The Top Floor Flat

Alright. Picking up where I left off with day two of my trip in Wales (that’s Sunday the 24^th of August for anyone playing along at home). In the morning after our night in the hostel in Caernarfon I got up a bit early to take some pictures of the castle before we headed out for the day.

Unfortunately, it seemed that everyone in the British Isles (and most of mainland Europe) had decided Wales was the place to be for the holiday weekend and so the traffic was horrendous. This was made even worse by the fact that the main road through Northern and into Mid-Wales is a fairly narrow two lane road and we were a very big bus. There were some close calls (for the other drivers at least) but we somehow managed to make our way onward.

Our morning drive was through Snowdonia National Park which is home to Mount Snowdon, the second tallest mountain in the UK. It was absolutely gorgeous and had many high, rocky peaks that looked wonderful for climbing. We didn’t do much climbing as we were in a bus but we did stop to try to get a glimpse of Mount Snowdon, although it was being shy and hiding behind a lot of clouds. I definitely plan on going back to do some camping there, it looks exactly like you’d imagine a place called Snowdonia to look except there wasn’t any snow. It should have been called Cloudonia. That’s what it looked like. Cloudonia.

As we headed south, we passed through a town called Beddgelert (pronounced Beth-gelert and it means The Grave of Gelert) and although we didn’t stop, the name goes along with such a great legend I’ll give a quick recap:

The last Welsh Prince of Wales, before it was taken over by the English, was a man called Llywelyn (sounds a bit like chwell-en with a soft ch like in challah) the Last who was Prince until killed by Edward I in 1282. Before he was killed, he did quite a bit of fighting with Edward and his English armies and so was out of his home a lot. His wife had died and the one creature he trusted the most in overseeing the care of his infant son was his dog, Gelert. One day, he was away and Gelert was keeping watch in the nursery when a wolf entered the castle. Gelert, the dog, instinctively pulled the baby out of the crib and put him underneath, then covered him with a blanket and went off to find the wolf before it could enter the room. They met in the next room and a huge fight ensued. Gelert finally killed the wolf but was quite injured so limped back to the baby’s room where he collapsed. Llywelyn returned that evening and found Gelert, covered in blood, in a seemingly empty nursery and in rage and panic pulled out his sword and cut of Gelert’s head believing that Gelert had killed the baby. At the noise, the baby, still hidden, started crying and Llwelyn realized what he had done. Horrified and ashamed that he had killed Gelert, he picked up the body of the dog and carried it in his arms until he couldn’t go any further, and there stopped and buried the body. Around that grave eventually grew the town of Beddgelert, the Grave of Gelert. Although we didn’t stop, there is in fact a place where Gelert is supposed to be buried.

I really loved getting the Welsh stories from our guide and we heard so many. But even stories weren’t helping us from getting antsy as we had spent the whole morning on the bus so we were more than ready when we got to Harlech Castle for a walk about. Like the castle in Llangollen the day before, it was also on a peak, although not nearly as high as the castle Dainas Bran so the walk up was much more manageable for the group. Also, it overlooked the ocean which was pretty fantastic. Both Harlech and the castle in Caernarfon where we stayed the night before were Edwardian castles, built basically to intimidate the Welsh people that he had overtaken. They were meant to be impressive and complex enough to be defended by only a few men so it was quite a site up on top of the hill. I spent the full hour wandering around the castle, which dated from the 1300s and probably took way too many pictures but enjoyed it immensely.

In some of the innermost castle areas, they had set up some display boards with information about the castle and its history. Everything was written in both English and Welsh. Aside from being a wonderfully lyrical language, it’s beautiful to look at too – although it’s not really phonetic so it’s hard to guess at the pronunciation from the written words.

All too soon it was time to leave the castle. We stopped again briefly in a town called Dolgellau to grab some lunch but it was another long bus stretch as we made our way to the town of Hay-on-Wye, better known as the town of books. Hay-on-Wye has a local castle as well but the castle was purchased by a nobleman who was, shall we say, completely bonkers. He turned the castle into an antiques and second hand bookshop but upon realising that the antiques weren’t moving and the books were selling like hotcakes, he ditched the antiques and bought more books. And more books. And more books. Then another shop in the town to sell the books. And another. And some more books. Suddenly, someone realised that he was completely bankrupt and he lost everything because he had been buying the books for more than he was selling them.

Fortunately, his legacy lives on and Hay-on-Wye, with a population of about 1800 (that’s smaller than Colby!) has over 30 secondhand bookshops of varying specialties. There were secondhand gardening bookshops, secondhand cookbooks shops, bookshops where nothing was over a pound. The original castle, with its random assortment of books for sale, was still there with a garden full of books for 50p. We had gotten there rather late and a number of the shops were closing for the night so we only had about half an hour to look around. I got irrationally (well, I thought it was rational) angry with the whole town when I found a rare and first editions bookseller trying to sell a “full set” of Bronte novels for £250 but the set didn’t include one of Anne Bronte’s novels so was one short. I might have to go back and give Hay-on-Wye a second chance, though. It is after all the town of books and I really think that sounds like my sort of place.

It was quite late, then, when we got to Abergavenny, our home for the second night. We were staying in a hostel called The Black Sheep which was situated above a pub and after a quick walk through the town (which wasn’t just empty… it was absolutely barren. It was like a ghost town. Although it did look as though it would be very cute during the day) to grab some dinner, we all headed back to our own pub where the bartender, who also owned and lived in the pub and hostel, put on a quiz for us with free drinks as prizes. Our team tied for first place and I won another drink for being the first to know that “woman Hitler” is an anagram of “Mother in Law” so by the time the quiz finished I was relaxed enough to enjoy and even take part in the post-quiz karaoke (although I think the rest of the group wished they had had a bit more to drink!). We annoyed the neighbours until past 11pm when we all traipsed off to bed at the end of our second day in Wales.

Just one more installment of the Welsh Saga tomorrow! Hope you’re enjoying the story so far…