Minerva

The Baths

N took the children to Stonehenge, leaving Mom and I to wander Bath. Actually “wander” is not an accurate term as it connotes something leisurely. We had exactly six hours to see the city before being carted away to London.

This was my second visit to Bath. The first time I visited was with my awesome cousin H. I had just gotten out of graduate school after a grueling quarter of non-stop, up-all-night work. For the two miserable years I spent in graduate school, I kept “Pride and Prejudice” in the VHS player, watching it over and over like a balm to my ailing brain. When I hit England all I wanted to see was Jane Austen things. Jane Austen. Jane Austen. Jane Austen. However, H was working on her Masters in history, specializing in Medieval England. So I didn’t get to see much Jane Austen, but a whole hell of a lot of really, really old England. I nearly froze my butt off at Sarem (my butt was significantly smaller then.). Nonetheless, H kept me from totally embarrassing myself in historic places (she can name all the British monarchs…it’s pretty impressive, not like the Danes where you got a 50/50 chance that it’s Frederick or Christian) In Bath, H and I stayed in rooms that required money to keep the radiator running and a coin operated bathtub that we shared with all the other tenants. Also, I don’t really like meatballs. Yet the night H and I arrived in England, blurry–eyed and hazy from the jet lag, I ordered spaghetti with meatballs. The very next day the Mad Cow panic hit.

Ok, I’m totally digressing. But hey, it’s my blog. Like it or leave it.

Bath

Bath was a happening resort town during Georgian Era or the period when the Georges were on the throne of England. For those who remember dates, that’s 1714-1830. The architecture has remained surprisingly unaltered through time and is an excellent example of the period. I’m lousy with architectural history, but from what I understand Georgian design is obsessed with the clean lines and mathematical precision of classicism. The understated style is sandwiched between the more bombastic Baroque and Victorian.

Bath

Aqueas Sulis

There are two stories explaining the origins of Bath. In the first, King Bladud created the springs through divination. He went on to build feathered wings for himself, but sadly died flying into the Temple of Appollo in New Troy. Bummer. In the second story, Bladud became afflicted with leprosy and left the court to become a swineherder. He and his pigs, also stricken with leprosy, found the springs and were cured. Bladud returned to court, became king, and fathered King Lear. Regardless, there was an early Celtic shrine erected at the springs dedicated to the goddess Sulis. Later the Romans would appear on the scene and build “Aqueas Sulis” proper, though they identified Sulis as the goddess Minerva.

Ruins from the Roman Temple

After the Romans, things slide right into the dismal Middle Ages where everyone managed to forget that the earth was round and went around the sun, or how to make flush toilets, or build decent roads.

Nonetheless, rumor had it the springs had curative powers, and ailing people from all over England continued to come and swim or drink the waters. What you see today was built in the eighteenth century.

The museum takes you into the archeological diggings of the Roman Bath temple and chambers including the hot, cold, and warm baths. There a bunch of stone stuff to Minerva, but I’ve never “ohh-ed and ahh-ed” over Roman art. It’s the Roman drain still holding runoff from the springs that fascinates me or the stone piles that held up the floor to allow hot vapor to build up underneath. What happens when geeks travel…

Heated Roman Floor

Here is a virtual tour of the Baths

We actually began the day at the Jane Austen Museum where we listened to a great lecture on Jane’s family, which I can hardly remember as I write. That short term just can’t seem to make the haul to long term anymore. Must be mad cow kicking in.

Tea Service

Here is what I remember from the lecture:
Jane had a love, but mostly hate relationship with Bath. She was a nasty critic of its society. Her family removed to the resort city from the country. Unfortunately, the Austen family overextended themselves and had to give up their first finer home in Bath. Over time, they slipped slowly down through the cracks of society until the final blow of Mr. Austen’s death, leaving the females in the family in financial straits. Jane’s brothers came to their rescue and set up the women on a country home. Unlike the Brontes, the male Austens were generally decent people.

Though several of her novels were set in Bath, Jane did not write much while living in the town. The novels that we read today were either written or rewritten from earlier novels at Jane’s home in the country.

Here is a neat sign explaining how people lived in Jane’s time based on their income level.

From the Jane Austen center, we roamed to the Assembly rooms. As y’all know, I write stories in the Georgian era, so if this isn’t your thing, you might want to skip this section (or entire blog entry.).

The Assembly Rooms

The Assembly rooms were bombed in WWII. What you see today is a careful restoration. Up until the Prince Regent built the Royal Pavilion in Brighton in the early nineteenth Century, Bath was the most popular resort town in England. People came in from nearby Bristol, London, and the countryside to rent a house for the season. All levels of society mingled in Bath, thanks to big-man-about-town Richard Beau Nash. He laid down “rules” of behavior for Bath, which excluded all sorts of lovely pursuits such as dueling with swords, cock-fighting, or bull-baiting.

Nash’s rules are pretty humorous, so I will include them.

