Day 23: Venturing Out of the City

This morning Ethan and I both had our separate plans: Ethan was headed to the abbey for Mass and I was going to be busy finally doing my laundry.  However, when our hotel owner heard my plans for the morning, he insisted that I borrow their laundry machine.  I can't describe how thankful I was.  I haven't had clean clothes in such a long time.

Ethan had already headed to church and there was no chance I could catch up or make it to the service.  I decided to wander around Bath while I waited for Ethan.  As I was coming to Pulteney Bridge, I noticed a fake window painted on one of the buildings.  It's below a faded advertisement for a bookstore.  I liked the artificial view of a man enjoying his books as part of the ad.

I found a staircase down to the river walk along the Avon.  The path gave beautiful views of the weir. If any have seen the 2012 film version of Les Miserables, the weir makes an appearance in the scene of Javert's death.

The Pulteney Bridge was inspired by the Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy.  I immediately noticed the similarities and think both are beautiful for different reasons.  The Ponte Vecchio looks a bit more haphazard but has amazing history and beautiful stores.  The Pulteney Bridge has a more random collection of shops, but the facade is well designed and gorgeous.  Both fantastic bridges!

Just off the river walk is a small meditation maze.  The maze was put in during the 1970s and has beautiful mosaic work in the center.  The main image is of the "Gorgon" from the Roman temple complex (neither Ethan nor I think it is depicting a Gorgon; it seems more like the depiction of a river deity).  Running through the image is a golden thread (they call it Ariadne's thread, referencing the thread the Cretan princess gave to Theseus to help fight the minotaur), which adds a second maze...for your eyes!  The images surrounding the central portrait are from Roman myth, including the Orpheus and Proserpina.

I headed back over the river and waited for service to end in the abbey.  As I stood outside the building, I noticed many details I hadn't seen before.  There were scrolls on the towers, a flock of angels surrounding a saint, and two depictions of Jacob's ladder.  They run up each tower, showing angels climbing up to heaven.

Once Ethan came out of service, we decided to head out of the city center and head to the Prior Park Landscape Garden.  The park was about a mile outside of the city center and up a pretty large hill.  We weren't sure what we were headed to see and were a bit disappointed that we had to pay to enter, but after the walk, we weren't turning back empty-handed.

Prior Park was the estate of a wealthy local businessman, Ralph Allen, in the 18th century.  He had mad a great deal of money reforming the British postal system and then again in quarrying the local Bath stone.  He decided to build a beautiful, Palladian manor house as an advertisement for the wonders of Bath stone.  Now the manor house is a private school.

The house sits at the top of a small valley looking over the city of Bath.  The center of the valley is empty of trees, creating a grassy field down towards the most notable feature of the landscape garden, the Palladian bridge.  The rest of the park is covered with trees, a mixture of mostly elms, oaks, and various evergreens.

We made our way down the valley and to the Palladian bridge.  This bridge, a copy of the Palladian bridge at Wilton House in Wiltshire, is one of four surviving Palladian bridges in the world.  Three of the bridges are in the United Kingdom and one is in St. Petersburg, Russia.

The bridge was built in the 1750s and soon attracted vandals.  The first piece of graffiti on the bridge dates from 1799, although Ethan and I did not find it.  The earliest carving we found was from 1809.  Though I can't and won't condone this sort of damage to beautiful architecture, it is interesting how graffiti becomes a little piece of history.  This is constantly relevant in the study of classics (i.e. the graffiti found in cities like Pompeii).  I'm not sure what we can read into the graffiti found on the bridge, but there may be something there.  It was interesting even just to see how much more detailed and more deeply carved the older inscriptions were.  They looked like they had been chiseled in.

Fun Fact #23: Ralph Allen had a pretty prolific career in the 18th century.  At the age of 19 he was named Postmaster General of Bath.  Thirty years later, he became the mayor of Bath.  He then served as a representative in Parliament for Bath.  He also helped put Bath on the map with his quarrying of Bath stone, the stone that came to define the city.  This honey colored rock is found in Prior Park, Bath Abbey, The Circus, the Royal Crescent, and many other beautiful buildings in Bath.

