A Wales Tale – Part 3

 AKA – A Day of Really Old Stuff

Sunday morning brought intense pain in my legs from our super hike the day before, but it also brought with it sunshine.  We packed up our campsite, and headed into town for some breakfast .  On a side note, why must all English (or Welsh) breakfasts be entirely made up of meat?  Some of us are not excited by the idea of two different types of sausages, and bacon along with eggs, beans, mushrooms and tomatoes.

Gross!  Who wants to eat this  for breakfast?

Anyway, after breakfast, we decided to take a walk around the tarn (for you Americans, that’s a mountain lake or pool, formed in a cirque excavated by a glacier.) 

Our walk led us past the old slate quarry.  Closed in 1969, the quarry now is home to the Welsh National Slate Museum (free) and the Quarry Hospital Museum (free).  It’s also a popular destination for climbers who scale the slate faces.  

Not my idea of a good time, but whatever floats your boat I guess… 

In addition, the pool at the foot of the slate cliffs is popular with the diving set, although there’s not much down there to see.

Again, not my idea of a good time… 

After checking out the slate quarry, knowing that all Americans love castles, Sarka and Al took us over to see the remnants of Dolbadarn Castle.  Originally built in the early 13th century by the Princes of Gwynedd, not much remains of the castle besides one circular tower.  While I pretended to be unimpressed (mostly due to the fact that I had to walk my poor aching legs up a hill to see it), I still had a good time checking the castle remains out. 

After we visited the boring, tiny castle, we drove out to Anglesey to check out the seriously awesome Beaumaris Castle.  Anglesey is an Isle located in the north-west of Wales, just a short drive from the Snowdonia area.  It can be reached  by either the newer Britannia Bridge, or the extremely impressive Menai Bridge.  One of the first suspension bridges, Menai Bridge was built back in 1826, and still spans the divide between Anglesey and the mainland today. 

Snowdonia as seen from the coast of Anglesey 

While I love all castles, both great and small, Beaumaris Castle for two reasons.  1) The brochure referred to it as the most “technically perfect” castle in Wales and 2) it has a real moat.  I was intrigued by the fact that the castle was considered “technically perfect”, and my sister Mini-Deal is obsessed with moats, so I figured that Beaumaris Castle would be a great castle to visit.  (BTW, when I told Mini-Deal of the moat, she was disappointed that toothed creatures were not in there to eat invaders.  Guess you can’t please everyone)

I stole this aerial so readers could get a sense of the overall layout of the castle.

Begun in 1295 for Edward I’s campaign to conquer Wales, it was never finished as Edward I, being a typical English King, lost interest in Wales and turned his attention elsewhere instead (Scotland).  Regardless, it remains an excellent example of concentric castle building.  It really is an interesting example of castle architecture.  Upon doing some research, I found out that the castle gate features meurtrières (murder-holes), which are totally cool.  If I had realized they were there, or thought to look up, I would have taken a few photos.  For those of you not obsessed with castles like me, murder-holes are almost exactly what they sound like – holes in the ceiling through which to murder invaders.  In the case of castle defense, boiling oil was often poured through the holes to discourage the breaking down of the castle gates.

At this point, a great number of readers are probably suffering from exactly what the folks at Beaumaris Castle warned of: Warning: History Overload

They were also kind enough to warn of the following:

If you try and abduct a child, you will break your ankle, fall down the stairs and be attacked by killer seagulls.

  This sign was placed with the knowledge that Allister would be visiting

While Al climbed the walls (literally) and he and Kevin ran around in all the secret tunnels, I took the time to take a few pictures:

  

After the castle, we headed to our new campground, but not before stopping at a neolithic burial chamber on the way that Allister had heard of, Bryn Celli Ddu.  It consists of a mound at the center of a henge.  Not only is it a burial mound, but its also an ancient observatory that has been hypothesized to mark the summer solstice.  The coolest part for me was the carving on the center henge stone. 

 

We made our way to our campsite, had a barbeque, consisting entirely of meat.  Apparently the spicy pork steaks and spicy sausages were lovely, but I stuck to the burgers.  After dinner, we drove down to the beach and walked around a bit. Naturally, Sarka and I took photos while Kev and Al acted like monkeys in the sand dunes and took ridiculous photos.

That night, I froze my butt off even more than usual.  Come to find out, it had snowed overnight.  No wonder I was so cold…

    

Overall, I had a fantastic time in Wales.  I’d love to go back again and see more of the beautiful country.  I highly recommend a trip to anyone in that corner of the world.

Chester chooses chestnuts, cheddar cheese and chewy chives

Sunday morning brought rain, and the departure of Katie.  Originally, we had planned on dropping Katie at the airport and then hanging out in Manchester for the day.  However, when we dropped Katie off, we looked at the clock and realized that it was only 7:15am.  Nothing in Manchester would be open until at least 10.  Driving to the airport, I had seen signs indicating that the town of Chester wasn’t too far away.  According to the English Heritage book, Chester housed England’s largest Roman Amphitheater that was conveniently open at “any reasonable hour” along with a castle so we decided to head to Chester for the day.