I. That a visit of ceremony at coming to Bath, and another at going away, is all that is expected or desired by ladies of quality and fashion – except impertinents.
II. That ladies coming to the ball appoint a time for their footmen’s coming to wait on them home, to prevent disturbances and inconveniences to themselves and others.
III. That gentlemen of fashion never appearing in a morning before the ladies in gowns and caps, shew breeding and respect.
IV. That no person take it ill that any one goes to another’s play or breakfast, and not to theirís – except captious by nature.
V. That no gentleman give his tickets for the balls to any but gentlewomen – N.B. Unless he has none of his acquaintance.
VI. That gentlemen crowding before ladies at the ball, shew ill-manners; and that none do so for the future- except such as respect nobody but themselves.
VII. That no gentlemen of lady take it ill that another dances before them – except such as have no pretence to dance at all.
VIII. That the elder ladies and children be contented with a second bench at the ball, as being past or not come to perfection.
IX. That the younger ladies take notice how many eyes observe them – N.B. This does not extend to the Have-at-Alls.
X. That all whispers of lies and scandal be taken for their authors.
XI. That all repeaters of such lies and scandal be shunned by all company – except such as have been guilty of the same crime.
N.B. Several men of no character, old women and young ones of questioned reputation, are great authors of lies in the place, being of the sect of Levellers.

In the winter months or “season,” people bought subscriptions to attend activities at the Assembly Rooms. On Monday’s there was a Dress Ball which cost a guinea for three tickets. It started at six o’clock. For the first two hours, stately minuets were danced, followed by some get-down country dances lasting until nine. Then everyone went to Tea Room for refreshments of sweet meats, jellies, wine, biscuits, cold ham, turkey, tea with arrack and lemon. Concerts were held on Wednesday. Musical guests included Joseph Haydn and Franz Liszt. Cotillion balls or country dances occurred on Thursdays. Cards could be played every day. Gambling was an addiction in that period and lots of pounds were laid down on Whist, a precursor to Bridge and Spades, and Vingt-et-Une (blackjack).

Sadly, in the early nineteenth century, society followed the Prince to Brighton and the Assembly Rooms fell into decline, becoming a cinema in the 1920s.

I couldn’t get good pictures of the room because there were portable chairs stacked about. So I would suggest the Assemble Room virtual tour.

Housed beside the Assemble Rooms, is the tres cool Bath Costume Museum. However, if you want to see some awesome costumes, you gotta go to the Victoria and Albert museum in London.

This dress is from approximately 1830 because of the slightly lowered waistline.

Victorian Dress

Victorian Dress

Victorian Dress

From the Assemble rooms, we hot-footed it over to No 1. Royal Crescent. Crescents are big thing in Georgian England. There is one across from Regent’s Park in London, as well.

Royal Crescent

No. 1 Royal Crescent is a museum of the typical Bath home in the Georgian era. Unfortunately, the museum wouldn’t indulge my photo obsession, which prompts me to mention my other fixation: guidebooks. I feel like a set designer when I visit these homes. What did it look like, what did it feel like, how would one move in the space? I get nothing from the sterile environment of museums where artifacts are kept under glass. I want contextualization, silence, and time. Once my mother let me in a house that was about to be given to the Georgia Historical Society. The place hadn’t been altered since the turn of the century. It was like a playground to me, wandering through the rooms, like the quiet human observing the ghosts.

The Bath homes were row houses that extended up five or more stories from basement. I found this fabulous, fabulous cross-section of a Georgian Bath home and have posted it here. Under the entrance walkway would be the coal vault, behind it an open area that led to the kitchen. On the iron fences above would be a rigged pulley or winch that allowed supplies to be lowered to the kitchens below. The basement level contained the kitchen rooms with a large fireplace and spit, servant’s table, and an additional vault for storing wine and beer. Some feet behind that vault wall was the cesspit that accepted the drainage from the outdoor privy running above it. Liquid matter in the cesspits was supposed to seep into the ground. Cesspits were emptied by the night soil men who came around early in the morning or by the poor servants who would have to haul the waste, bucket by bucket, through the house. They may have dumped the contents into the sewer opening in the front of the house which was technically illegal. These sewage passages were made of brick and did not have a constant flow of water to push the contents along.

The first floor (Americans add one floor) opened to a central hall flanked by parlors or a dining room. The dining room could be on first or second floor. In this house, the stairway zigzagged up the back wall of the house with another circular servant’s stairway on the side of the house. In other homes, the staircase emptied into the central hall, not a few feet from the front door.

Aside from the parlor downstairs, on the second floor there could be a withdrawing or drawing room, study, male or female parlor. Bedrooms made up the three floor and the children and servants stayed on the attic floor. Every room had a chimney and corresponding chimney pot belching coal smoke and soot into the sky.

Water as supplied to a lead cistern in the kitchen. It came to the house through narrow lead pipes which feed from larger pipes made of hollowed out elm trunks. Bath had a consistent supply of water because it tapped the natural springs in the area. Water companies were private. In London, where the water supply was not always constant, a house could have water supplied by multiple companies. Typically, water was serviced only to the ground floor. Inside the house, people could use a chamber pot or if they were lucky they had a water closet which was created either by a tank or pump forcing water up in a pipe leading from the cistern in the basement.

The entrance way would include a foot scrape, iron lamp bracket for holding the torches that the city required be burned at night during the winter months, a fire insurance plaque so the private firefighters knew to put out a fire at the home, and a snuffer for extinguishing torches.

Afterwards we strolled through the lovely parks and not so lovely parking lots until we reached the unassuming row house once belonging to famed astronomers, William Herschel and his sister Caroline Herschel. William Herschel is credited for using his telescopes to find Uranus, and the moons Titania and Oberon. Caroline is famous for finding several comets, a nebulae, and for putting up with her brother.

