Day 28: Braving the Rain

Ethan and I both purchased London Passes, a tourist pass that gives access to over 60 attractions in and around London.  They can be purchased for multiple days and allow you to go to £90 worth of sights each day.  We bought two-day passes and made a list of our top sights, although some proved too impractical to do within the two-day window.  However, today we tackled the Banqueting Hall of Whitehall Palace, Westminster Abbey, Royal Albert Hall, and Kensington Palace.

We picked up our Passes in Trafalgar Square and, as we headed to our first stop, we stopped into St. Martin-in-the-Fields.  I was very excited to visit the church as it has a very strong music history.  Most notably to me is the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, a conductorless string orchestra.  The group is named for its first performance in the church.  Since then, they have achieved musically and professionally.  You may have heard them without knowing, as they recorded the soundtracks to Amadeus and The English Patient.  I know them from a recording of Mozart's Requiem in D minor that is one of my most listened to pieces of music.  Below is the gorgeous organ in the church.

Ethan and I then headed to the Banqueting Hall.  The Hall was once part of Europe's largest palace complex, larger than Versailles or the Vatican.  The Palace, designed by Inigo Jones, was built for Henry VIII and was constantly expanding; the palace was made up of more than 1,500 rooms.  Sadly, the vast majority of the palace was destroyed in 1698 by a massive fire and only the Banqueting Hall survived.

In 1635, Charles I commissioned Peter Paul Rubens to decorate the massive ceiling of the Banqueting Hall.  The central painting of the nine shows the apotheosis of James I, the father of Charles I.  The paintings focus on the accomplishments of James I and his rule, which Charles had depicted was being full of wisdom and good virtue.  The central painting shows James I being brought to heaven by virtues such as Justice, Faith, Religion, along with the goddess of wisdom, Minerva.  Other paintings show James uniting England and Scotland and allegories for temperance and abundance.  They are massive masterpieces by Rubens and the only ceiling paintings by the artist still in situ.

The Banqueting Hall was used for masques until the Rubens paintings were added.  After that point, the room was used by the kings of England for official purposes, especially the meeting of foreign ambassadors.  The ambassadors would have proceeded towards the king in his throne.

The Banqueting Hall also witnessed the execution of Charles I, who was beheaded just outside the building.  After his fall from power, the building saw use by Oliver Cromwell, was turned into a church for later royals, then a museum, and now stands a historic site and function venue.

On our way to Westminster Abbey, we stopped to see two members of the Blues and Royals monitoring the Horse Guards Parade.  Only the monarch is allowed to drive through the central arch, which leads to the site of the 16th century jousting tiltyard.  The site is used for major events involving the British military, such as the Trooping of the Colour.

There is no photography allowed in Westminster Abbey, so I don't have any pictures to share.  However, Ethan and I got to see the tombs of many British monarchs and notables.  There are far too many to name, but I know Ethan's favorite (even without asking him): the tomb of Queen Elizabeth I.  I think my favorite moment was accidentally coming across the tomb of Muzio Clementi, a renowned pianist and composer who wrote many delightful sonatinas.  Sadly, Westminster is hurt by its status as a tourist destination and it's nearly impossible to really enjoy or experience the Abbey.  Instead, most of the time is spent getting pushed through crowds of visitors with audioguides glued to their ears.  Still beautiful and stunning, but I think I've seen more beautiful churches on this trip.

After lunch, we headed through fairly heavy rain to Royal Albert Hall.  The building is beautiful.  At the time, it had the largest unsupported roof in the world and to this day, the roof is unsupported and has been in place since it was installed.

Sadly, we were not supposed to take pictures for most of the tour (I accidentally took some in an area that I thought was okay, but apparently not).  However, Ethan and I had an hour long, informative tour through the building.  We got to listen to part of a rehearsal for Proms, which is ongoing, see the royal box, and the private room for the royal family.  We also went up into the gallery at the top of the theatre, which gave great views of the orchestra rehearsing and how they've adjusted the ceiling to be more acoustic.  All around, it was a really fascinating tour of a beautiful venue.

From Royal Albert Hall, we went to Kensington Palace, the home to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, and the Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.  The palace has been a residence for British royalty since the 17th century, with its purchase by William III and Mary.  Now the palace is part private residence to the royals and part museum focusing on the history of the royals and their connections to the house.

One exhibit of the palace focuses on the fashion of the royal women, by looking at pieces worn by Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, the Queen's late sister, and Diana, Princess of Wales.  The dress above was worn by Queen Elizabeth in the 1950s on a diplomatic trip.

This Indian inspired gown was worn by Princess Margaret to a fancy dress party in the 1970s.

