The Puffin Shuttle races along roads toward Saint David’s that in our trusty little Hertz car we barely crawl down. The shuttle is bigger, taller, wider than our rental. Where is the driver’s fear? Michael doesn’t seem to care, delighted to be a passenger having the ability to look around and enjoy the scenery. I wonder if he realizes that buses have accidents too. It’s an hour to Saint David’s, relaxing and enjoying the moment seems the path of least resistance—and to trust—as we rattle along at break-neck speed.

We are dumped in the middle of town fifteen minutes before noon. I know what we need to do, but I hate to bring it up.  “I think we should eat first,” I say, “then we won’t have to rush through the cathedral.”

“Where?”

Of course where.  I don’t know where. I check my phone to see if I have 4G’s.  Trip Advisor advises that The Bishops is a good choice; right across the street, we don’t have far to walk. It is five minutes before the pub is due to start their lunch service, but they hand over menus anyway.  I choose Bishops Fish Pie, Michael opts for Chicken Tikka Masala, turning his nose up very high at my choice.

“That doesn’t even sound good,” he says.

Cod, salmon, mussels and prawns bound in a creamy sauce topped with a lemon parsley mash topped with a shell on king prawn—I have to try it.  It is very British. And, it is probably something I will not fix at home or order again. The seafood is fresh and tender, but the sauce has been absorbed by the potatoes?  Creamy it isn’t. The king prawn, desperately overcooked. It is OK—just not wonderful.

In a tiny town whose main claim to fame is a large cathedral, you would think that that it would jump out at you, but there are no towers, no steeples anywhere in sight.  Michael does his usual thing when looking for something specific in a place he has never been in before—we begin climbing to the top of the highest hill. Luckily he walks faster than I do and starts on his trip back down telling me he knows where the cathedral is. Walking in the direction his nose tells him to go, we run into a sign pointing down a small alley.

Winding our way downward we finally follow the crowds, seeing the massive stone edifice (how can a country so small have so many things that are so massive) even further below in the middle of a small valley. Ken Follet is haunting me on this trip, because once again I see the embodiment of Pillars of the Earth.  I don’t even need to go inside.  It is enough to sit and stare and imagine.

In the gift shop I think I’m buying a book telling me the history of St. David’s, but instead it tells of the architecture and detailed information on each chapel, which is good, but not what I want.  Then during the tour I bump into a sentence mentioning King Alfred the Great and Wessex and the Viking raids in one breath, and history tells me that Alfred was the son of Aethelwulf  who was the son of Egbert who was the first king of England; and I hate that I get my history from television, but the Vikings series on the History channel comes alive even though the cathedral as it stands today is not that which stood here in the 9^th century.

The bishops palace adjacent to the cathedral is a massive ruin. A ruin worth exploring if I tread carefully. I lose Michael immediately. He climbs the steps directly beyond the entrance. I sit in the sun and study my method of attack, seeing that there are stairs on the opposite side of those he climbed, that do have a handrail.

Inside the ancient walls, with the blue sky as my roof, there is still no sign of Michael. I walk around, feeling the stone, reading the storyboards when I hear someone calling my name. “Keep talking,” I say, “I hear you but I can’t see you.” I follow his voice to a corner of the large open-air space, looking up. Smiling down at me from high above is Michael.

Am I surprised?