More than a wet weekend in Wales
⬅ previous ⬆intro next ➡Day 9 ~ May 23 ~ Hedd Wen, visiting Pwllheli and Tremadog
As I said in the intro, we've been watching a TV series about a couple restoring an old chapel not far from here, in Pwllheli, where they have a parkrun nearby. It's Saturday today: no prizes for guessing what that means.
Yeah, you knew that was coming; you knew that I was not offering prizes because somebody would have taken about 0.00001 of a second to claim said prize.
Hold on though: this is different!
Now an 18kg wash is definitely not the norm, but 8kg is just a large domestic machine – ours will do that, for example.
When I was a kid, we didn't have a washing machine – perfectly normal for British families in the 1960s – so what my mother didn't wash by hand, we'd take to the laundromat.
[When I say ‘we’, I mean my mother and I; fathers tended not to do that sort of thing in those days and my father was certainly not one to buck the trend. In retrospect, I wonder if I'd had a sister of similar age to me, would she have been the one to learn all the domestic virtues instead? Cooking, washing, going to the shops and stuff seemed natural just because I was the eldest and therefore the one who could first take on those tasks. Then again, my mother wasn't exactly set in the domestic mould, often beginning some project that might arguably have required skills she didn't have with, “Well if that idiot can do it, I certainly can!”]
The laundromat, though, was always full of women doing their washing [and perhaps wondering why their own young lads weren't helping], while this seems a lot more “I'm here!!!! Don't you want me?!”.
It will remain a mystery.
Enough of childhood memories, back to parkrun. It's down this sandy path and then it will be along a sandy beach. Ah, not PB territory then.
“Austere beauty” is the phrase we're looking for, I think.
The description from the parkrun course page is extremely bland: “The course is entirely run on the beach over soft sand for the first section and then compact sand up to the turnaround point.”
Doesn't look like I'm going to be in a photo-finish.
Another one done, I'm still standing and clearly still happy to be with Amanda even though she makes me do this kind of thing!
The RNLI lifeboat station is just a short walk along the beach.
And on the marina side, they are having some sort of regatta. To be precise, it's the first day of the Rooster RS Feva UK National Championships 2026. The sailing bits aren't actually happening yet, so for now it seems people are just milling around and getting ready.
Parkrun attendance was well over double their typical number (147 as against 65) and we suspect this event is a large part of the reason.
The town itself is a short walk away, so we don't think it's worth driving, and it turns out to be a wise decision: the traffic is pretty horrendous.
No, I don't know what this mural signifies. It's right in the centre of town, but it can't have been there more than a year or two because Google Street View's most recent picture is dated August 2024 and there is neither elephant nor castle to be seen. There is, however, a graphic that looks like an illustration of funds raised for some worthy cause, and a little research discovers this:
the National Eisteddfod of Llŷn and Eifionydd.
But I'm still none the wiser about today.
And here is our motivation for today's outing, Capel Salem. It looks like a lot more work is still to be done, far more than we had expected from how it's looked on the TV programme.
It's on a steep street, so from the side a little further up, it doesn't look quite such a monster. There are some lights on so presumably somebody's home even though there are no obvious signs of any building activity happening.
We've seen several of these signs since arriving in Wales, but can't immediately think of any time we've seen them anywhere else, although even close to home, we have plenty of roads in the Surrey Hills that might benefit from them.
From a distance, we saw something that looked like some kind of castle, and close up it is indeed most weird and wonderful. The sign is for Beresford Adams, a local estate agent, with the word “gwerthwyd”, Welsh for “sold”, at the bottom. But in Google Street View's August 2024 picture, a similar sign (though in a different place), has “ar werth” – “for sale”. Clearly it wasn't snapped up the moment it came on the market.
Beresford Adam's listing tells us more: it's called Picton Castle and dates back to approximately 1810.
It's labelled as “Sold STC” – Subject to Contract – which means not really actually sold yet, at £310,000, pretty jaw-dropping for those of us accustomed to London and Home Counties prices.
So that's our morning in Pwllheli. On the way back, we'll stop at Tremadog (near Porthmadog) to walk in the Coed Tremadog nature reserve.
Here we are in Tremadog, and what, you might ask yourself, is a “Cambrian Pill Depôt”? I certainly would.
Google's “AI Overview” says that, “It was primarily built to manufacture and distribute “Pills of the Three Virtues” (Pelenau y Tair Rhinwedd), a widely popular patent medicine of the era”, but it doesn't give a source and I can't immediately find one. In fact, I think this is a classic AI hallucination: it was not built at that date, nor for that original purpose.
By contrast, Cadw have listed it Grade II, and their report page says, “In 1839 it became the Cambrian Pill Depot, a dispensary established by Robert Isaac Jones (1815-1905), which sold ‘Tremadoc Pills’, claimed to cure numerous ailments.”
More information (despite slightly clunky prose) can be found at the history page for the Tremadog Memorial Institute as the building is now known.
It's too small to call it a “town”, really, but it's far too grand to be a mere village. That's because its creator, William Maddocks, had planned it to be much more important than it turned out to be (see the Cadw page linked above and Tremadog at Wikipedia). We are planning to climb to the top of the hills behind.
We start on an easy trail, and it's not long before we are high enough to look out over Porthmadog and the estuary. We can't quite see the train station from here, although the Cob is visible if you know what to look for, and zooming in on the original, you can spot the Premier Inn at the end of it.
Well it started as an easy trail, but it's getting a bit less easy.
Definitely on a real path, though.
Ooh, it's a slow worm, we think, not a snake.
Go to climb rather than walk now.
It's worth it! Look at that view!
Hmm... There are other things to see from here too. You wonder how the estate agent would describe this: “Ample opportunity to put your own stamp on the property”, perhaps.
Returning, we think we are on the path, but eventually have to conclude we're not really any more. We have to hack our way through the jungle a bit but never actually get lost.
This stream crossing is strictly unofficial, but we've found Amanda a stick to help and she's fine. Shortly after this, we find the path again and head back down.
When we get near to where we started, there's another trail leading up that looks interesting, as it's almost a flight of stairs.
In the end, it takes us to a gate in a wall, through which there's just a very boggy patch that we decide not to tackle.
They don't want you going off-piste here!
It's steep enough that they give you a string to hang on to at this point.
Right, we've had an excellent couple of hours, back to town now.
We thought we'd parked the car by a church, but it's only when we look closer we find that it's now the office of Ffestiniog Travel, a sister company to the railway, that specialises in railway-related tours around the world.
Church and chapel recycling does seem to be a Welsh thing.
And a little further along the road is Capel Peniel, described on a signboard outside as “Wales’ most striking Chapel”. The Greek temple design is believed to be based on St Paul's, Covent Garden (which is not St Paul's Cathedral!).
It was a Methodist chapel originally, but closed in 2010 with falling attendance and rising costs and fell into disrepair. It was transferred to “Addoldai Cymru” – the Welsh Religious Buildings Trust – and restored in the 2020s. It's now Grade I listed and visits are apparently possible by appointment, but it's not generally open. Learn more here.
Enough ecclesiastical stuff, back to base.
The exotic chickens invade!
And I am taking a picture with my trusty feline assistant. I'll be honest, I've completely forgotten why both of us were climbing on the table.
We will drink a farewell toast to Hedd Wen in Welsh pink fizz.
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