In March, Olwen and I set off on another trip, this time to two of the non-English parts of Great Britain: Wales and the Southwest (Devon and Cornwall). Though this trip includes some fantastic megalithic sites, it’s also a hodge-podge of other cool places, so just scroll past if you don’t care.
Lucky for me, Olwen and I share many interests and she has some of her own, so we had plenty to see. We started with Oxford.
Oxford
Thanks to Brideshead Revisited and the Inspector Morse TV series (and the Colin Dexter books), I’d been in love with Oxford for a long time. I wanted to spend several days there rather than just breezing through. And so we did.
Some highlights:
- We had tea in The Eagle and Child (aka the Bird and Baby), the pub where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their pals used to congregate.
- We took a bus to nearby Woodstock to see Blenheim Palace, home of the Dukes of Marlborough, where Churchill was born. It was closed, but we strolled around the grounds.
- We visited the Ashmolean Museum, with its astonishing collection of art and archeological artifacts. I could have spent several days there.
- The hoity-toity people in the Morse stories always stay at the venerable Randolph Hotel. We opted to stay at a B&B, but had tea at the Randolph so we could see inside. Swanky!
North Wales
Next we took the train up to Wales, to the Holyhead ferry terminal. Carole took the ferry over from Dublin to spend a few days with us.
I’d visited North Wales in 1979 and had pretty much fallen in love with it. It was one of those places where I felt I’d been enchanted, like a spell had been cast on me: that I would always want to go back. I still feel that way!
Isle of Anglesey
Right across the narrow Menai Strait from Caernarfon lies the wide, flat island of Anglesey. It is chock-full of megalithic sites, so it must have been very important to the Neolithic people.
When the invading Romans decided to wipe out the defiant Celts, this is where the Celts made their last stand. The druids stood on the island shore taunting and cursing the Romans. Going down in a blaze of glory.
Beaumaris Castle
When Edward I got tired of fighting the rebellious Welsh, he built a network of castles around Wales known as the Ring of Iron. This one is still functional and is a great example of the type of defensive fortifications that were cutting edge in the 13th century.
There’s a beautiful chapel with a lovely echo. We sang “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning.”
Din Lligwy dolmen
The beautiful Din Lligwy dolmen is from the late Neolithic period, and has one of the largest capstones in England, weighing over 25 tons. They found the remains of around 30 people when they excavated it in 1909.
The short stubby curbstones actually extend deep into the earth and so are much bigger than they appear. Here are some of its decorated stones.
I can’t help but notice the reconstruction and “repair” done in so many of these places. I’m grateful they’ve been kept accessible and safe, but you can really tell the difference from the ones that are intact. It’s a bit like using Elmer’s Glue to repair a Rodin.
Predictably, there’s a 12th-century chapel nearby.
Trefignath
You can eventually find your way to Holy Island, which is an island off the coast of the island of Anglesey. We spent a lot of time getting lost on this particular day, which is all part of the fun.
This was originally a three-chambered court cairn but it’s tough to visualize from these ruins. There’s a big factory right behind it. There are some standing stones nearby, but we could not find them.
Barclodiad Y Gawres
A beautiful passage tomb, heavily reconstructed with concrete. It was locked up and we didn’t have time to track down the key. There are some decorated stones inside featuring the usual Neolithic art: spirals, zigzags, chevrons, etc.
The name translates as the Giantess’ Apronful. Lots of these places were associated with old stories of giants; the Bronze age people who encountered them probably could not imagine regular humans building these incredible structures.
Caernarfon Castle
Here is another one of Edward I’s castles. This one is intact and still in use; it is where the Prince of Wales is crowned. I’d visited in 1979 with Cheryl and it was a thrill to see it again.
Segontium
This Roman outpost overlooks Caernarfon and Anglesey. Only the outline of the buildings’ foundations are visible.
It was an important location in Mary Stewart’s books, which take place in the days when the last Romans were just a fading memory and their buildings were crumbling to ruins.
Portmeirion
We spent the night in this place, which was beautiful and luxurious. The story here is: some guy thought this area looks a lot like Italy, so he bought a bunch of land and developed it to make it look an Italian village. Actually it’s a resort-type hotel. He designed it so that no matter where you stand or sit, you can see something beautiful everywhere you look. And that is true!
This picture doesn’t do it justice; it was winter and the trees were bare, but even so it was gorgeous.
