Enid Blyton locations pt 2 The Rilloby Fair Mystery

Here's the second Enid Blyton book read so far, this time split between 2 days. The Rilloby Fair Mystery very much focuses on a fair, and as fairs are constantly one the move from one place to another I was curious to see which locations Blyton would mention. Disappointingly neither place mentioned logically links to a real life setting. However, there are a few random links which I will soon be exploring.

Cover of the book. The first pages were torn out,
but I'd guess this Armada edition is from the late 60s or 70s period.

THE STORY BEGINS  A clash is set to happen in the Lyntons' household. Cousin Snubby and his dog Loony are meant to stay over, but so is Great Uncle Robert. Their personalities are quite the opposite, so you can imagine the potential chaos. 

En route, the two end up sharing a train compartment, HOWEVER, neither is familiar with the other. Snubby ends up making a fancy plot about a Green Hands Gang, which the old man believes, and this further adds to the awkwardness when the two meet again at the house. 

A busy busy household

It is unusual for Uncle Robert to visit when the children are on their holidays and at home. Alas, a theft at Chelie Manor, where he was staying, made him prefer the noisy din of dogs, monkeys, and the presence of Snubby. Of course, he didn't know then that he would be accompanied by dogs, monkeys and Snubby! 'Chelie' sounded more French than English, and my guess as fairly close, as the is a Chélieu in France. I must admit that Chélieu sounds much more finished, but then it wouldn't fit the English setting. 

It seems that a gang was targeting buildings housing old documents, such as letters, or maps, and steeling this. One group of items stolen were maps of the county of Lincolnshire, which is factual enough. Don't mind the map below, you can be sure that those stolen from the collection were very elaborately drawn and probably date hundred of years back. 

Fun fact - Lincolnshire spans the North, Midlands, AND south of England!

What's particularly peculiar about these robberies is that the thief manages to get into locked places! 

Coincidently at that time a fair was also at Pilbury. This name sound extremely British, and I was surprised there is no place under this name. It sounds familiar, and may have been inspired by the brand 'Pillsbury', an American brand of baking and dough products. 

This is where Diana makes the startling observation that wherever the fair is, a robbery seems to follow...This is also were Snubby, with minimal evidence, informs Great Uncle Robert that the next robbery will be in Ricklesham. The name is quite similar to Icklesham village in East Sussex. Apart from that, there is minimal connection to a place in real life. 

Icklesham is very close to Winchelsea and Hastings. 
It is located in one of my favourite areas of the southern English coast. 

As it so happens, Ricklesham House is the next to be targeted, so Snubby finds himself in a pickle. With Great Uncle Robert on his tail, Snubby nicely niftily gets out of the way and spends a day or two out of the house making errands. 

This was quite a long list, all these places where mentioned in the first few chapters. The next place Rilloby, is were the fair moves to, and where the scene settles.  Rilloby has no real connection, and does sound quite made up. All the consecutive events happening occur either between the Lynton's house, the fair grounds and very interesting castle. 

Snubby is caught snooping around the caravans

Marloes Castle - there is actually a Marloes village in Wales, with St Brides Castle nearby. Marloes village seems to be more of hamlet, but has land stretching much further. This is, in fact, a Marloes Penisula and Marloes Sands. 

Marloes

Marloes sands, Wales

In the story, the castle is near Rilloby, and not named after a village of the same name.

All the little random connections mentioned are very small villages, and I doubt if Blyton even knew of such a place as Chélieu when she was writing this book. I have no intention of revealing how the storlyline develops, but it makes a great read!

Enid Blyton Locations pt. 1

After finishing reading L. M. Montgomery's 'The Blue Castle' last week I got a sudden urge to look up are re-read a book by Enid Blyton that is set in a place called Penrhyndendraith. This is actually a real place in Wales, but we'll get back to that later.

After a bit of searching, I found which book this was - and read The Ragamuffin Mystery within the day. 

As I child I basically grew up reading and re-reading Enid Blyton books, but I hadn't touched them in a while. Now, I read through the story with new perspective.

The beginning of the story in short: With Mr Lynton away in America, his wife and children Roger and Diana set off in a caravan and car, and invite their friend Miss Pepper with them. However, an accident to their aunt alters their plans. Mrs Lynton takes the car and goes to see her sister, and in the meantime Barney and his father who were touring Scotland travelled south to help the others (now stranded without a car). They end up staying at an inn at Penrhyndendraith, and are soon joined by their energetic, if not a bit crazy, cousin Snubby and dog Loony who was meant to be staying at his aunt for the holidays. 

Penrhyndendraith 

Here is Penrhyndendraith on the map- it on the coast in the North of Wales. Way above is Scotland... so Barney and his father must have had quite a journey to reach the others. I'm not sure where Roger, Diana & Co were touring in the beginning, I may have missed it if is in the book. However, they had planned a 3 week holiday and were apparently traversing several counties. The place Yesterley is mentioned, but a quick search on the map will show this to be factious. 

Just a mile or so from Penrhyndendraith is Portmeiron, which is perhaps the main attraction of the area nowadays. This little village will appear quite out of place and as if it's a part of Italy. Indeed, the architecture is remarkably different compared to similar buildings in North Wales. 

