From Scotland to Wales

                                                                      Chester, Cheshire

We left Ft. Williams in the highlands and took the train to Chester.  Train travel is relaxed and easy and we had upgraded to first class so we had even more attention and way too many cups of tea and snacks,  and lunch.  Sometimes I felt our trip was eating with some intervals.

We stayed at Sycamore House a delightful B&B which was an easy walk to the pedestrian bridge taking us to the old walled part of the city.  

       

This one and next are views from the bridge

Pleasant pedestrian walkway right along the river, separated from the narrow road.
This is the River Dees.  Pathways along rivers in the UK are often the old tow paths. As an RVer I was intrigued by the
house boats we saw tied up in many places.

   The Romans began fortifying the city almost 2000 years ago.   Damage and rebuilding were common, but after the  English Civil War (1642-1651)  which badly damaged the walls, the rebuilding was for the purpose of recreation.  Today locals and tourists alike enjoy the walls and the old city within them which includes the Rows, a shopping district with covered arcades on two levels and Tudor-style buildings   

The wall

Loved the old stone streets

During excavations for a project an old Roman arena was discovered.  Chester dates back to  the first century A.D.

Inside the Chester Cathedral

                                                                       

                                                                              Wales

Although we had the "homey" feel many other places, staying in B&Bs, Wales was distinct.  Friends, Bret and Jane, have a house in Northern Wales.  They have only recently purchased it and Jane was to be there when we were, overseeing some modifications to the interior.  So, we stayed in a private home and had a day together to explore some of the Welsh coastline, a slate museum, and a castle.  In a pattern I was to learn is common, the house is joined to another.   One might think of it as a duplex, but each is separately owned and maintained.  And while this was two, often there are three or more houses in a row.   Theirs is on a narrow street in Llanfairfechan.  On a hill, it has three levels but you enter at the mid level which is the living room area.  Upstairs are two bedrooms and bath, downstairs, leading out to a back patio and a creek, is the kitchen and eating room.  Previous owners added a half-bath on the lower level.  Stairs are narrow and steep, which is the norm.  It was charming and so were the helpful neighbors.  Chris helped with a final project but the neighbor supplied the tools.

The three of us headed out early to see the coast.  Here Jane and Chris stand in silhouette

Next stop was  the  neolithic burial site.  We drove a narrow country road, and the GPS landed us in the middle of a farm.  The woman who found us turning around in her driveway directed us to the access.  We parked and walked along the path.  You can see Jane in the archway of greenery that surrounded us.  

This particular site is unique in the sites excavated in the UK  is that it is aligned so that a shaft of light, on the summer solstice, runs down the narrow stone passage to light up the burial chamber.  

We were not there on the solstice, but you are allowed to walk through the stone opening.  It was a peaceful site, bordered by a couple of hiking trails and farms.  

Signs in Wales are in both Welsh and English.  Jane told us, and we read it as well, that Welsh is still commonly spoken in northern Wales.   

Caernarfon is a medieval fortress which, although no longer habitable, still is used for ceremonial purposes such as the investiture of the Prince of Wales.   It is a World Heritage Site and was definitely a spot we wanted to explore.  Here are a few photos inside the castle and also looking out onto the town which is inside the old fortress walls. 

The staris are steep and narrow.  I would not think of traversing them without holding on to the rope
guide you can see, particularly if you enlarge the photo, hanging to the left of center in the photo.

You can see more modern parts of town with the old walls.  When I say more modern, that is a relative term.  For Americans it may seem very old.  For a Welsh town, what's a few hundred years ago in the scheme of things.

Our final stop of the day, having visited and eaten along the way between stops, was the National Slate Museum.  In my experiences working in mining camps and visiting them throughout the west, I frequently find the mines, not in the placer mines so much, but in the hardrock areas, had huge contingents of Welsh and Cornish miners.  These men were sought by the mines because of their experience in mining.  Southern Wales was noted for coal, northern wales for slate, and Cornwall for tin.

Not far from the castle we visited this town with its old quarries, machinery, railway, and examples of housing.  I am always interested most in the human side of these locations and listened to tapes and read accounts of people who had worked there and of family members telling the stories of growing up in the town.

On our way from Chester to Llanfairfechan we stopped at Conwy Castle. Our previous castles, in Edinburgh, were observed from the exterior.  In Wales we went inside, climbed the steep turrets, on circular stairways, walked along the parapets, looked up at walls that once were divided with floors between the levels. Conwy was built by Edward I who conquered Wales and built a number of fortresses. Construction began in 1283, a year that seems impossibly old by American building standards.

Note the old wall still surrounding the town.