Wales. Just driving on the highway I sense it as we leave Shrewsbury: the wildness of the woods, the rugged glens of the marches, the dappled sunlight. The tall arches of a ruined castle on a high green hill made me want to pull off and hike and damn the schedule.
Often the trees arch over the two lane road keeping it in shadow. Even at the edge, the allusiveness of the place is tangible; so much comes to mind at once: the Mabinogion, gentle folk, Merlin, the cruel, proud lives of the coal and slate miners, all those who came from Wales and changed the world: Elizabeth I, Inigo Jones, T. E. Lawrence, Dylan Thomas, Richard Burton, Bertrand Russell…
Especially when the October wind
(Some let me make you of Autumnal spells,
The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)…
We listened to a silly 1950’s science fiction radio drama on the BBC and drove on, all the way to the northern corner on the Irish sea: Conwy.
We were greeted by heavy rain, which is to say a light squall by Welsh standards. It took me three loops through the compact medieval walled town to find our B&B, the Gwynfryn, and approach it from the proper direction. But once again, Lynn’s careful research turned up trumps: our rather red room was spacious and comfortable and Colin, one of the two proprietors, helped us lug in our stuff and find a parking place (no small thing in a walled medieval town.) Robert’s room was, well, pink. Dinner was at the Bistro Bach which specializes is new Welsh cuisine (i.e. fresh, local ingredients, bright flavors in a warm, casual setting.) Robert and I went vegetarian while Lynn opted for the lamb.
The next morning the clouds had lifted and after Welsh Rarebit for breakfast, we were off to the castle. I’ve explored castles all over Europe, from Carcassonne to the Rhine Valley to Scotland but the castles in Wales have my heart. The meaning and history of what survives, a tracing on a mantle, or a vaulted window are highlighted by the absences of what’s gone and the misty forests and fields beyond. They provoke and transport my imagination the way no others do. And among that select company, Conwy is one of the best. Though it’s in Wales, it’s an English castle (built by the great Savoyard architect James of St. George for Edward I) and it’s a mixture of grandeur and hominess that feels quintessentially English. (All of which takes nothing away from the grandeur of the native Welsh castles such as Dolwydellan.) It’s just that as a result of history Wales is home to best of the English castles as well.
The town of Conwy also possesses one of the best, extant Tudor homes, Plas Mawr, which was where we spent the afternoon as the rain had returned. Plas Mawr is fully restored and if you give it the time and focus, it also can reveal a lot about the texture of daily Tudor life. Elizabethan England was an age of reinvention, among the political consequences was the Commonwealth; among the cultural consequences was the Age of Reason. Yet, even in that transformative time at Plas Mawr in the distant north of Wales, you see ritual and ceremony embedded in the architecture. The rain settled in and we had a respectable dinner at the Italian restaurant a couple of doors down from our B&B.
The next morning was bright and cheery and after a few snaps of the castle we headed south for Aber Falls, a favorite walk. It’s only a couple of miles long with a mild elevation yet in that time you walk through close thorps of beech, alder, hazel and sycamore trees. I took a photo of Lynn beneath a great witching, branching oak just as I had fifteen years ago and was very pleased that all three of us were hale and in the world. At the top Robert and I scrambled up a shale steep, then we photographed the falls and I found myself musing that the ancient woods of medieval Europe were wilder, more diverse and grander than anything we imagine. As we were coming back down Robert posed, a head atop a standing stone. After scrumptious cheese and pickle sandwiches at the café and community center at the base we drove to Anglesey to take a gander at a few of the pre-historic barrows and standing stones, then it was back to Conwy for dinner.
The following day was bittersweet because it meant leaving Conwy and we began our very gradual way home. After a several hours at Harlech, Y.A.T.F.C. (Yet Another of Thomas’s Favorite Castles), we arrived in Newport and our hotel Cnappan. When Lynn and I first stayed there in 1991 we almost didn’t: we drove into the small seaside town on the west coast and saw a bright pink building in the middle of all the gray ones and it was our hotel. It was foreboding, but like the stalwart heroes in a gothic novel we braved the ominous lodgings. And we were very glad we had. During those three days I had some of the best food I’ve had in my life. Two dishes, in particular, remain mythic: “the Pasty Pennebont,” a pasty of early summer vegetables and greens picked from the proprietors’ own garden the same afternoon and absolutely world’s best bread and butter pudding. The Coopers and Lloyds are still the proprietors and the food was every bit as good as I’d remembered although it was the wrong time of year for a Pasty Pennebont alas.
And for the next two days we walked. On Saturday we hiked up to the iron age forts in the hills above the coast, where, on one of the more dramatic promontories, Robert and I invented the rare art of “air fencing.” It was to become a theme for the remainder of our holiday. It’s a highly practical sport as it requires no gear and both competitors are free to imagine victory. It also offered a fine prospect of Newport and Dinas head which inspired me to recite some Dylan Thomas.
By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,
Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,
My busy heart who shudders as she talks,
Sheds the syllabic blood and drains her words…
Lynn assured me that the reason she’d married me was my ability to recite Dylan Thomas impromptu on a Welsh hillside. On the way down we passed a small cottage named Fern Hill.
She was coming down with a miserable cold that both of us ended up sharing but it didn’t keep her from the next day’s twelve mile rugged tromp around Dinas Head. The path rose and fell multiple times from sea level to several hundred feet above it and there was a substantial sea breeze. Each prospect, over a gate, or out to sea, or back towards the town pulled at me. What is it Faust says, “Oh moment thou art too fair to pass.” Our destination, in sight of the town of Fishguard, was a small seaside bar where we ordered three beers as a reward but we were forced to abandon them by the arrival of the bus (the last of the season) that took us back to Newport.
On Monday, we left Wales, stopping on the way to explore Kidwelly Castle, (Y.A.T.F.C) where Lynn may have once seen a ghost. We sadly crossed the Severn Estuary in an appropriately dreary rain. Our final nights were at Castle Comb, a picturesque village, whose thatched houses had served the day before as one of the settings for a film being shot by Steven Spielberg, “The War Horse.” It also portrayed “Wall” in “Stardust.” Our last full day, we visited Avesbury, Silbury Hill and Long Barrow. As we walked among the megalithic monuments, I couldn’t help recalling our hikes in Chaco earlier in the summer and wondering what the megalithic Britons and Anasazi would have had in common.
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