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On the final leg of the journey to Abu Dhabi, gusts of freezing rain sweep down from the thickly wooded hills, shrouded in cloud. Damp sheep graze on a strip of grass between the road and an ever-widening band of angry grey-green water.
The road bends round to the right and dips below a bridge carrying the railway, and suddenly it is there: a curve of white and pastel terraced houses and an endless forbidding panorama of sea that vanishes into the mist. The rain hammers down even more furiously.
What? Sorry, you must have misheard. Abu Dhabi? This is Aberdovey, a tiny seaside town on the coast of Wales, perched on the edge of Cardigan Bay.