Diana, Princess of Wales, wore this red dress during a royal tour of Saudi Arabia in 1986.

Other portions of the museum were dedicated to earlier monarchs, especially King George II and Queen Caroline, the ruling royals to live in Kensington Palace.  The house served both public and private functions, all in a wonderfully decadent style worthy of the British royal family.  In one room, used for balls, projectors played dancing men and women against some of the walls.

The King's Gallery had commanding views of Kensington Gardens, but the art might have distracted from the view.  Paintings by the likes of Tintoretto and Vasari covered walls throughout the palace, and the King's gallery had two massive Tintorettos.

The queen's portion of the palace was equally stunning, although in possibly a less grand way.  It felt more homely, if a palace can ever be described in that way.  This makes sense, as the rooms were much more private than those of the kings.  The Queen's Bedroom was the probably the sight of at least the death of two British Queens, Mary and Anne.

The largest portion of the palace is dedicated to the life of Queen Victoria, who was born and grew up in Kensington Palace.  It was even here where she was told she was queen and held her first privy council meeting.  The dress above is from Victoria's early reign, when she had just been happily married and had her first of nine children.

Much of the exhibit is dedicated to the relationship between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.  Both were accomplished pianists and singers and Albert seemed to enjoy composing a great deal.  He wrote quite a few pieces dedicated to and about Queen Victoria, including the one pictured above.  Victoria loved to hear him sing them to her.

This is a locket, very much in style during Victoria's reign.  It contains photographs of Victoria and Albert and lockets of their hair.  Often the lockets of hair are symbols of mourning, which dominated much of Victoria's life and reign.  Albert died twenty-four years into Victoria's sixty-three year reign and she never recovered.

It is often said that Victoria only wore black after the death of Albert.  Though this is probably not true, almost all depictions of her show here in almost all black attire.  This portrait of Victoria at age 80 shows her still in mourning clothes and looking rather forlorn.  However, it was one of her favorite depictions of herself, stating that the artist had never painted a better portrait of her.

Queen Victoria was interested in arts beyond music.  She started painting when she was young and here are some watercolor sketches of a sunset she painted.  Quite a multitalented queen.

Although we didn't get to meet any royals, Kensington was truly fascinating and beautiful.  Sadly, we got drenched going there and leaving.  As we made our way back to our hotel on the tube, we heard increasing announcements about platforms shutting down due to flooding.  It seems we picked one of the heaviest days of rain London has seen in a while to do lots of sightseeing.  But what a successful day we had!

Day 12: Mining for (Roman) Gold

So this morning began with a bit of a struggle.  I had called some taxi services yesterday to get estimates of how much it would cost me to go to the Dolaucothi Mines from Llandovery and had settled on a company.  When I called them this morning to get a lift, thinking who would be using a cab on Wednesday morning, I found that they had no cars available.  I scrambled and called a few other companies and eventually found one that could send a car over.  The trip had already gotten more expensive.

While I was making these calls and waiting for my taxi, there was a constant barrage of weird sounds coming from outside.  The noise was coming from an even odder collection of cars.  The Garbage Run, a car rally starting from the Netherlands, was rolling through tiny, old Llandovery.  The Garbage Run is a rally to show that even old, beaten-up cars can do rallies that are thousands of miles long.  The cars are generally all older model cars that have been seriously personalized.  I saw everything from a car with a tent on top of it to a car shaped like Olaf from Frozen.  I watched a car with a paddleboat glued to it's roof try to fit into a parking spot for about ten minutes.  In all this chaos, my taxi arrived.

My taxi driver was a very sweet man and we had a lovely chat about local culture and Welsh accents as we drove the twenty-five minutes to the mines.  As he dropped me off, he warned me that there would not be taxis until the late afternoon, as they worked school runs.  I'm assuming this meant that schools had hired the taxis to act as buses to bring the students back home to the towns and villages that were farther away from the school.

I arrived at the mines and found out that there would be a Roman tour of the mines about an hour and forty-five minutes after I arrived or a Victorian era tour about an hour earlier.  Clearly, I decided to wait around for the Roman tour.  In the meantime, I wandered around the mining buildings and machines.  The contraption below is called a headframe and was used to lower and raise an elevator into a shaft below.  The shaft below this headframe was 500' deep.  This was not the deepest shaft dug in these mines; I noticed one marked on the map as being 1000' deep.  Now most of the shafts are covered and sealed. 

Most of the machinery around the site is from the 1930s era.  There were three (possibly four) main periods of activity at this mine.  The first was the Romans who began working here in the 1st century CE.  It is possible that the mines had been worked by the natives as early as the Bronze Age, but there is no physical evidence for this.  After the Romans, the mines weren't worked again until the Victorian period.  The were finally worked again between 1933 and 1938 for the final time.

