Language learning on the road

Well, 42 days into this venture - 28 of them actual cycling days - I find myself in a foreign country. No, I haven't inadvertently cycled into the Channel tunnel and ended up in France - my brother Jim and I crossed the Wirral and ended up in Wales.  To be fair, the country doesn't seem foreign and nor do the people but the language certainly does. Sometimes it seems like someone has strung together a load of consonants and expects them to be pronounceable! Well, being by nature a lover of languages and a firm believer that when in Rome, speak as the Romans do, I decided not to be disconcerted by every road sign in Welsh and English but to use them as my teacher.

The first Welsh I picked up was "Croeso y Cymru" and I thought how nice to be formally welcomed to Wales before I'd even met any of the lovely people my brother and I were to encounter on our ride through this beautiful country.  The sign I saw most often was "safle bws" and yes, they do queue in an orderly fashion for the buses here just as we do in England :-)  Speeding down a 20% descent I also quickly learned why "araf" is painted before every bend on the road - if you haven't guessed, it means "slow".  For some reason we both found "dim parcio" funny - perhaps because it sounds a bit Italian and that seemed incongruous and perhaps because it reminded me of how people park in such daft ways, but in fact it means "no parking".  As Jim and I were slogging up a hill we spotted a sign "pant cudd" and I thought yes, not only could I but I am puffing and panting, thank you!  We discovered it was warning us of a hidden dip which at least allowed us to pick up a bit of speed.  Knowing that "araf" means "slow" it didn't take much to guess that "arafwch nawr" means "slow down now" and sure enough that was confirmed by the English "reduce speed now". Other signs were "Ar werth" - For sale, "ysgol" - school, "ffordd" - road, "siocled" - chocolate (the most important word to know in any language) and my favourite of all is "twmpathau" which are speed bumps - no idea why that word appeals but reading it just makes me happy.

So I reckon a few more weeks in this beautiful country and I could be holding conversations along the lines of:
- See the house by the bus stop?
- You mean the one next to the school?
- No, further down the road where the speed bumps are.
- Ah, the one with the For sale sign up.
- Yes, it was painted chocolate brown last year.
Or maybe I should just accept my linguistic limitations and stick to English!  And perhaps it's just as well I only have a few more days cycling in Wales before I cross the Severn bridge and back to familiar monolingual road signs.