Replica of Herschel’s Seven Foot Newtonian ReflectingTelescope. He used the original to find Uranus in 1781.

Model of Herschel’s Forty Foot Telescope

William, born in Hannover, started his professional career as a composer. Unfortunately he wasn’t so well–received. In fact, he had to publish a public apology in Bristol newspaper concerning his horrific performance of “The Messiah.”

Poor pox scarred Caroline was left behind in Hannover to be a housekeeper to her family. She joined William when he came to Bath. He taught her English and gave her music lessons. Often she assumed the role of lead singer in his choral works. (Caroline probably had more promising in a musical career than her brother, but she declined the opportunities presented to her.) William considered astronomy a mere hobby. Unfortunately he couldn’t afford a nice, new shiny, telescope, so he decided to build one. And that’s when all hell broke loose. Building telescopes became his passion. Caroline writes, “It was my sorrow that I saw almost every room in the house turned into a workshop.” Keep in mind, William used horse poo-poo to make molds for his lens.

Herschel’s Kitchen.

Music Room.

Herschel’s Tiny Workroom at the very back of the house.

It was in this garden that in 1781, Hershel discovered Uranus.

William to his sister Caroline

It was getting close to time to meet N and the children. Mom and I swung into the Sally Lunn house, reputedly the oldest house in Bath, circa 1482. It’s a restaurant, but in the basement is a tiny museum to Sally Lunn’s kitchen. Sally Lunn was a French Hugueno who came to Bath in 1680. She became famous for her buns (Bread buns, that is. I don’t want ya’ll to get confused and think I meant a bun as in Bunny rabbit. For sailors in the early nineteenth century would touch a “bun” for luck before getting on a ship.)

Sally Lunn House

Sally Lunn Kitchen Museum

And then ten minutes in the Bath Abbey.

One minute at the chocolatier and onto London. Here is my husband driving through downtown London at night in the rain. (London drivers have nothing on Welsh drivers.)

So mom, the kids, and I were stuck in the tiny cottage, cut off from all civilization. Just us and the sheep. Lots and lots of sheep.  Mom and I would take turns venturing out on the long and treacherous walk to the local Tesco for groceries. By the time my husband returned from his business trip, we were almost crazed with cabin fever. According to my husband’s plan, we were to head straight to our elite and insanely fashionable Holiday Inn on the east side of the London. In my head, I saw myself desperately clutching my wild children’s hands while trying to navigate the crowded London streets. When they were younger, I had taken them about the city strapped in the McClaren stroller, the best stroller in the entire universe. It was a lightweight and could be folded down and strapped over your back. In Liege, we bought this thing that allowed G to stand on the back and be wheeled along.

In the absence of the best stroller in the entire universe, I asked N to take a small detour to calmer Bath for a day. I had had it up to my dazed eyes with British traffic and desired a nice walking city.

Our first stop on our way south into England was to the Valle Crucis Abbey. In the images I had seen of the old Abbey, it stood like a graceful, majestic ruin set against the wild mountainous scenery. Turner painted the Abbey in his sojourn to Wales. However, now the abbey is adjacent to a Caravan/RV park. First thing, I done gone and found one of my kin.

(For the record, I do not own a confederate flag. I consider it a historical relic and it should not be on the Georgia flag.)

The abbey was founded by the Cistercian Order in 1201. The “White Monks” sought remote locations where they prayed in solitude, while the poor lay brethren farmed the land for them. Henry VIII shut the abbey down — that Catholic problem and all.

Our wonderful Welsh landlords suggested touring Llangollen. It’s a lovely place with soaring mountains and a rocky, roaring river filled with kayakers.

The most famous place in the town is a unique cottage called Plas Newydd. In the late 1700s Miss Sarah Ponsonby and Lady Eleanor Butler  settle there and became known as the “Ladies of Llangollen.”  The two came from aristocratic Irish families and met at an Irish boarding school when Sarah was  Eleanor’s pupil.  Eleanor was 29, sixteen years older than Sarah.  Nonetheless, the two fell in love. Sarah’s family pressed upon her a rather offensive engagement to man who was waiting for his terminally ill wife to die. Meanwhile Eleanor’s brother schemed to put his sister in a nunnery. The two women tried to elope, dressed as men and armed with a pistol. They were stopped by their families and separated.  Yet, they refused to be kept apart, and Eleanor ran away to Sarah. With a maid’s help, Sarah hid Eleanor in her room.  Finally, their families relented and let them live together. The women came  to Llangollen. At that time, it was just a tiny village beside the River Dee. The ladies became quite controversial celebrities in their day, entertaining the Duke of Wellington and William Wordsworth.

Plas Newydd is filled with oaken carvings and stain glass collected by the ladies. Unfortunately, the house was closed when we visited.  Here are pictures of the grounds.

At the time the ladies lived at Plan Newydd, I don’t believe there was a front garden, nor was the house painted white and black. We can thank the wonderful Yorke family from Erddig for these enhancements.  As a boy, Simon Yorke III’s younger brother John had fallen from his pony near the ladies’ cottage, and Sarah and Eleanor had given him oranges.  Later, John would be severely wounded in the tragic charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War.  He bought the house in 1876.