The buildings around the site contain the machinery and tools needed to operate a mine in the 1930s. These included things like giant winches to operate elevators in shafts, generators to create compressed air to power the tools underground, and ventilation controls.  This machine above controlled the flow of compressed air from the generators to three chambers underground.  It was fascinating to look at all the levers and dials on these machines.  It made me realize just how little I know about anything having to do with mining, which ended up being the theme of the day.

They also had a few troughs set up to allow you to try to pan for gold.  When I purchased my ticket, I was given a small plastic bag for any gold I might find while panning.  Gold mining in Wales is not at all like the gold mining in the western United States.  The gold here is not in nugget form, but rather dust.  The dust is trapped in other stones, mainly quartz.  Therefore, the panning process would have been extremely tedious, working to reach the very finest particles.  I gave up rather quickly, perfectly happy to leave without any specks of gold.

Finally it was time for my tour and a group of eight followed our guide, Emyr, around the site.  One of the first things he showed us was a model of a very clever Roman device.  In the 1930s, when working on a shaft 160' below ground, a miner accidentally discovered a massive mining gallery.  It was from the Roman period.  Not only were they shocked to find a Roman mine so deep underground, they were also shocked by it's size (it was nicked named the "Cathedral" because it was so large).  In this gallery, they found evidence of Roman scaffolding and tools, including a curved piece of wood.  Eventually, using examples from other Roman mines in the Mediterranean, they discovered that it was part of the Romans' system of keeping water out of the work site.  They used a series of water wheels that were able to collect water and then poor it into a higher trough, which would then lead to another wheel.  Through a long series of these wheels, the Romans were able to bring water up to the surface level by level.  Emyr demonstrated how this worked with the model they have which is only built to about half scale; the actual water wheels would have been around 12' in diameter.

From the demonstration we walked up the from the bottom of the valley we had been in.  I should say former valley.  The site of the 1930s mining buildings is actually the bottom of the Romans' largest open cast mine.  The bottom is much higher than it would have been in Roman times as it has been partially filled in by natural causes and was used as the waste dump from the Victorian era mines.  The size and scale of this open cast mine is pretty hard to describe and capture with a camera.  It would have been massive.

We continued up the side of the large open cast mine and onto the rise above it.  The landscape here was greatly varied, due to many smaller open cast mines and their dump sites adding dips and hills to the land.  We came across the first Roman drift mine, but could not enter due to unsafe conditions.  We went to the second drift mine (a drift mine is a horizontal mine as opposed to a shaft which goes down) and entered the Roman mine.  The mine was surprisingly beautiful made.  The walls had been worked very precisely, creating a neat corridor with well angled corners leading to the ceiling.  It had clearly been done with painstaking care (which raises many questions as to why).  It was possible to still see some of the pick marks left from Roman tools.

It is estimated that the Romans moved out some half a million tons of stone and collected between three quarters to thirty-five tons tons of gold (we joked about how wide a range that is).  In the mine, we were able to see some galleries in which the Romans followed veins of quartz.  It is believed that the Romans used slave labor for work in these mines, and the presence of a fort nearby means that it might have also used convict labor.  There is a theory that the mine was so large it would have required more than just local slaves and the mine would have drawn slaves from other parts of the Empire.  We saw one drift mine and evidence of many open cast mines, just a small fraction of the site, and I can believe that they would need to bring in extra man power.

There were some interesting features in the main gallery of the mine we visited.  The gallery was a large open space, but would have had many rooms spreading out from it, leading to other galleries.  These have since been filled in, which leaves some aspects of the mine a mystery.  Emyr also pointed out to us some markings that were very exciting...initially.  Carved into the wall were an "IIX" and "IX," presumably some sort of Roman numbering system.  If these were truly Roman, the mistaken IIX for eight (instead of VIII) could have been easily explained away as a mistake by a local slave or possibly even by a miner working upside down (I'm not so sure about this theory).  The distance between the two markers is also roughly a cubit.  However, the two numbers appear on different levels of shale, which seems odd for something being used for an exact measurement.  Therefore it seems somewhat likely that these were added in the 19th or 20th century by Victorian or Cardiff University pranksters.

After leaving the drift mine, we passed by remains of more small open cast mine and evidence of a complex water system that the Romans used for ground sluicing.  This technique allowed them to wash away upper layers of shale to find the quartz veins below.  To do this, the Romans had to build an aqueduct six miles upstream and channel the water into holding tanks.  In a single day, the sluicing system could have used two million tons of water.  It is also likely that this system was adapted to be part of the processing of the quartz.  After this explanation, we headed back down the hill and to the base of the Romans' large open cast mine.

