Saturday, March 27, 2010

North Wales pt. 2- Llangollen proper

So we woke up and headed down to breakfast in the attached wine bar. The owners puttered around bringing people tea and toast. Talked to him quite a bit, he's been to the states several times, and it was interesting talking to him. We suited up and prepared for our hike to Castell Dinas Bran. And it was a hike. We walked through the really pretty town, and over the bridge (Llangollen was built because it was the best place to cross the river). Then we started up. Passed a lot of sheep pastures, Marina and Paikin chased a few of the loose ones, determined to pet a lamb (which of course never happened). It was a really tough hike, I realized just how out of shape I was. It was incredible, you kept coming onto higher platforms and just watched the whole valley and the town spread out beneath you. It was drizzling the whole time, but it felt nice as one by one we lost layers to the heat of hiking. The whole time the ruins of Dinas Bran looked down at us reminding us why we were making that trek. After much scrambling we finally made it, to be greeted by a rainbow. We explored the ruins a bit, but eventually the whole class ended up sitting on the ruined walls looking out over the entire town. The next mountains over were where Darwin did a lot of his paleo/geo work. It was breathtaking, and well worth the walk. It was a lot colder up there, and the rain picked up/turned into snow, so we headed back down.
Dinas Bran

Darwin's study!
The ruins up close
The views from the walls

We wandered around the town a bit, and saw Plas Newydd. The famed home of the Ladies of Llangollen (noble lesbians). Their house was closed since it's still pre tourist season, but their gardens were incredible. Almost all of us crammed into a bower overlooking a brook. We grabbed lunch at a bakery, and I bought some amazing Applewood cheese, a cheese and onion pasty, and carrot cake. It was still raining, so several of us crowded into a covered alley and confused people walking by. After grabbing fudge/homemade ice cream, we eventally ended up in the bookstore of doom (so named as we kept losing members of our group to it, for literal hours, we were convinced it was just eating them). It was really neat, above this cafe, just rows and rows. And everything was 1/2 price, I bought myself a new Piers Anthony book which was nice for all the bus rides.
Llangollen and the river

Plas Newydd

We hopped on the bus and headed for Horseshoe falls engineered by Thomas Telford to feed his amazing aqueduct that was our next stop. We walked across it, and then down below it around the river that runs under it. Making this day the most hiking intensive, and most of us pretty sore in the morning. Afterwards we bid farewell to Llangollen, and headed to the royal town of Caernarfon (Ca-nar-von if you say it the English way). It's a gorgeous sea side town, the old part of it completely walled in with a castle right on the shore. We checked into our new B+B where I was to share a bed with Kristie. Room was a lot smaller, but nice, and the place had a nice common room with a tv and computer, so the group hung out a lot there. We had dinner at the Black Boy Inn (very much not pc, but good food) and gorged ourselves once more. I had the most complicated Ceasar salad I ever want to meet, chips (fries) with cheese mayo dip, a lot of bread, and chocolate tort for dessert (finally got to try treacle tart as well, it was good). We rolled back to the B&B and hit the sheets by 10:30 or so, a common theme as we were usually exhausted.
The Aqueduct

Horseshoe Falls

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