2012 Alternative Games include bog snorkelling, worm charming
Welsh village to hold crazy Olympic events
hat’s it like to live in a far-off place most of us see only on a vacation? Foreign Correspondence is an interview with someone who lives in a spot you may want to visit.
Peter Brown, 60, lives in Llanwrtyd, Wales, in the county of Powys, where he has a pub, the Stonecroft Inn. He is also the organizer of the 2012 World Alternative Games, which will be held in his village.
Q: OK, how do you say where you live? “Lan-worddid?” A: Near enough. Q: What does your part of Wales look like?
A: It’s brilliant: one of the most unexplored parts of Wales, with rolling hills, streams and rivers — smack bang in the belly button of Wales. It can be wet at times, but when the sun shines it’s one of the best parts of Britain.
You get here by road or train. It’s about four hours from London, but there are airports at Bristol and Cardiff. Manchester is only three hours away.
It’s very sparsely populated: Less than 700 people live here, generally working in forestry or farming. There’s a small business in town that employs about 30.
I live in the pub. It’s very traditional. . . . It’s typical Old-y World-y, selling traditional beers.
Q: You’re the chairman of the World Alternative Games. And they are . . . ?
A: We’ve always been known for crazy events in town — bog snorkelling,
Wman vs. horse races — and we were just talking about so many of these kinds of events, and how little of (Britain’s) 2012 Olympic Games are coming to Wales. We thought we would bring as many fun, quirky outdoor events down to us for our own games. We got a good reaction to this in town, though some are obviously worried about the number of people who may come down for the events. We got a good reaction from the Wales Tourist Board and Welsh government TV. We’re starting to get presenters (TV announcers) wanting to come down here.
Q: What are the usual “crazy events?”
A: The man-vs.-horse race is usually in June; bog snorkelling is in August. The bog snorkelling will pretty much remain in the same time slot. The games begin Friday, the 17th of August, and finish Sunday, the 2nd of September. It’s basically the gap between the London Olympics and the Paralympics.
We will have something like 30 different events: chariot racing, beer-barrel rolling, bath-tubbing, downhill mountain board championships, wife-carrying, stone-skimming, wool-sack carrying, backwards running, worm charming plus more. Such as gravy wrestling. Q: Bath-tubbing? A: It’s where people race in old bathtubs around a course. It’s on water. They’ll be doing this probably down at a local lake, Abernant Lake. Q: Worm charming? A: Competitors try to get as many worms as they can out of a threemetre square of a grassed area, using only a fork. They have 30 minutes to do this. The world record is well over 500. They dig their fork around in the dirt, but are not allowed to turn the surface over. That and stomping your feet attract the worms to the surface. The worms are put in a suitable container and not released until after dark, because the birds might eat them. We think of everything, you see. The oldest event here is probably the man-vs.-horse; that goes back 30 years. Q: Do horses always win? A: Nearly always. But a man has won three times.
We’re trying in these events to promote the spirit — that taking part is more important than winning. However, there will be gold, silver and bronze medals.