Here, I ran into another problem.  My tour had come to an end and there were not going to be any available taxes from almost two hours.  I had also exhausted most everything I wanted to know about the site.  So I put on my most innocent face and asked a woman from my tour if she happened to be heading in the area of Llandovery.  After consulting a map, it happened that she was heading that way and offered me a ride.  She was absolutely lovely and we swapped travel stories, mostly about getting lost in inconvenient places.  By 3:30 I was already back at my hotel.

After taking a break for a snack and to listen to some podcasts, I decided I would try to go find the Roman fort site outside Llandovery after all.  It was only supposed to be about a mile outside town and I didn't have much else to do.  I made my way down the road, and after a few minutes of confusion, found the church that was meant to be near the site.  There was nothing remotely fort-like about the setting.  There was the church with a graveyard, a residential neighborhood, and a big pasture.  There was a walking sign pointing to the pasture, so I thought maybe I'd find something at the bottom of it.  As I was going I read a bit more about the Roman fort, called Alabum, and found out that I was standing at the site and there was really nothing left of it, just bits of evidence found by various vicars of the church.  I was a bit disappointed, but easily distracted as I made more horse friends.

Fun Fact #12:  I learned a great deal of facts about gold today and I think rather than doing one fun fact I will share quite a few in a list!

1. Welsh gold is the most valuable gold in the world.  This has to do with both its rarity and the fact that the last gold mine in Wales shut down in 1999.

2. Gold is one of the ten rarest elements on Earth.

3. A lump of gold the size of a matchbox could be hammered out into the size of a tennis court.

5. An ounce of gold could be made into a wire fifty miles long.

6. Romans used gold in their dentistry, including making gold wires to hold teeth in places.  (I'm imagining golden braces.)

Day 5: Getting Lost...A Lot

Well today was a lot.  I'm expecting (and hoping) that today will be my most physically challenging of the trip.  Today I hiked from Holyhead, along the coast of Holy Island, to the top of Holyhead Mountain and down the other side to South Stack, a 206-year-old lighthouse, and then back again.  All said and done, I took over 30,000 steps today and walked almost 14 miles (thanks Fitbit!).

For the most part, I followed the Anglesey Coastal Path, which runs around most of Holy Island.  I do immediately have to say this was one of the day's biggest challenges.  The trail is marked, but not all too often, and there are hundreds (yes, hundreds) of offshoot trails from the main paths.  Some of these offshoot trails look bigger, more official, or easier than the path you are supposed to take.  This meant I spent a great deal of the day wandering on paths, hoping I was still heading in the right direction.  The views you get from any of these paths are amazing (one benefit of so many paths is you can almost always find a way to the coast or the cliffs for magnificent views).  I did not hike on the best day, with sporadic bits of rain, but the scenery was still striking.  Apparently from a clear day, you can see all the way to Ireland!

There are many things of note along the route, but the first really striking one for me was the old fog station.  It is apparently home to a local artist and I wish I had seen her walking around; I would have had so many questions for her.  The station is perched on a cliff over the sea and down a rather treacherous path.  It was a great place to try to imagine life on a relatively isolated island.

From there, I started my climb up to the summit of Holyhead Mountain, which began slowly.  I reached a lower crest and became very certain that I must be at the summit even though I could see a higher part of the mountain.  This was because I had reached a well laid out wall (a section pictured below) and the foundation of a rectangular building.  This seemed like it was the Roman watch tower I was meant to find at the summit!  I wandered around and took my notes rather confusedly before deciding that it must have been some later addition and the true Roman tower was up the mountain (I believe this is an old telegraph station, based on the route I was using, but an employee at the South Stack visitor center told me he thought it was Roman.  I'm guessing he was probably wrong.).

I happened to pick one of the more obscure paths up to the summit and did my best imitation of a mountain goat, hopping up rocks, trying to reach the Roman ruins.  I was very impressed from my approach that anyone could have identified the jumbles of rocks as anything more than that, let alone the remnants of Roman occupation.  However, when I finally made it up to the summit, I saw more of what I was expecting: the base of a building at the highest point of the island.  There was clearer evidence of the a Roman wall on the other side of the summit.  The spot had commanding views all around, even on an overcast day.  The tower would have been able to watch out over the Irish Sea for raiders and look back towards Holy Island, Anglesey, and mainland Wales.  Nowadays, the summit gives a striking view of Holyhead and her harbor.