I highly recommend stopping in Llangollen if you are touring Wales.  Queen Victoria chose to stay here rejecting an invitation from Erddig (The Yorkes never forgave her.) Here is a shot from the deck of the restaurant where we stopped for lunch. If you look high on the mountain, you will see the ruins of an old castle that was built upon an even older wooden hill fort.

Erddig

I figured my mother was sick of castles (a concept my husband doesn’t understand), so I suggested a nice estate tour. My first thought was the lovely Penrhyn Castle or the luscious Bodnant Botanical Garden, but of course, they,  like every sight we desired to tour in Britain,  were closed until April. So we settled on the Erddig because it was open.

Library

Erddig is located in Wrexham. It was built in the late 1600s. To be honest, I haven’t toured that many estates in England, but the ones I have seem quite stiff and/or reverent. They were either the sparely furnished home of some famous writer or artist at some vague point in their career or the bombastic creations of fabulously wealthy, famous British sun gods.  Erddig seems to have been passed down by generations of  “guys.”  There are lords and ladies dotted all over the National Trust landscape, but the numerous untitled Simon and Phillip Yorkes who cared for Erddig seem more like your lovable, yet dysfunctional cousins who couldn’t throw anything away (such as the extra bits of the two-hundred-year old rare, hand-painted,  and extremely delicate wallpaper. The restoration team found it in the attics.)

Drawing Room

My favorite part of the Erddig story begins with Philip Yorke II. According to the Erddig guidebook, the poor young man was pushed into marriage to an Annette Puleston in 1877. After their honeymoon, she left him without even a note saying good-bye and  hitched a ride on a milk truck. The strange circumstances of his separation shut Philip out of Welsh society.  Not heart-broken by either event, he plunged into helping the London poor, seeing to the welfare of the Erddig servants, touring Europe, taking up various artistic endeavors, and becoming a avid cyclist.  Annette died in 1899, and at age 50, Philip married a fellow cyclist, Louisa Scott, and begat two sons.

Chapel

During the World Wars, Errdig would severely deteriorate. The National Coal Board dug a shaft under the house which collapsed and caused the South Wing to sink.  Philip II’s firstborn son turned into a bitter recluse.  He chased off most of the remaining servants, set a dog on the postman, removed the telephone, and refused to have electricity installed, preferring to use the old pumps and steam engines. Upon his death, his brother Philip III inherited Erddig. He was 61 years old and unmarried.

State Bedroom

Philip III began his career studying to be a priest, but was a bit too liberal in his religious views for his teachers. Next he tried acting,  unfortunately he had little talent. So, he founded and managed  a traveling theater company. When that endeavor panned out, he roamed about Europe, spending a great deal of time in Spain. He financed these trips taking jobs as teacher, groundsman, and tour operator. Later, he bought a bus and began his own touring company, both driving and sleeping in his bus. It is  interesting to note that he was a vegetarian, but not the first in his family to take this stance. Philip I, born in 1743, was one as well.

Servant’s Bedroom

At Erddig, Philip III camped out in the freezing rooms using oil lamps and setting up homemade burglar alarms. According to the guidebook, he claimed his worldly needs were “about on the same level of those of an unemployed oyster.”  I wish I could find an online image of the house in 1970s to show you. The guidebook shows wallpaper peeling off the wall like sunburned skin, chamber pots collecting water dripping from the stained ceiling. A portrait is set on the floor. It looks like a movie set from Oliver Twist. Nonetheless, Philip invited the community to come to Erddig, where he served them  large vegetarian meals. It is through his efforts, National Trust (or “National Distrust” as Philip III called it) was able to restore Errdig. It has been voted Britain’s second finest stately home.

A few of the servant bells that run down the length of the servant’s passage

The owners of Errdig took special care of their servants and had each of their portraits painted and verses composed about them. There are more portraits of servants in Errdig than members of the Yorke family. Once their family carpenter Thomas Rogers was captured by a Naval press gang while working on an estate cottage. He managed to contact Simon Yorke III, who bought Rogers out of the Navy.

Servants Hall with portraits of servants

Dolwyddelan Castle

Llywelyn ap Gruffydd’s big, bad granddaddy Llywelyn Fawr (Llywelyn the Great) built the castle of Dolwyddelan. What you see above is  a restoration of the castle completed in the Victorian era. The original castle fell to Edward I a month after Lylwelyn ap Gruffydd was killed. The fall of Dolwyddelan allowed Edward’s forces to march through the Cowy Valley all the way to the sea.

Edward had a series of castles constructed along the shoreline, as well as rebuilt castles like Dolwyddelan. The castles built wholly by Edward I include Flint, Rhuddlan, Degannwy, Beaumaris, Conwy, Caernarfon, Harlech, Aberystwyth, and Builth.  In previous trips, I had visited Beaumaris and Caernarfon.  So this year we went to Harlech and Conwy

Harlech Castle

To me, what’s fascinating about Harlech castle is that the area is mentioned in a group of stories collectively known as the Mabinogion. This book came into being in mid-nineteenth century, when Lady Charlotte Guest translated two ancient Welsh texts known as the White Book of Rhydderch (Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch) and the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest). These medieval texts were written in 1300s, but the stories are much, much older.

Thus begins Branwen, The Daughter Of Llyr:

Bendigeid Vranthe son of Llyr, was the crowned king of this island, and he was exalted from the crown of London. And one afternoon he was at Harlech in Ardudwy, at his Court, and he sat upon the rock of Harlech, looking over the sea.