Don't mind the alarmy stock photo, but you can assume which one is Portmeiron. The buildigns are just so colourful!

Back to the book - Penrhyndendraith supposedly has Merlin's Cove where the children go swimming, and have part of their adventure here. However, there seems to be no real such Cove - Blyton may have gotten the idea from a Merlin's Cave which is way down south in Cornwall, near Tintagel. 

Merlin's CAVE, Tintagel

Snubby ends up playing 'ragamuffin' and accidentally gets himself, and the others, involved in a mystery-adventure. As is common in many of the Enid Blyton story plots, the 'scourges' end up being fellow guests at the same place the others were staying in. Awkward! Needless to say, Miss Pepper is left completely ignorant of the dramatic happenings that unfold throughout the book. 

Despite trying to hide from these 2 men staying at the same inn, they are recognised. So Snubby makes a hasty escape halfway through breakfast and spends a day away in Dilcarmock. Barney accompanies him. Again, here is Blyton being creative, as there seems to be no such place.

They return and soon after the story quickly unfolds. The owner of the inn, Mr Jones, ends up being involved in the bad works and all 3 men are taken away. The story ends with his wife, Mrs Jones, apparently begging Miss Pepper to stay a while longer, to which Miss Pepper agrees. Her son Dayfdd and goose Waddle start to get along with the others and the lot spend their days at the beach. 

So it is a seemingly 'all's well that end's well' ending, but as a mature reader, I can't help feeling it a bit emotionally detached. After all, Mrs Jones' husband and Dayfdd's father has just been taken away and his family members appear to be left none the worse. They couldn't have been too close to start off with! Whatever their relationship was, they certainly showed resilience and adapted quickly!

Downhill All the Way

The above title is what K.M. Peyton decided to name her book, and it describes exactly the type of walk my father and I went on yesterday. 

The book

To start off with, it would probably be a good idea to give a brief overview. After 2 months "in convalescence" it was high time I got to do a little exploration again, and what better way to do it, than going 'downhill all the way?'. To be fair we had been going on a walk here and there, but yesterday happened to be an off day and after running some errands around the central areas of the island we had some time to kill and headed to Bahrija. (Not directly though...we're not that energetic).

What I really had in mind was to explore Fomm ir-Rih. This little pebbly/rocky beach is quite secluded and not easily accessible. Usually we'd walk to the hanging cliffs above it from the Bingemma area (path in red) but there would be a road from the opposite side (yellow line). This seemed to be coming from Bahrija, and I intended to find out! 

Map of Bingemma/Bahrija area

We happened to arrive right when school was about to be finished for the primary children. Already some parents had parked their cars to the side, and the building struck me as being in such an idyllic location. It was the furthest in the village, overlooking the flora and fauna. 

The walk was so beautiful, and everything felt so fresh, especially after not being in the 'proper' outdoors for a while. This week has been really nice and sunny. It's a good break from the previously stormy and very windy days of December and January. 

At a point the path forks and we took the left path. When I looked it up on the maps later I found that it was the other road that led to Fomm ir-Rih, but the one we took was still nice. There was even a hiking trail along the cliffs but that will be an other adventure...

29/07/2025 To the capital again in 2025 part 1 Florania Public Library book sale!!

 Phew, its already almost August, and what better way to finish off July than to make a good trip to the old capital?

The parents took a couple of hours of leave and I... well I don't have school at the moment and Tuesdays are currently my free days...so we packed the car and drove to Valletta. Did I mention we left an hour late? It's quite a habit in the family... 

To be honest, the main reason of our excursion was to visit the Floriana Public Library, which is near Belt is-Sebt, located right outside the main entrance to Valletta. We saw on the maltalibraries website online that they were selling old, second hand books and simply had to go and have a look! (It ended up being more than a look)

Central Public Library

Apparently this book sale has been going on for the past 10 years, and come to think of it, when we visited last year I saw a section of random books sitting by themselves in a corridor but there was no sign whatsoever of 'books for sale'. Or maybe I didn't look well enough. Anyway, today we went to inspect.

Found a poster dating some years back on their FB page

AND WHAT A FIND! There is a whole corridor of books, on shelves, in boxes... simply everywhere you look there are shelves of unwanted books, though why exactly they are unwanted, I wonder. I understand that some of them are outdated and not that popular, but other modern children's books like Jacqueline Wilson were also amongst the shelves. There were also a lot of classics, and Enid Blyton books too. I didn't really look at the adult section. 

(Not the actual books)

There were also a lot of foreign language books, mostly German. Amongst theses, was a very interesting looking guide to some canals in that region. What a pity I don't know a word of German!

But I haven't got to the best part... books are sold at the mere price of 25c. Unbelievable! Even in charity shops prices usually go from 1 or 2 euro to 5. We spent ages rummaging amongst the books and when we finally decided which we were going to get, (some would be duplicates of ones at home which were too classic of an edition to leave behind), the total price was just 5 euro. As books sold for 25c each, 4 books makes an euro, so we had 20 books to take with us back home! I also got a Chalet School book which are pretty expensive on the internet. 

Chalet School

So that was the library, a great start to the morning. If you haven't heard of the book sale, do give it a visit, you may find a treasure!