After descending the summit, which took longer than expected as one path I followed tried to have me scale down a 20' cliff, I turned towards South Stack.  I had been able to see the lighthouse a few times and it was beautiful from a distance.  The route there was more circuitous than it probably should have been, but as scattered raindrops fell, I reached the crest above the lighthouse.  There I came to a ruined structure, possibly a gun turret, and looked down at South Stack.

I had decided when I began the day, I was going to push myself and go out to the lighthouse.  Those who know me well (or maybe less than well), know that I struggle with anxiety, and long staircases (I know it's weird), as well as heights, can give me bad anxiety.  I knew I would find both of those at the South Stack; it's 400 steps down the cliff, then across an aluminum bridge over a rocky, rough channel, and then the stairs up the 135' tower.  After some confusion over where to get tickets and a stop to look for puffins at the RSPB observation area (no luck), I headed down the stairs.  They were not nearly as bad as I expected and soon I was at the bridge.  I started across slowly and then basically sprinted to the other end because I was getting the skeevies knowing there was nothing below the bridge but angry water.  I walked the path to the lighthouse and was quickly shepherded into a tour of the house, which consisted of being told to climb the tower.  The tower staircase was the epitome of what gives me anxiety: a small, narrow, spiral staircase built into the wall with no support beneath.  Since there were people following me (and because we were heading up), I took a few deep breaths and made it up to the top.  The view was again impressive and it was very cool to see the glass that magnifies the beam rotating around a lightbulb.  A cheery guide spouted off some facts about the lighthouse.

Unfortunately, I missed most of what he said because bad luck had befallen me.  I noticed that a cushion from one of my earbuds had fallen off and had probably fallen into a grate at the top of the lighthouse.  Now this is no disaster, but a true annoyance to me.  In the immediate sense, I had picked out songs to help keep me calm when dealing with the stairs, and in the longer sense, I was using music to keep me entertained on my long walks and train rides.  I knew it would be hard to find a way to replace the bud, so I fruitlessly tried to find my missing cushion.  No luck and I took the stairs back down (which was much worse than going up).

I headed back to the visitors center, grabbed a quick lunch, and then tried to head back towards Holyhead.  Tried being the operative word.  I tried to take many trails that led nowhere.  One advantage of all these mistakes was that I was able to see the ancient huts near South Stack.  They date from as early as the Iron Age (around 500 BCE) to the post-Roman period.  The huts were small farmsteads, with homes and areas for livestock.  There's also evidence of farming going on around the huts.  It is believed that though there are eight farmsteads, only one or two were occupied at a time.  There was also one hut complex that was much larger than the rest.  This one consisted of two circular buildings, a small, closet-like building, and a walled yard.  The huts were quite fun to wander through and the knowledge that they were probably occupied simultaneously as the Roman watchtower brought new ideas of native and Roman interaction.

Eventually I found a path heading the way I wanted, around the non-coastal side of Holyhead Mountain.  As I was rounding the mountain, I kept hearing voices but there were no others on the paths around me.  Finally I spotted four men climbing the cliffs of Holyhead Mountain.  I was distracted by this for quite sometime, both fascinated and terrified that someone would fall.  I moved on once I saw the man pictured below safely reach the top of the cliff he was scaling.

Coming around the other side of Holyhead Mountain, I got a closer look at the Roman walls...I think. I already had doubts about the extent of the walls that were "Roman" and they were made worse by taking this route.  I soon found that there were many other walls around Holyhead Mountain, presumably from old or current grazing areas.  I wandered through these, trying to angle back towards the town of Holyhead and my B&B, but never knowing if I was really heading the right way.  I found a path heading back towards town area and started down it carefully.  Then I stopped.  I was at an impasse...with four horses.

Grazing right next to my path home, were four horses - two stallions and two mares.  I've never known horses to be aggressive or territorial, but because it seemed like it might be two males and their mates, I decided to be cautious and wait for the horses to move on.  That didn't quite go as planned.  Three of the horses took a lot of interest in me, coming up to the small wall that I was standing by.  The one pictured below let me pet his muzzle, but another just seemed annoyed I didn't have any sugar for him.  After around ten minutes of the horses looking at me like I was a fool (I was probably being one), they eventually moved farther down their field and I calmly, but quickly, crossed the pasture.  After another twenty or so minutes, I finally made it back to my room and collapsed into bed, with aching feet.

Fun Fact #5: In the 1800s, a young man working at South Stack was so worried about his sick mother that he crossed back to the mainland in a storm...on a rope using his hands and feet.  There was no bridge at that time and as his friends cheered him on, he scrambled across to the other side, over churning water and through pouring rain.  Just to check on his mother.  No son can top that.