Wales Day 2, Part II - Conwy

My dad and I left Caernarfon by public bus to Conwy at about 1:15. We had purchased day tickets in Llandudno costing £6.50 for unlimited travel on the public buses operated by Arriva in northern Wales. For three hours of total bus riding in the course of the day I'd say not bad! Bus service is frequent and efficient, but I have to give Arriva poor marks for its website - you can't make heads or tails of the fee structure and the travel zones, so we were at the mercy of the driver to charge us the correct price.

OK, back to castle talk! Conwy castle was built during the reign of Edward I, just like Caernarfon, toward the end of the 13th century. It, too, is built near to the sea and inside the town - both Caernarfon and Conwy are walled towns, and large portions of the medieval town walls still exist. The next two pictures are actually of portions of the town wall in Caernarfon. The third wall picture is from Conwy.
 

Conwy Castle is nearer to square than Caernarfon - or any other castle we've seen on this trip. You could also walk almost the entire way around on the battlements. 

Because I know you like it, here's a really brief video clip from atop the battlements. Reminder, surf to www.vacaken.com to access the clip if you can't access it from the email summary!


Cool, huh? We climbed in and out of little rooms and passageways within the castle walls and towers. The circular staircases were steep and a bit dizzying, but at least the stair treads in Conwy had been widened a bit - the treads in Caernarfon were likely the originals and were probably less than 9" wide at the widest part!  You can see why the caretakers of the castles posted nicely-worded "pass at your own risk" signs. 


 
 

We spent a couple hours or so enjoying the castle and the cute town of Conwy. We caught a bus back to the old-folks town at about 4:45, and we arrived back at the hotel by 5:30. We made dinner reservations at an Italian place, Mama Rosa's, that was highly recommended by the staff at our B&B and by the community on TripAdvisor. The food and service were awesome, and the recommendations were well-deserved. 
Tomorrow we take our last train of our journey, back to England and the northern industrial town of Manchester! Check back later for more!!

Wales Day 2, Part I - Caernarfon

We got up reasonably early today, 16th August, for our breakfast at the B&B and to catch a bus for Caernarfon, Wales - a ride of a hair more than 90 minutes. Our plan was to combine our castles quest with stops on the Remembrance Tour - my Mom and Dad had visited the castles at Caernarfon and Conwy on their honeymoon. Plus, by leaving Llundudno for the day we could avoid the omnipresent old-people smell for a while.
We arrived in Caernarfon by about 11 AM and we were greeted by more great weather, as you can see in the pictures.
Caernarfon Castle is in the middle of the old town, and it's also the seat of the Prince of Wales. HRH Charles, Prince of Wales was invested with the title in this castle by his mother way back - in fact, less than a year before my parents visited the castle in July, 1970. The ceremony to invest the heir with the title Prince of Wales in Wales itself was revived by the Queen. A special slate platform (now permanently installed in the center of the castle grounds) and slate thrones were commissioned for the event. The intent is that the investiture of a Prince of Wales should continue to take place here in the future. I'm not sure what happened previously - I must have missed that information panel in the exhibit.


Caernarfon Castle is not a near total ruin, like Helmsley and Rievaulx are. It's not in decent shape, either - its somewhere in between. Its walls and towers are more or less intact and you can climb most of the towers and walk through passages within the walls. Not much in the way of interior buildings remain. Caernarfon is a smallish castle, and evokes the idealized mental image of what a castle should look like.
   


A good hour-plus of touring Caernarfon left us satisfied and content. And hungry. We decided to find a pub in Caernarfon for lunch before hopping a bus to Conwy (which is on the way back to Llandudno from Caernarfon, and about an hour away.)
We settled on the Four Alls pub, a free house a couple of blocks from the castle and the surrounding tourist area. A free house means that the pub is neither owned by nor exclusively licensed to a particular brewery. If a pub is owned or licensed by a brewery, its sign/exterior will be clearly marked with the name of the brewery (my great granfather's pub, the Pineapple, was a Robinsons house.)
The pub's sign defines what the 4 "Alls" are: the monarch rules for all, the soldier fights for all, the minister prays for all and the merchant pays for all. There is also a fifth All on the sign, if you look closely to the right of the merchant in the lower right quadrant - a devil-like character proclaims that it takes from all. 

Next stop - and post - Conwy!!

Interesting VacaKen Sidebar, Entry Six:

I’ve been studying up on digital photography to better use my Canon EOS Rebel T3i DSLR camera.  It has several pre-set “point-and-shoot” modes, and those are the settings I’ve primarily used on my previous trips.  I bought the “For Dummies” book for the camera, and a good friend of mine who owns a camera shop sat down with me and my Dad to go over the manual settings available (thanks, Brian!).  I’ve been playing around with shutter speed, f-stops/aperture and ISO settings on this trip to try and improve the photos I take.  What do you think?

North Yorkshire - The Ruins at Helmsley and Rievaulx

Today, 14th August, we're castle hunting! We have been to a couple of castles so far - the still-in-use Windsor and Edinburgh castles. Today we're visiting the ruins of Helmsley Castle in Helmsley (I just like typing Helmsley -- reminds me for some reason of The Jeffersons). We will also explore what's left of Rievaulx Abbey. My parents visited both over 43 years ago.


Here's what's left of the remaining tower of Helmsley Castle. Helmsley (as I type it again, "Moving on up!" is playing on a loop in my head) began life in the 12th century. It was largely destroyed during a series of conflicts between the royalists and the parliamentarians during the English civil war.
As you can see the weather remains great - partly cloudy and upper 60s.


 
 
It took about 40 minutes to drive from Thirsk to Helmsley. The road conditions varied from normal city street and normal-width country road to 25% inclines on curvy roads barely a car width - meant as two-way streets - and the sides of the road were either tall walls and thickets or deep ditches.
My Dad and I brought a picnic with us, and we ate it while sitting on a bench in the market square of the Town of Helmsley. Had we known, we could have picnicked in the castle ruins itself - several families had been doing just that. 

Lunch sorted out, we drove about twenty minutes to Rievaulx Abbey. The Abbey is located pretty much in the middle of nowhere - not town-adjacent as Helmsley Castle had been. The road to get there were sporty....

Rievaulx Abbey, North Yorkshire, England - August, 2013

Rievaulx Abbey was the home to Cistercian monks up until shortly after Henry VIII decided that divorce was preferable to papal authority and created the Church of England. The abbot wasn't too keen on the new game in town and created enough of a ruckus that the Abbey was forfeit to the crown. During its operation, the Abbey tended and harvested wool from sheep and did farming - one disastrous year (some sort of sheep plague) put the abbey in hock. The abbey never fully recovered from that, making the crown's take-over that much easier. Henry VIII took over a lot of Church property in this way. 

Sanctuary of Rievaulx Abbey in North Yorkshire, England, August 2013

Still photos are pretty, but don't always convey the full scope and scale. To try my hand at being more of a conveyancer, here's a brief 2 minute video of the "inside" of the main sanctuary, pictured above. Friendly reminder - you may need to visit this page on www.vacaken.com to view the video. 


Rievaulx is pretty darned cool. 
 

A 25 minute car ride brought us back to Thirsk and the end of our last day in the Yorkshire Dales. Tomorrow we head back to the city of York, return the car, and head by train to the Riviera of northern Wales - Llandudno!