View from Harlech Castle Tower

The Welsh texts also contain the oldest written stories of King Arthur. Scholars don’t know if the stories were the basis of King Arthur legends, or if they were borrowed from elsewhere. Nonetheless, the existence of them in the Mabinogion, as well as other evidence suggests Arthur could have been Welsh or lived in Wales. Most experts (according to the BBC website) agree that King Arthur was a British/Roman general who fought the Saxons.  Interestingly, the early Welsh Princes traced their families back to the original Roman leaders.  Not far from Ruthin is a tiny monument called the Eliseg’s Pillar.  It pays homage to a King Eliseg and claims he was a direct descendant of Magnus Maximus.

Inside Harlech Castle Gate

To reach Herlach Castle, we rode and rode and rode on tiny winding single-lane roads (the British version of single lane roads, that is) through the mountains.  Mind you, I was car sick and sandwiched between two bored children in a backseat of the Ford station wagon. After an hour of this torture, we reach the stone walled village sloping down a hill. The Castle is situated on a stone jutting into the ocean. Standing on the castle walls you can see the shimmering line of the Irish Sea and the land  stretching up from the water  to form the mountains of Snowdonia.

View from Harlech Castle of Irish Sea meeting Snowdonia Mountain Range

During the War of the Roses, the Welsh held the castle for the Lancastrians despite almost seven years of being under siege by the King Edward IV’s forces. (What do English Edwards have against the Welsh?). Frustrated, the King sent 7000 – 10,000 men as reinforcements to converge on the Castle. Herlach managed to hold out for another month. It is the inspiration for the song Men of Herlach.

Men of Harlech, march to glory,
Victory is hov’ring o’er ye,
Bright-eyed freedom stands before ye,
Hear ye not her call?
At your sloth she seems to wonder;
Rend the sluggish bonds asunder,
Let the war-cry’s deaf’ning thunder
Every foe appall.
Echoes loudly waking,
Hill and valley shaking;
‘Till the sound spreads wide around,
The Saxon’s courage breaking;
Your foes on every side assailing,
Forward press with heart unfailing,
‘Till invaders learn with quailing,
Cambria ne’er can yield!

Thou, who noble Cambria wrongest,
Know that freedom’s cause is strongest,
Freedom’s courage lasts the longest,
Ending but with death!
Freedom countless hosts can scatter,
Freedom stoutest mail can shatter,
Freedom thickest walls can batter,
Fate is in her breath.
See, they now are flying!
Dead are heap’d with dying!
Over might hath triumph’d right,
Our land to foes denying;
Upon their soil we never sought them,
Love of conquest hither brought them,
But this lesson we have taught them,
“Cambria ne’er can yield!”

Mountains of Snowdonia

We took a different route home, driving high into the mountains until we could see the icy peak of Snowden, the highest peak in the Snowdonia mountain range.

The center peak is Snowden, the largest mountain in Wales

The day before, I had been “chatting” on facebook with my good friend A, who is quarter Welsh. She told me the sad story about Llywelyn the Great’s dog, Gelert. On the drive back to our cottage, I spotted the symbol for tiny monument for Gelert amid the squiggly lines on the Welsh road map. The remains of the dog were not but two miles from us in a village aptly named Beddgelert.

Beddgelert

The story of Gelert is beside his grave:

In the 13th century, Llywelyn, prince of North Wales, had a palace at Beddgelert. One day he went hunting without Gelert “the faithful hound” who was unaccountably absent. On Llywelyn’s return, the truant stained and smeared with blood, joyfully sprang to meet his master. The prince alarmed hastened to find his son, and saw the infant’s cot empty, the bedclothes and floor covered with blood. The frantic father plunged the sword into the hound’s side thinking it had killed his heir. The dog’s dying yell was answered by a child’s cry. Llywelyn searched and discovered his boy unharmed but near by lay the body of a mighty wolf which Gelert had slain, the prince filled with remorse is said never to have smiled again. He buried Gelert here. The spot is called Beddgelert

Gelert’s Grave

The next day, N and the children and I hiked to the top of mountain to see the remains of a monument to George III. As you may know, George III went insane and the monument followed the same such fate. A strong gale blew off the top, leaving only the crumbling base. There are few trees left in Wales, though my husband thinks at one time it must have been a dense forest. Now, the land is lush green grass divided in hedge lined rectangles and squares. The wind is powerful on the top of the mountain, nonetheless, I am a merciless hiker.

Hiking with children

View from mountaintop

Then we got into the car and headed off for Conwy Castle. I’m afraid of heights and this castle petrified me. First, we walked on the old, pigeon-soiled town walls to the castle entrance. The graying stones were uneven and the thinnest of metal railings kept you from falling to your death on the parking lot below. The children, my mom, and N didn’t seem so concerned about their mortality. Finally, I had to bail as a family member when everyone wanted to climb to the highest tower. Alone, I strolled through the old crumbling bones.

Conwy Castle

Of the ruined castles I visited, this one had the most vintages of a time when its original inhabitants moved through its passages. Even the Tower of London, with its plaques commemorating the spot where Anne Boleyn had her head chopped and the name Jane Gray carved desperately on the walls, seems  sanitized of history by the flux of so many visitors. In Conwy Castle, you can still see the  indentation of the fireplaces in the King’s hall is, as well as the faint carvings in the Chapel tower. In the center of the ruins, surrounded by a fence, is a 91 foot deep well that supplied the castle.