 

Since Chester is only about 24 miles from the airport, we still arrived in the very early hours of the morning.  We decided to start our day with a walk on the city walls.  Once a city completely walled in for protection, much of the original city walls remain, and can be walked on.  The walls reminded me of the walls in York, but not quite as extensive.  Roman gardens 

Cailin was VERY cold, so she tried jumping up and down.  When that failed, she bought an ice coffee…my sister the genius

 

By the time we finished, it was 9:00 am.  Kevin was hungry (is anyone surprised?) so we decided to get some breakfast.  Cailin and I vetoed the first place that we saw as it looked fancy.  We then spent the next hour wandering around the shopping area looking for a place that was actually open besides McDonalds while Kevin got mad at us for not just eating in the first place we found an hour earlier.  We finally found a pub that served breakfast, and Kevin and I got various forms of breakfast sandwiches and hash browns while Cailin attempted to warm up, still drinking her ice coffee.  While it was only 9 am, the pub had about 20 people drinking pints of beer.  This not only upset my stomach at the thought of drinking beer so early, but it was also quite sad.

 

After we re-fueled Kevin, we decided to walk around the shopping area.  They had quite a selection of stores, and the best part was that you could walk under-cover around the shopping area.  Very useful for us as it had started raining and my umbrella had broken.  We spent an hour or so walking around, admiring the Tudor architecture of the buildings and doing a little shopping -a new wind-resistant umbrella for me and a little something for John Felty (no, not more scotch).

 

Kevin really liked the Tudor style architecture.  He kept demanding that I take pictures.

Right near the shopping area was a huge cathedral.  Being Sunday, we couldn’t go inside and check it out (unless we wanted to sit through mass which is quite painful for a couple of girls who grew up going to a Baptist church that had much shorter services and didn’t require kneeling and sitting and kneeling and standing.)  We did however get a few pictures of the outside. 

When we emerged on the other side of the cathedral, Cailin and I saw one of our favorite things – McDonalds.  Cailin didn’t eat any breakfast so she was hungry and I can never turn down a double-cheeseburger so we made a quick pit stop into McDonalds.  Cailin, like myself, has an ongoing contest to eat at McDonalds in every country she goes to.  So far, she has the US, South Africa, The Netherlands and now England.  I have the US, France, England, Belgium, and South Africa.  I should also have Greece, but Kevin refused to let me eat there when we were in Athens on our honeymoon.  I’m hoping (but doubtful) that there is a McDonalds in Venice so I can add Italy to my list this weekend.

 

After our brief stop at McDonalds, we set out to check out Chester castle.  We found the castle easy enough, but it took us forever to find a way to get in.  Once we did find a way in, we realized that the castle was inexplicably closed for the day.  Boo!   Cailin and Kevin trying to find a way in

We decided to head back to the car and make our way back to Manchester for the James Morrison concert.  On the way back, I realized we had never seen the Roman Amphitheater, which was located right near where we had parked.  However, once we got to the Amphitheater, we realized that it was, like the castle, closed-this time because they were doing work to it.  It looked pretty cool, and I wish I had gotten a chance to see it up close, but a picture from the city wall will have to do for now.

Castle Craziness

 

Since the preparation of Thanksgiving dinner kept us inside most of Thursday, we decided to spend Friday with a little day trip.  Since Mini hadn’t been to a castle ever (unless you count Gillette Castle in CT), we decided to head on up to Carlisle to check out the castle there.    Carlisle is located very close to the England/Scotland border, and therefore has a lot of very interesting history associated with it.  Much of the city lies on top of Roman ruins.  The ever elusive Hadrian’s wall goes through the city.  It was also the site of a number of battles during the Jacobite rebellion of 1688-1746.  Therefore, it makes sense that the castle would have been a very important part of the city.  Due to the huge influence that the castle had, it was kept up a lot better than many of the other castles that Kevin and I had been to.  In fact, I think it was the best castle I have been to thus far. 

The castle was originally built in 1066 by William II  of England while the area was still part of Scotland.  He promptly took over Cumberland (what is now currently Nothwest Cumbria),  made it part of England and caused it to be fought over for the next 700 years.  Mary, Queen of Scots was briefly imprisoned here from May to July 1568.  Before you start feeling sorry for the red haired Queen, she had free reign of the castle and 30-40 servants !During the 2nd Jacobite rising, Carlisle castle was captured and held by the Jacobites until the Duke of Cumberland and his forces drove them out and held them prisoner in Carlisle Castle until they were executed.

 

Mini-Deal was obsessed with moats, but disappointed that this one no longer had water and contained no crocodiles

An extremely large portion of the castle was open to visitors, including the former prison/keep, and one of the buildings where people lived.  Kevin and Katie made a rookie mistake and left Cailin and I alone with our cameras.

 

Mini jumped in here and started singing “Everybody look at me cause I’m standing in a moat!”

      This was a problem

Katie and Cailin got sent to Jacobite jail

 

This was called the “licking stone” since the prisoners would lick it to get water, so obviously I needed to demonstrate

Bring us some meat!

I’m protecting the castle from Mini

A Dwarf door for the dwarf!

Mini desperately wanted to get through this trap door

  What’s in this hole?

Eye see you!  (Katie gets in on the ridiculous fun)

   

Mini is imitating the exit signs over here (see the green sign in the right side of the picture)  

  Poor Kevin was just trying to get a little shut eye!

After we had our fill of ridiculousness, we headed down to check out Carlisle Cathedral, had a quick bite to eat and headed home.  Carlisle Castle is definitely worth a visit if anyone ever gets up that way.