More than a wet weekend in Wales
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 6 ~ May 20 ~ Treehouse to Hedd Wen (not really near anywhere!) via Caernarfon
Farewell, tree house, you've been lovely!
After carrying our bags down to where we left the trolley at the bottom of the hill, it's a fairly flat meadow to cross and then a last little climb back up to the car. A bit steep but nothing remotely like the treehouse hill itself.
For the next four nights we'll be staying on another farm, although this time in a very modern bungalow!
It's quite near Caernarfon, which is why our plan this morning is to check out the castle.
“Caernarfon”? I'm sure it was spelt with a ‘v’, not an ‘f’ in my youth.
Ah, Wikipedia says, “Carnarvon and Caernarvon are forms of the name Caernarfon which are no longer used for the town in north Wales, but remain in use in other contexts. The first two forms are in English orthography and the third is the Welsh spelling, adopted in English since the 1970s.”
So the Investiture of Charles, Prince of Wales (or King Charles III as younger readers may know him) in 1969 did indeed take place at Caernarvon, not Caernarfon, Castle.
But I digress. We're off to the place, not entirely sure whether our tickets will be valid, but we'll find out.
And here we are. Not actually entering the city via a mediaeval gate, we've parked in the castle car park and are taking a walk around town.
Into the castle!
Ok, a bit of artistic licence... The public entrance isn't through here, nor some grand historical gateway either, so we'll just pretend a bit.
Oh yeah, at the real entrance, we told them we'd got some sort of cock-up on the day for our tickets and they didn't bat an eyelid.
This is how the castle as a whole looks from one of the towers.
Every care! Not just casual “don't fall off the battlements” care...
From the height, we can look down on the town hall.
And zoom in on the curious figurehead: Justice is blind, but wears a Madonna-like Jean-Paul Gaultier bra?
A bit more light-hearted design. It's fairly obviously not original mediaeval workmanship, but exactly the sort of joke they went in for in those days.
Also within the castle is the Royal Welch Fusiliers Museum, but they have big signs up saying “no photos”. Ok, fair enough, I'm not sure why, but I'm not going to cause trouble [yeah, yeah, on this occasion, ok?!]. You can find their website here to learn more.
It's art. Let me explain...
Or at least, let the artist explain.
There are several other works, but we are kind of “well, yes, ok” about them. Deep and meaningful is one thing, but we like shiny. Remember, we are not just casually shallow people, we are extremely seriously shallow people.
So we're done. If you want to revisit Charles’ Investiture in 1969, checkout British Movietone News at YouTube.
After visiting the castle, we take a little walk and have crossed to the other side of the estuary. Now we look back across the water at the castle, and you can see how complete it is externally, even if the interiors are mostly now pretty rough.
In the other direction, what is this? Google Map suggests it's a place called Castell Bach, but then has nothing further to say of any use. To my surprise, OpenStreetMap has even less to say about this location.
Oh well, maybe it's a holiday home, maybe it's a white slavery mastermind's lair; who knows?! We're not going to learn anything in the two minutes before we move on.
Back around town, then...
Spelling is clearly one of the Dark Arts around here.
I'm not going to lie, I'm not sure this is true... Our cats have never shown the slighest tendency to consider murder as even mildly distasteful, and I would not like to speculate on the results of any sewing they might attempt.
It's not the prettiest of places, though, and again seems a bit run-down.
On our way out of Caernarfon, we stop at a Tesco for some provisions, and decide to take a further stroll in what looks like a nearby park.
The park itself seems a little tired and run-down, but then we find a path that leads underneath stone bridges carrying roads across the river. The Seiont – Caernarfon's river – is not that wide here, it's only really at the estuary itself that it becomes more than a modest size.
Definitely reminds us more of the Mole than the Thames!
We follow “Seiont Mill Road” which runs alongside the river here. Any mill there might have been appears long gone.
Hmm... A sluice gate that is obviously still in use, but I wonder if it might be historically related to the mill?
Well here's something I've just learned from Wikpedia:
The term “sluice” originates from the Middle English word scluse, which derived from the Old French escluse (modern French: écluse). This, in turn, came from the Late Latin exclusa, a shortening of aqua exclusa, meaning “excluded water” or “a shut-off water channel”. The Latin exclusa is the feminine past participle of excludere (“to shut out, exclude”), from ex- (“out”) and claudere (“to close”).Every day is a school day!
Leaving the river, we pass a modern estate and a graveyard on our way back to Tesco. Exotic travels or what?!
Right, back in the car and on to our next accommodation.
“Hedd Wen”, a purpose-built cottage on a farm in pretty much the middle of nowhere.
Inside there's plenty of space and it's very clean and comfortable.
And a better-equipped kitchen than many.
In the garden, some rather exotic chickens, more pets than farm animals I think.
These eggs did not come from those chickens, though: we bought them at the treehouse shop on our way out this morning. I'm going to make quiche for dinner.
A quick quiz.
Q: what do you do when you want to blind-bake a quiche base but don't have any baking beans?
A: grab a handful of Welsh slate from the garden!
While dinner is cooking, I make friends with another local.
You may deduce from my fleece that although the sun is shining, it's not all that warm.
Dinner is served, prawn and asparagus quiche.
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