Conwy Castle Chapel Tower carvings

Note: I’ve always toyed with hiking the Appalachian Trail, but I am frightened of being consumed by bears, mosquitoes, or venomous snakes with no one for miles to hear my cries of agony. I’ve decided that if I ever wanted to undertake an epic hike, I will come to Wales. I can hike, camp, eat boring trail food or pop in a pub for something more substantial and then spend the night a Bed and Breakfast with a nice shower.

Betws-y-coed is a bit of a gateway into the wilds of Snowdonia — like a tiny St. Louis.  The Victorians stopped here on their holidays to the Welsh mountains.

This was my second time stopping at the picturesque village of gift shops, restaurants, and Bed and Breakfasts.  My first visit several years ago  is  now a frantic, blurry memory. We were leaving Great Britain in two days and down to the last of our clean clothes.  The children were just babies, so dirty clothes meant dried-on food, poop, and pee. Not the clothes you could fake wearing  a second time.  At 4:45, as we left the narrow, wiggly mountain roads and approached Betws-y-coed, G puked all over himself and the car seat.  Not just once, but several voluminous times. I scrambled into the touristy mountain apparel shops just as they were closing up and cried, “Clothes! I need clothes!”

For those who have been following my blog since the Netherlands trip last year, you would be interested to learn that N has developed a relationship with our new British GSP system. It’s quite a dysfunctional relationship.  She continually gets him lost, yet he still listens to her, coming back for more directional abuse.  She isn’t as cool under pressure as our French chick. She disapproves of N’s map-informed decisions and insists on putting us on single-lane, hedge-lined suicide alleys, rather than decent two-lane roads or, heaven forbid, a motorway.  She is very “calculating” and says the same thing over and over, “when possible, please perform a legal U turn.” Hell, if we could perform any U-turn on these tiny roads, much less a legal one, it would require bending the laws of physics.

I have walked and walked and walked, mostly through muddy fields while being bleated at by annoyed mother sheep. If I could  speak the simple sheep language, I would tell them I was merely looking for a safe passage into town for my own little lambs. My husband assured me that we would be staying at a quiet farmhouse on a sleepy, hedge-lined country lane.

Ha! He dropped us off at our farmhouse and then took the car to a conference, leaving us stranded in our quaint country cottage with all its hedges and sheep and flaky internet access.

I’m sure  when Beatrix Potter visited Wales so many years ago,  ducks in sweaters and such could waddle safely down the country roads disturbed only by an occasional carriage or pedestrian. Not anymore.  To one well-versed in Atlanta driving rules, these quaint country lanes translate into blind curves and no emergency lanes or sidewalks.  This doesn’t seem to bother the people flying down these roads like they have a death wish. Last night, I was nearly taken from this world by a man passing another car in front of the driveway to our farmhouse.

So after an hour of trudging through the fields, thinking of Mr. Knightley and Elizabeth Bennett who like to amble amongst the fields, I came upon a subdivision and a mother pushing a stroller. I felt like Sir Henry Morton Stanley hacking through some sheep-strewn jungle to find Dr. Livingston.  I use this analogy because Stanley was born down the road in Denbigh. He is the illegitimate son of Elizabeth Parry, whose body reputedly never decomposed in its grave.

“How do I get to town without being hit by a car?” I asked the mother, desperately waving the map my family had risked their lives to obtain by walking to the tourist information center. In that cheery British accent, the sweet mother gave me instructions to a footpath ending with “and then you will come to a proper light where you can cross the street.”

I’ve been trying to write something about the history of the Wales, but I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s quite difficult. The Welsh are, for lack of a better word, hillbillies. Except for better amenities, they have remained the same since they were living in little hill forts during the Bronze Age. From that time, Wales has been invaded by people from France (OK, lots of people from France: Celts, Anglos, Saxons, Normans), the Roman Empire, the Irish, inland Britain, the Vikings, and Cromwell. All have fought and claimed some degree of victory in Wales.

The Welsh borrowed some cultural aspects of their supposed subjugators—that is, if it suited them. But no one really defeated the Welsh, because quite frankly, it’s hard to fight tribes willing to hide out on frigid mountaintops and fight guerilla warfare (that really pissed off the Romans). Also, in the off season, the Welsh tribes stayed in shape by fighting each other. They loved to fight. It was a great Celtic affair of getting naked, dying oneself blue, and running screaming into battle. There, you were supposed to cut off the head of your enemy and show it off to your family watching from the hillside. “Look honey!”

Here’s a nice description of the Celts, from a book entitled Celts by Frank Delaney.

They invite strangers to their banquets, and only after the meal do they ask who they are and of what they stand in need.  At dinner they are wont to be moved by chance remarks to wordy disputes, and after a challenge, to fight in single combat…they frequently exaggerate with the aim of extolling themselves and diminishing the status of others. They are boasters and threateners and given to self-dramatisation.

The Romans built forts and roads, fought a few battles, Edward constructed  castles, the Normans killed some people (The Norman Robert of Rhuddlan plagued Wales. His severed head was impaled on a Welsh ship’s mast,) but I get the impression that Wales is pretty impenetrable and defiant when she wants to be (see Queen Boudicca). There really wasn’t a clear victory for any invader but an unspoken truce.