You might recognize the name if you’re into fancy dishes. Portmeirion Pottery is made and sold there. Olwen and I both bought a bunch and had it shipped home.
And if it looks a familiar, this is where the TV show “The Prisoner” was filmed. Every TV in every room is showing episodes of the show all day every day.
It is one of those “destination” places, where the surrounding infrastructure exists to support the tourist traffic. So nobody actually lives there. Plus we were the only people staying there, so it was a little surreal.
Mt. Snowdon / Yr Wyddfa
The Welsh are trying to jettison the English place names, and I support that.
For as long as coal was used as fuel, it has been mined in Wales, so the rugged hills and mountains are criss-crossed with little railroads for transporting out the coal. This narrow gauge railway is now used to haul tourists up Mt. Snowdon. We could only get about 3/4 of the way up due to snow, so this was it.
As you can see, it was very misty that day. Cold, slippery, icy in places, rocky, uneven footing, sheer drop-offs. I kept thinking of how easy it must have been for the Welsh to disappear into these mountains to elude their foes.
Bardsley Island / Ynys Enlli
We drove down the Llyn peninsula to get a look at this little island, where Merlin is said to be buried. (There are about a dozen other places with the same claim, so, you know.) It was a major early Christian site and has a bird observatory. We opted not to take the ferry out; the weather was not great and we had an ambitious schedule.
We also passed Dinas Emrys, where Merlin had his vision of the two dragons fighting under the mountain, presaging the rise of the Pendragons. Today a major highway runs alongside, so we just drove by.
Dyffryn Ardudwy
We headed down the coast road toward South Wales. Our next stop was Dyffryn Ardudwy, which features two fantastic dolmens, the older of which is dated to around 4000 BCE.
We spent a lot of time looking for things we couldn’t find, and a lot of places were closed. Fair enough, it was March after all.
South Wales
It was late when we finally arrived at our B&B that night. We’d gotten lost driving down a narrow, dark, twisty forest road and had nearly run out of gas. See Blather for details.
We were due to stay at a place called Plas Alltyferin near a town called Nantgaredig. The directions sent us up another narrow, dark, twisty forest road.
The end of the road put us in the back of a big house. No lights on, no signs of life. It could have been Dracula’s castle, for all we knew. Then I noticed a tiny, dim bulb over a door. We knocked timidly. It turned out to be the right place, and the people greeted us warmly.
It was a huge 18th-century Georgian house with walls three feet thick, full of gorgeous antiques. And books were piled everywhere: bookshelves, window ledges, on top of anything flat. They had two little Jack Russells and whole bunch of cats. The next morning we walked out to see the remains of a Norman motte behind their house.
Then we got a tour of the farm and had a wonderful time feeding baby lambs and petting the horses. It was lambing season so the guy had been up all night warming baby bottles in the microwave and helping the ewes give birth.
Carreg Cennen
This place looks like it’s straight out of a fairy tale. This castle was built in 1282, but legend says it was first the stronghold of Urien. There were definitely prehistoric, Roman, and early Welsh fortifications here long before the Normans arrived.
We couldn’t go inside, but the view was absolutely magnificent.
We spent the next couple days in the area around Abergavenny, exploring the valleys of the Black Mountains. Once you get on a road, you pretty much have to follow it wherever it’s going. Very likely it’s a narrow road through thick forests with no turnoffs. You might be hemmed in by thick hedgerows on both sides, then suddenly you burst out of the trees onto a bare, windswept hillside. You totally believe you could come around the next bend and find a family of trolls living under a stone bridge.
Church of St. Martin, Vale of Ewyas
We drove up the beautiful Vale of Ewyas and stopped to see the tipsy Church of St. Martin’s in a village called Cwmyoy. Built in the 13th century, it sits on the site of a land slip and as the land continues to settle, it gets more crooked. Some parts lean this direction, others lean that.
We visited the Llanthony Priory, debouched at Hay-on-Wye, and then went back south via the Golden Valley, which C.S. Lewis talks about. So incredibly beautiful.
Ironically, Offa’s Dyke runs along the ridge of the Black Mountains between the two valleys we traveled today. Another near miss!
Arthur’s Stone (Herefordshire)
We made a quick stop to check out another Arthur’s Stone, this one in Herefordshire.
See 1996-2 for more pictures and stories: click here.