hills and that Language and to be quite honest I think we became lonely for our friends and family. Anyway much to the pleads of Mrs Davis to stay we left and returned to the South of England where we still live to this day. We go back as much as we can from time to time and stay with Gina Jones. the last of our long lost friends still living there now. A couple of days is enough but it seems much closer now we have the M4 motorway & the bridge we hurry along to get home. George Larbey

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