We spent the last 3 days in Wales, following the coast road to Holyhead where we will catch the ferry to Ireland. Wales is beautiful. Along the south coast it is wild and rugged, similar to Cornwall in England, but further up it softens, with rolling hills dotted with sheep. Lots of baby lambs around at the moment too. We’ve had some great weather, cool, but sunny days and mostly dry. The people here are very friendly and the one’s we’ve spoken to have been really bubbly. The welsh accent is lovely. We stopped to have lunch in Caernarvon where there is a great castle. It was almost like being in a foreign country as nearly everyone there was speaking Welsh rather than English. Interesting to listen to, even if you can’t understand a word.
From Swansea we kept to the coast road heading north and we drove through some beautiful countryside. South Wales is similar to Cornwall – wild and rugged coastline but as we drove further north and the road went more inland the scenery became softer, with rolling hills and nice little towns. We went to see St Davids – the smallest city in Great Britain, with St David’s Cathedral and the Bishops Palace. The cathedral is still a working church and the Bishops Palace is in the process of being restored. There is also a museum cataloguing the history of St David himself (the patron saint of Wales). A lovely little city.
Later in the day we saw signs to an iron age fort and decided to go have a look. This is a re-enactment of an iron age village made up of roundhouses with thatched roofs. The roundhouses of this village are actually recreated on the foundations excavated during an archeological dig. There was a guided tour conducted by an archeology student and she did a great job explaining what the excavations had revealed about how the inhabitants lived at that time. Very interesting.
That night we stayed at a guest house in Aberystwyth, a nice little seaside village (Welsh names are very hard to pronounce!)
Found a nice pub to have a couple of ales in! (Surprised??)
Kept heading north the following morning with a stop at Caernarvon to have a look at the castle – you can hardly miss it – it dominates the town’s harbour. This castle was built by Henry II and was deliberately imposing to remind the Welsh of his power and authority. There are lots of shops and narrow winding streets inside the castle walls and it’s a lovely place to wander around for a few hours.
We had planned on staying the night in Holyhead (where you catch the ferry to Ireland) but we got there earlier than expected and since there was a ferry leaving in the next couple of hours we decided we may as well take that one and stay in Ireland the night.