It is worth noting after the Roman Empire, Wales emerged as its own Christian country. Then the Welsh fought off attacks from the Anglo-Saxons pagans. My Viking husband contends these Anglo-Saxons later assimilated Vikings. The Celts book describes Vikings as “European people, even more mobile and adventurous” than the Celts. Well, that explains my children, the offspring of two obnoxious cultures.

The historical information pamphlets I’ve been collecting in Ruthin or Rhuthun, if you speak Welsh, are very different from anything I’ve collected in the other places I travelled. Which makes me think the Welsh, true to their (somewhat) Celtic heritage, love a good story. Their historic information starts with the normal jargon: such-and-such was built in 1456 by so-and-so blah, blah, blah. Just your eyes start to cross, the writer veers off in some wild direction about the romantic liaisons of so-and-so or the grisly death of so-and-so who stayed at such-and-such for one night.  This leads me to my next impression of the Welsh: they could make a Spanish Soap Opera look like the Andy Griffin Show. Back in the day, you had to wonder if the Welsh wedding vows were “perhaps” or “maybe.”

If you want to be archetypal about this, consider that Huail, King Arthur’s rival, busted the king while he was hanging in Ruthin with his mistress. Arthur had Huail executed on a stone in the center of town. There’s a placard on the supposed stone commemorating the supposed event of the supposed king.

Then there is Katheryn of Berain, 1535-1591, the famed “Mother of Wales.” She had six children of her own, two from each of her first three husbands, as well as, sixteen stepchildren. She arranged marriages between her various degrees of children. She was an heiress and the illegitimate great-granddaughter of Henry VII. It is rumored she killed a lover by pouring hot lead in his ear and then burying him in an orchard. Her second husband Richard Clough asked her to marrying him on the way to her first husband’s funeral, beating out Maurice Wynn who asked her after the funeral. Don’t feel sorry for Wynne, she married him after Clough died.

The history of Ruthin castle tells of a Gray Ghost, a lovely lady who roams its crumbling walls. This isn’t one of those forlorn ghostly chicks mourning her wronged death. Her husband was an officer to Edward I. She caught him getting it on with a local Welsh girl and killed her with an ax. After her execution, the Gray Ghost’s corporal body was buried outside the castle walls because they couldn’t put her in consecrated ground. I didn’t get this hot gossip on a ghost tour; it’s on the official historical information handout at Ruthin castle. It also tells of “Patsy” wife of Colonel Cornwallis-West and lover of Edward VII. She would entertain her lover by toboggan down the Ruthin castle stairs on a tea tray.

But seriously…

Ruthin castle began as a wooden fortress. The name Ruthin comes from the Welsh words “red” and “fort.”  Edward I granted it to Dafydd for his help in suppressing the Welsh and Dafydd’s own brother, the badass Prince of Wales Llewellyn ap Gryffudd —another one of those extremely dysfunctional families in British history. Poor Dafydd probably had mental issues having grown up a hostage in the Tower of London. He watched his own father fall to his death trying to escape. He and Llewellyn had a love/hate relationship. Dafydd would fight his brother in battle, then beg for forgiveness, become his ally, and then turn on him again. But on Easter of 1282, Dafydd decided his Welsh allegiance once and for all. He laid siege on Hawarden Castle, surprising its English Lord.

After Llewellyn’s death, Dafydd became Prince of Wales and a wanted man. The British finally caught him and charged him with treason, homicide, plotting against the king, and sacrilege because of the Easter attack. He was half-hung, then disemboweled while still alive, and then drawn and quartered.

Now according to Wikipedia, Llywelyn didn’t have any illegitimate children, which is noted as being weird for Welsh royalty. Meanwhile Dafydd had eight. See what I mean about Wales being the historic Peyton Place. (note:  in olden days, illegitimate royal Welsh children could inherit property.)

But I was talking about Ruthin Castle. So after the Dafydd debacle, Reginald de Gray (who is the supposed former Sheriff of Nottingham of Robin Hood notoriety) was given the castle by the King. In 1400, Owain Glydwr, the self-proclaimed Prince of Wales, would lead a Welsh nationalist uprising. He tried to capture the castle, but failed. However, he managed to take de Gray hostage and ransom him.

Ruthin Castle would go on to withstand several initial sieges by everyone’s favorite destroyer of historic landmarks, Oliver Cromwell. Eventually, the castle fell in 1646. Oh and here’s a shocker: Cromwell demolished it. Yet according to the Ruthin Castle Historical information sheet, “sections of battle scarred mediaeval walls, tunnels, underground dungeons, whipping pit and drowning pool survive with their secrets of torture and bravery and are listed as Scheduled Ancient Monuments.”

A manor house was built on the ruins in 1826 and would become home to Patsy and her tea tray toboggan. Today it is hotel and popular venue for weddings.  Below is a Welsh peacock hitting on the other lady peacocks amid the ruined fortifications of the castle.

Notice: The following was written under severe sleep deprivation.  Important words may be omitted and the grammar may be sucky.

We made it. Eight hours on a plane then six bags and five people in a station wagon. On the drive from Manchester to here,  I was asked not to talk anymore, so I kept my head in hands and thought of one thing: sleep.  Oh sweet elusive sleep.

