Holiday in Wales day 2, tuesday 5th may (part 1)

Holiday in Wales day 2 (part 1)

Yep, you read that right, day 2 part 1. Last Tuesday, was so packed with stuff and photo opportunities I’m going to have to split it to easily manageable bits, and this is the first bit.

On Tuesday 5 May, it rained, and rained, and rained, and rained. It was bizarre and at times quite spooky. That torrential rain was mixed with weird, bright, sunny periods that came out of no where and took us all by surprise, and then disappeared as fast as they arrived.  You could quite literally rush into a shop to escape the torrential rain and howling wind, only to emerge a few minutes later to blue skies and warm sunshine. Anyway, thing to remember about this decidedly odd weather is that loads of my photos have big rain drops splattered over them. Others look as if I’ve chosen a delicate soft focus, I didn’t; the soft focus look is the result of me constantly cleaning the rain off the camera and shooting through a decidedly damp lens.

We started our day bright and early, breakfast was at 8. Have I mentioned that in this hotel with its 80 (ish) rooms, spread over 4 floors, there was only one life? And that single life only carried 2 passengers at a time? Oh and also remember, I was travelling as part of a coach party whose average age was considerably older than my own great age and six of the passengers used mobility aids.  And something else to bare in mind; there was another coach party of similar size, age, etc as ours, staying at the same hotel, at the same time. So when I say we all trooped downstairs to breakfast, don’t imagine a gleeful procession moving at pace toward the dining room. If you want to visualise this migration, think of a genteel pack of elderly  rescue dogs who meander at their own pace, double back on them selves when the fancy takes them, stop to sniff ever blade of grass and greet every passing  being be it human or canine. That is a more accurate picture of the morning move toward the dining room.  I could see poor Dagma our driver getting agitated every morning waiting for her passengers to board the coach after breakfast. After all, she had a timetable to keep.

The dining room had lines of rose pink tablecloths, that awful hotel carpet, dusty floor length cream drapes and unsightly grubby nets. But on a more positive note, our little waitress was lovely and the food was ok. In fact breakfasts were rather good. They even provided me with Vegetarian sausages every morning. Then after breakfast, out to the coach and on to our first destination, a little place in Anglesey.   

This place in Anglesey, which we all ended up referring to as ‘that place with the long name’, has the longest place name in Europe and the second longest place name in the world. It apparently adopted the name in its present form in the 1860’s as a means of promoting itself. By the time we arrived at the place with the long name, the rain was torrential, all we did was get out of the coach, attempt to get a few photos, have a very brief look around and then head back to the coach. 

We saw the obligatory lady with the funny hat, resplendent in her Welsh finery; donned no doubt for the benefit of the tourists. Being a tourist myself, and not wanting to act out of character, I took my turn in the line of photographers. She probably goes home at night and laughs herself silly at all those people lining up to take her photo. 

It was a very brief visit; we saw the railway station, with the long name above the door. We saw a huge Pringle/ gift/ tourist shop with the Welsh lady in the foyer and the long name plus literal translation above the entry and then we played dodge the rain drops on the way back to the coach.  I’m not about to attempt the place name just in case I get one of the 58 characters wrong or in the wrong place but; for those of you who are interested, here is the link to more info about the place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Llanfairpwllgwyngyll

OK, I’ve decided to try the name;

Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch.

Ahhhhhh that appears to be all 58 characters and all in the right place.

From there we headed off the island of Anglesey and on toward Porthmadog Harbour. When we arrived we were hit by one of those weird sunny periods that took us all by surprise. 

We admired the Harbour; it really was a lovely little harbour with a long, long history of shipbuilding and transporting locally quarried slate. From this little harbour Welsh slate was loaded off the flat bottomed barges and tiny railways onto seafaring ships to be transported all over the world.

More info on Porthmadog here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porthmadog

We took a walk along the little railway line that overlooks the water with Snowdonia in the background. 

There is a bridge at the entry of the harbour and on this bridge sits a little house clad entirely in Welsh slate, I’m not sure if it’s an old house with new cladding, or if the house itself is old, but either way, it’s charming to see a whole house covered in Welsh slate. 

This is the same tiny railway that transported the workmen to and from the slate mines and in later times the slate itself down to the ships in the harbour.

 

It is a small narrow gague railway operated with old steam engines on lines that zig zag across the streets where railway meets road.  As we were walking we were lucky enough to see one of the steam trains cross the road and pull into the railway station.  We were not due to meet up with the rest of the party at the railway station for a couple of hours which gave us time to investigate the Maritime Museum. The museum is housed in the last remaining slate shed at Porthmadog Harbour.

 Site for the Maratime Museum

http://www.porthmadogmaritimemuseum.org.uk/page12.html

Outside the museum were several old chains, anchors, and other paraphernalia of past shipping history. Inside were lots of different displays of the harbour, harbour history, slate history, industrial history and shipping history in general associated with the Harbour. 

We felt it was well worth a visit, apparently there are none of the old ships that were built there left intact, but there were plenty of old photo displays of them inside which is where this photo came from.  

From the museum we headed out of the harbour, across the bridge and in to the railway station. We were due to meet the others there and start our very own railway journey. Naturally it was raining again by that time.

Next blog will be all about the railway journey  :-)