On our trip: Castle Day

Today is Thursday

We have decided that today will be Castle day.

We slept badly, we discovered that our campsite was on the side of a major road, we discovered this many times during the night (but as the campsite was chosen on it’s proximity to the pub it was OK).

On the way to or castles we drove through some magnificent countryside, the difference between English landscape and Welsh landscape is unbelievable. It would seem that you go from low flat pasture to rugged mountains at the border.

The roads seem so much wider here you can actually get two cars on the road at the same time, that is until we went into a town.

The first castle was Harlech and it was a brilliant ruin, The views from the top of the tower were great.

Steven helped out with his masonry skills and carved a few replacement cornice stones for them.

Health and safety doesn't seem to have been taken to the ridiculous extremes that it has in Australia, these parapet walls are only 2 feet high and open to the public. I suspect that if it was in Australia it would either be closed off or have an enormous steel cage all the way along it.

Steven is the King of the castle

Then we moved on through more great scenery to Caernarfon castle, it was brilliant.

Built in 1282 by King Edward I to celebrate his defeat of Wales. The Welsh still resent the English for this, oddly.
It was constructed with walls surrounding the town, some of which remain today.

The day we were there a Welsh Choir was rehearsing in the grounds for a couple of hours. They were brilliant. After a quick climb up the towers Tammy settled in to listen to the Choir, Steven climbed every tower, some of them twice due to getting confused on the many spiral stairs. There are long passageways running all the way around the castle with the arrow slits. My Dad informs me that these are called 'loop holes'.