Anglesey and Snowdonia

Yes, those are real place names. The planning in Bangor resulted in the following-Later that same day I visited a castle not 20 minutes from where I was sitting. Odd thing about that particular castle (Penrhyn Castle) is that it is totally intact and not a crumble ruin like so many of them are but that's because that particular castle is only 150 years old. It was built by the guy who owned the slate mine located not too far way. I have a few exterior shots but no interior photos were allowed. Too bad. It was very nice.

The next day was a bus ride across the bridge to the island of Anglesey and along the inlet Manai to Beau Maris, the last and not completed castle built by King Edward. I liked it because there was hardly anything kitchy about it. You had to go through a little tine gift shop to get to the castle but otherwise no other commerce was there. There were no mock up of rooms or anything and only a few informational signs at discrete locations. A way more real life medieval feel here than I'm guess I would have encountered had I made it to Warwick.

After my tour of Beau Maris, I took the bus to Llanberis. I had really good bus connections so I was there earlier than I expected so I took in a few of the sites including the slate museum near the bottom of the very same slate mines that the Penrhyn's owned. I also visited another castle-Dolbabarn. The reason why this is called a castle escapes because it looked more like a stone silo although there was evidence of some other stone walls for rooms or buildings but there wasn't even a visitor center/gift shop with this castle and to get there I took a sort of goat path up behind the garage of one of the hotels!

Earlier in the day I had found a place to store my pack while I did the tourist stuff. I decided to do dinner there before I headed up the hill to the hostel. It's a great little place call Pete's Eats and it mostly serves the serious outdoors folk-mountian bikers, rock climbers and backpackers. Very inexpensive and massive portions. Really good for those doing the carbo loads, too!

The next day, I took the late morning train to the almost top (the tippy-top is closed for train travel while they build the new visitor center) of Mt. Snowdon, the highest peak in Wales (and England). I chose the later train because the forecast had suggested the weather might be better then than the early morning. The forecast was wrong. I never did see the top of Snowdon. The train ride itself was sort of fun. It was a rack and pinion, whatever that means but it impress several of the guys. It's one train car with about 25 people and it is pushed up the mountain but a steam engine. There is a guy that sits in the front of the passenger car in a separate little compartment and every once in a while here would lean out and bang on the side of the train. He was chasing sheep off the track! Visibility was fair to poor so the narration about the things to see on the 'valley floor' or 'across the way' had to be imagined on the way up and remembered on the way down when we could see but the narration wasn't repeated. Visibility on top was about 20 feet but a few folks got out and we wandered around taking foggy pictures and bumping into one another. Except for seeing a bit better, the backward ride down was uneventful. I meandered the town a bit more then hopped a bus to my next hostel Capel Curig. This stop was meant to only be a sleepover and considering the two only had about three buildings it worked out well.

That brings us to today, I think. I'm in Betws y Coed and that is pronouned Bettis er koyd. I kid you not. It's a Welsh thing. Actually, it's almost unusual considering the number of vowels. Do you remember way back in grammar school when you learned AEIOU and sometimes W and Y were the vowels. In Wales, they are always vowels. Y Wyddfa is the name of a mountian and 'no', I don't know how to pronounce it. Anyway, the town was only going to be another sleepover because I couldn't get a hostel room in the next town I plan to visit but in order to make it worth while, I made this a hiking day. I hiked from Capel Curig to here. It was not a long hike and gloriously mostly downhill except for the quarter mile straight up at the beginning to get up off the highway where the hostel was located. I only got lost once but getting lost here means I went through the wrong sheep meadow and came out on the highway sooner than I should have. I think I missed the prettiest forested part of the hike but I eventually got back into the woods to finish the hike to here. And even taking the detour like that, I arrived a bit earlier than expected again so I'm taking a breather now and will maybe go into town for dinner a bit later.

Hasta la bye-bye from Wales.