Yes, we are back in Wales…the Land of my Grandfather, based on him being born 100yards over the border in Knighton. Whilst I may have a small amount of Welsh ancestry I haven’t inherited any ability to spell the Welsh language or place names. Looking at the name of the place we are staying tonight has already given me a problem and we haven’t been to Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch yet! Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch is actually on Anglesey and there is a good chance we will be visiting. For this trip we have booked our weekend sites ahead so we are not quite as spontaneous as we normally are on our trips. This coming weekend we are staying on Anglesey which I have previously visited but a very long time ago and I can’t remember much of that.
This morning we travelled from the Wirral to a place that I have been before and surprisingly I can remember it….a National Trust property at Bodnant Gardens just down the Conwy estuary from Conwy. It’s got to be one of the best gardens in Britain. It has a famous Laburnum Arch which unfortunately wasn’t in bloom but everything else was. I will let the photographs impress you rather than my inadequate words.
We spent plenty of time walking around the ponds, formal and woodland gardens. Despite a showery forecast we had good sunny spells and it remained dry….but probably because I took an umbrella with me and Sod’s law is such that if I don’t take an umbrella it pours and if I do, it stays fine.
We drove to our nearby Certified Location around mid-afternoon and wanted to go out for a bike ride. I thought that I better start using my new Garmin cycle sat-nav and began setting up a route. Well at risk of boring you with the technical detail it took me almost as long to programme the route into the Garmin as it did to complete the ride! The very quick explanation is that I had to programme the route onto a ‘Strava’ app, then transfer it to the ‘Garmin Connect’ app and then download it onto the Garmin sat-nav. I’m sure there are other ways of doing the same thing and I know I will get quicker at doing it. When we eventually got riding a mixture of sunshine glare and my short-sightedness made me struggle to see the screen. Oh, I forgot to mention that I initially set off in the wrong direction because I had misunderstood the direction the device expected me to cycle around the circuit I had devised! I will get there….but not necessarily with the help of the Garmin.
A Good Castle ruined!
Thursday 13th May 2021 - Llandudno. Bright and sunny with light showers later in afternoon.
We were wild camping again tonight and were on the look out for somewhere to stay. Initially we drove into Conwy and found a car park that had a sign that said no overnight parking but it had marked our motorhome spaces and the ticket machine price list showed a cost of 50p to stay overnight after 6pm. We parked up and went to browse the town. We were impressed. The castle was closed due to COVID restrictions but the town looked very active. We also found out that the castle and walls were a UNESCO site….we like to bag another UNESCO site!
The castle and it’s walls were in a semi-ruined state but largely intact and the working harbour area was very pretty too. We were taking a photo with my phone when an older man politely asked if we wanted him to take a photo of both of us. It became apparent that he didn’t really know how to take a photo with a mobile phone. He asked where to press and whether it would click? I had to tell him to move his finger from the lens and eventually he asked me to check if he had taken a photo. The photo above was the result of his kind offer….as were the 14 other identical photos he had taken at the same time! Also, whilst in Conwy we walked across a pedestrian only path over the road bridge so that we could get a better look at the Thomas Telford Suspension Bridge which was built in the 1820’s to fit in with the battlements of the Castle. I took a photo and we started to walk back to the town. As we did a large lady with dreadlocks told us firmly that it was a one way pavement. Well, we hadn’t realised but I was a little taken aback by her affrontedness. I get the impression that some people in Wales are rather rabid about maintaining strict COVID restrictions. The one way system was a bit ridiculous, we would have had to walk about half a mile in the wrong direction to comply with the one way routing and the pavement was very much in the open air and very quiet. Calm down Richard, live and let live.
Overall we were very much impressed by Conwy, it was pretty, had lovely shops, a great harbour quayside and Castle and walls endorsed by the United Nations….but we moved on to Llandudno. I remember Llandudno from a couple of previous visits but Janice didn’t have a recollection of visiting, at least as an adult. I thought it deserved a look at. You may know that it is on a little peninsula with a beach on both sides, although the main beach is on the eastern side. Great Orme’s Head is a large hill that dominates the peninsula. We parked up on the West Shore which has a wide prom and lots of free parking along the wide road….we thought this is the place for us to stay overnight, we like to stay by the seaside!
Photo of Great Janice’s Head and a nice big hill in the background.
We wanted to walk up Great Orme and then down into the main town centre and East Shore. So we packed a sandwich and tramped up the hill. The views were lovely and as we arrived at the top we saw the road, a railway line and a cable car….not what you expect to see at the top of a big hill. I don’t think this one counts to our tally of conquered Wainwright’s! We joked that we could have cycled up the Orme like we rode up the Rock of Gibraltar.
We had our butties and walked into the town. It is a very smart Victorian style holiday resort and it has managed to retain its grandeur. The East Shore again has a wide Promenade (not funded by the EU as far as I know) and has palm trees and smart hotels all along its sweeping bay.
Llandudno has a connection with Lewis Carroll, whose real name is Charles Dodgson. Dodgson’s friend was Henry Liddell (whose daughter was called Alice). Liddell built a holiday home on the West Shore and Carroll reputedly came to stay regularly and had inspiration for the Alice in Wonderland stories whilst here. I know it is all a bit tenuous but the holiday home was later turned into a hotel and I have previously stayed at that hotel. This is all a long way of explaining why I am standing next to a statue of the Mad Hatter. Whilst we took the photo we were approached by another older man….this one looked like Benny Hill in his Fred Scuttle persona (flat cap and round metal rimmed glasses and pervy expression), I humorously accused him of being the mad hatter and he must have been local because he told us about the Lewis Carroll connection which I knew anyway. We moved away as soon as possible before we could be drawn into further conversation.
We walked back to the van and had a cup of tea and sat in the prom. You know that things happen in threes….well, we were approached by a third older man who was walking with his younger carer. He launched into telling us that he was the ‘Donkey Man’ and he used to do the donkey rides along this beach. I chatted with him to Janice’s concern and he eventually gave us a little dance before moving off! We must have a got a ‘nutter magnet’ in our pockets today! Janice seems to think that I will become one of those older men as I get older….people will cross the road to avoid me chatting! I don’t deny it.
We spent the rest of the day at leisure, having another ice cream and wandering around Llandudno. I feel that we are just getting into our bimbling lifestyle.
No comments:
Post a Comment