I don’t remember much about getting here, except the landscape was beautiful and the cabin was cute and cold. All this seemed on the surface of my brain.  I just wanted to sleep.

After a long nap and learning how to use the radiators, the higher functions of my brain returned.

From the back window of our cottage, beyond the orchard and field of sheep, the landscape opens, rolling and unbound.  The clouds are heavy and hang heavy over the hills.  We are in Wales, but it feels like Netherlands. It has that same gray cast and stark modern houses.  Small cars zip down the hedged lanes. Yet, everyone we have met has been extremely nice. They wave when they pass. I feel a bit taken aback by the friendliness, and the bleating sheep and the curious little lambs that came to the gate to see C.  How do people live in Beatrix Potter storyboook? I gotta think there are a bunch of  little rabbits in blue coats sneaking under garden gates around here.

Here we go again. We are all folded, packed down, and weighed to TSA and airline regulations. Now begins a sleepless night over the Atlantic. Cramped bathrooms, children who are bored, seat consoles that little fingers can’t control, the bloat, the food, the drinks that spill,  the magic markers that role under the seat in front of you, the overhead bins that can’t fit everything, and the inevitable creepy guy. All trips have a creepy guy. Like the overweight European gentleman in the burgundy suit, reading porn and staring at you as you breast fed your baby.

I’ve never been able to sleep on planes. Once I took Tylenol PM on the way back from England, but I kept waking up every five minutes with the airline movie “Sabrina” moving in and out of my Salvodor Dali-like dreams. Now I get this rather “cringe-y”, Pavlovian response whenever exposed to the movie.

We have forgotten to pack something important. I know it. I’m at peace with that knowledge.

Update:

We left the children’s car seats in the car that took us and had to wait for the driver to circle about the airport. Then we got pushed through TSA cattle shoot. Now we lounge in the sky club. Outside the windows, the planes shine in the sun and baggage cars zip about.  I feel akin to the moment the astronauts of old climbed into their capsule, ready to plunge through the atmosphere.  In those minutes, all communication with the ground was severed, and everyone prayed the heat resistant shield worked.

My last week in Netherlands the weather turned cold and rainy. That depressing gray drizzle that you can walk about in, go to the grocery store or bank in, but you would rather lounge on the sofa, drinking hot Jasmine tea, and reading the second book in the Isabel Dalhousie series by Alexandar McCall Smith. Sounds ideal, but instead I found myself catering to bored, cabin-fevered children. Oh, if only Nickelodeon’s “Wonder Pets” could have played all day. Plus N had business trips to Switzerland and Sweden.

Coming back from Switzerland, he and his GPS girlfriend had a falling out. I knew it would be so–those intense love affairs burn out so quickly. He had refused to slavishly follow her desires. They got into a fight in the snowy Ardennes; and she said in that crisp, clear voice of hers “unable to navigate further” and shut off.

Ah well…

I went back into old city of Maastricht to visit the St. Servaas Basilica built upon the remains of Saint Servatius buried in 384.

I wrote a small piece to my friend about the experience. I will include it here:

I’m drawn to old places of worship, even those small, harsh churches in the rural places with the straight boards painted white and stove to heat the cold congregations. The air is thicker in these places. I feel buoyant, like in waters of old prayers–the most earnest of prayers–still bleeding, vivid, not diluted to benign by some reproduction of print technology. N feels this tangible energy at battlefield sites. Sometimes he knows he is on a battlefield before he even stumbles across a placard or marker. We make quite a traveling pair.

Saint Servaas Basilica was empty except for my family and the two kind ladies cleaning Mary as the “Seat of Wisdom” with rags. How casually their hands wiped the sacred object I just read about in the little brochure the man in the booth gave me.

This basilica, a rather plain, unspectacular specimen compared to its neighboring cathedrals, held a special treat for me, the music lover. The organist was practicing that afternoon. I remembered my college choir director explaining the composers of old wrote music for these cavernous cathedrals and basilicas, knowing the sound drifted to the ceiling and echoed in the concaves. Listen to a “Palestrina” piece sung by “Tallis Scholars” on YouTube. As I watched the organist’s fingers twist about the keyboards, above me, these invisible analog waves played, splashing about, making joyful noises in the ceiling.

Once workers had hoisted themselves to these heights to install the ceiling. In 1500, they didn’t have OSHA regulations; these men risked their lives to put a brick in place.

Again a mystery returns to me, some epiphany I can’t seem to articulate. It started in the Bruges Cathedral. This is an edge of it:

My eyes will pass over the massive stain glass; and I will think how majestic, how beautiful the warm reds and oranges shine like sunlight refracted in rain onto the dark stone interior. I will not come closer to study the tiny detail one skilled hand must have labored over to craft the flowing folds of Jesus’ sleeve as he held up the cup of his blood. In a matter of seconds, I will pass the window of Jesus at the last supper to another stain glass masterpiece: the ever redundant scene of Jesus on Mary’s lap. In my mind’s messy file system, these windows will merge to a single amalgamation of all the stain glass I have ever seen.

But I must be reverent in these places, even if I don’t appreciate the position of Jesus’ falling sleeve, or remember the exact gold sculpture of Jesus on the cross hovering over the altar. For in the concaves above me echo the ernest prayers of brick layers, composers, stain glass masters, pilgrims crawling on their knees, and generations of worshipers.