Day 2 Excursions (Jan. 17th)

              Today was another busy day full of touring with Tecwyn. We started the day off at 9.30am and left Bangor. I got up on time this morning-no worries :)  We headed to Caernarfon Castle, which was a very important castle in the history of Wales and their continued fights with the English. It was changing hands a lot during the 12th century and was also the site where Prince William was crowned the Prince of Wales, so a lot of history happened here. It was quite a gorgeous castle, and the city of Caernarfon itself is surrounded by a wall. Back in the 12th and 13th century the city had a curfew, 9 o'clock I believe, when all its inhabitants had to be inside the wall. The city has much expanded since this time, but the walls still stand that surround the city, and are quite beautiful to look at.

We spent a few hours exploring here-it was quite cold (by U.K. standards anyway), about 4 C, or 36 F. There were many dungeons (essentially long falls into a black hole, no joke) and secret staircases and passageways and tunnels. It was an awesome first castle experience-I think we all really enjoyed it. The castle is located on the edge of the city, with a dock and functioning draw bridge very close to it. It's hard to tell, but in the picture below the castle is on the very right, and we were standing on the draw bridge.

      We explored here for a while, and I have this bad habit of climbing things, so I did. I shimmied up a chimney (see below picture) which was probably 10 feet high or so. That was cool. I popped my head out of the top and some of our group was on the next level up-it scared them a lot to say the very least. I, of course, thought it was hilarious. :)

There were chimney's throughout the castle as well. The one to the left here was the smallest one we found. (I'm holding myself up by my sheer leg strength by the way, against the sides of the chimney ;)  Most of the chimney's were quite large, such as the one that I'm standing in below.

Also, since I have incredible ups (joke) I had to do a jumping picture. How often do you get to jump in a castle, first of all, let alone the castle where the Prince was crowned Prince of Wales. I thought it was a rare opportunity, so I took advantage. :)

Below is a video from the castle. It's a little hard to see, so I apologize for that.

     After Caernarfon Castle a few of us stopped at a cute gift shop, where I got myself a Wales flag car sticker.  We then made our way to Cricieth Castle, which wasn't as well kept as Caernafon but still beautiful none the less. It looked over the water on one side, literally just a drop off. The view from the castle was stunning, looking over the town and shore to the West I believe.

  The view from up here was also spectacular looking out over the water. I've decided that Wales is just a beautiful place all around.

This is Cricieth Castle, considerably smaller than Caernarfon

We all explored this castle for a while as well, though there was alot less to see since most of the castle was torn down already. I found this sign however, and Peter this is for you.  ;)

         Tecwyn then bought us all ice cream from this wonderful shop called Cadwalader's. The ice cream was to die for and apparently it's a homemade recipe, and the site that we were at was the original building. Tecwyn is full of stories like this-he knows a lot about a lot.

     We got back on the bus and made our way to the Slate Mines in Llechwedd. We got an audio tour of the mines, with wax figures and everything. I enjoyed it, though I know some people thought it was lame. We were 418 feet down in the mine at one point, with 7 stories above us and 8 below. We were also 458 feet down at another point during the tour. There are 16 total levels where the miners worked in their respective "chambers", and there were 250 chambers in total. The chambers were 40 ft x 80 ft (if i remember correctly) and 4 miners worked one chamber. Once you had a chamber it was your chamber for life, and each chamber took up to 10 years or more to mine completely. The miners often died before age 40 because of all the dust and particles in the air that they breathed in every day-it was quite the dangerous job.

  

This was at the end of the tour. It is hard to see, but it is a reflection off of the water. This was a "memorial" to all the miners that died down here. The water was crystal clear and still-I felt like I was at an aquarium looking down at a huge tank. The only thing missing was fish. It was very picturesque and quite beautiful in my opinion.

          We then visited Dolwyddelan Castle (we were supposed to go to it yesterday, but the rain prevented us). This castle was also quite small and a lot of it was gone already. It was actually located on private property-an old grumpy woman, according to Tecwyn, owned the land and therefore the castle it stood on. We had to get her permission to go up and look at it, which she granted us. Tecwyn told us a story of last years group-one of the boys jumped on the back of one of her sheep and she came out the door with a shot gun and shot it into the air. A lovely woman don't you think?  This castle was built strategically (as it is in the middle of nowhere) and was used as a fortress for various princes of Wales as they fought each other, brother against brother, for more land and therefore more power.



  

     This was also a very long day-and once we returned "home" to Bangor some of us went to Morrisons (the local grocery store) and got some stuff for dinner. We (Grant, Garrett, Ben, Hannah, Megan, and myself) had steak, potatoes, and peacher for dinner that night.