Day 22: Visiting the Spa

Ethan and I had a busy first full day in Bath.  After a nice breakfast in our hotel, we headed into the center of Bath.  We decided to visit the Roman baths and museum first.

Even though we were at the bath complex relatively soon after opening, the place was PACKED.  There were so many families and tour groups that it was nearly impossible to move around.

The visit starts at viewing platforms over the main pool.  The platforms go all the way around the pool and are decorated with 19th century statues of Roman emperors, governors of Britain, and generals.  These include Julius Caesar, who led the first Roman incursion into Britain, Claudius, who ordered the large scale invasion of Britain, and Julius Agricola, a Roman governor of Britain known for subjugating and Romanizing the province.

The bath complex was built in a Roman town called Aquae Sulis, the Waters of Sulis.  The site had been known for its natural hot springs and before Roman times, had been considered the home of a Celtic goddess, Sulis.  The Romans adapted this belief, creating the syncretism of the Sulis Minerva.  A large complex and holy site developed around these springs.  The complex contained a naturally fed pool, tradition bathing rooms, and a temple dedicated to Sulis Minerva.  Above is an employee of the museum, dressed as a Roman priest.

From the main hot springs pool, we entered the museum.  I was surprised by how much the museum, and the site in general, was dedicated to the holy area of the complex.  I think that the name Bath distracts from what I've ever heard about the site.  It's so much more than the typical Roman bathhouses I've visited.

The temple was just next to the baths.  Though it was dedicated to Sulis Minerva, there were many altars and depictions of other deities within the temple courtyard and the surrounding area.  Facing the interior courtyard were two large depictions of Sol and Luna, the Sun and the Moon.  Below is the depiction of Luna, with the crescent moon behind her.  It also seems she is holding a whip, probably to urge on the horses of her biga, a two-wheeled chariot.  Sadly, the depiction of Sol is lost.

There were altars to many and varied gods found in temple area, including those dedicated to Aesculapius, Diana, Mercury, Jupiter, and Celtic deities, like Rosmerta.  The carving below supposedly depicts Celtic mother goddesses in a triplicate form.  There was even a dedication from the tomb of a German veteran, showing that some Germanic deities were worshiped in Bath.  All of these different religions came together in this sacred area.

One of the things I was dying to see in Bath were the curse tablets found in the spring.  This practice represents another blending of Roman and British religious customs.  Traditionally, Roman curse tablets were placed in places linked to chthonic deities and crossroads, such as cracks in walls or underground, but in Bath they were pretty much exclusively thrown into the spring.  The Romans adapted to native beliefs of connections to deities, using water as the access point.

Though many curse tablets were just addressed to "the goddess" (presumably Sulis Minerva), others were dedicated to gods like Mercury and Mars.  This curse tablet is a complaint about a theft, which seems to be what most of the Bath curse tablets were about, and lists the names of possible suspects to help the gods curse the right person.

Below is a depiction of Sulis Minerva in gilt bronze.  Not much is known about the goddess Sulis before the introduction of the Romans, other than that she was worshipped in the area of the holy springs.  She may have had similar characteristics to Minerva, such as wisdom and decisions, but this is not necessarily correct.  Sadly, we'll probably never know much about the original worship of Sulis.

Through much of the museum, it was possible to see how the natural hot springs fed the main pool of the complex and how the Romans harnessed these waters.  Much of the original Roman construction remains in use, but has been adapted by later users of the baths.  Ethan very intelligently pointed out that the areas around the spring were covered in rust, as the water is high in iron content (We can both attest to this, as they had a tasting station of the spring water.  It tasted eerily like blood.).  The water was warm enough to be steaming and casting some heat; the water coming out of the springs can reach up to 115º F.

On either side of the main pool were more traditional Roman bathing rooms.  The baths were on a fairly large scale, much larger than the town of Aquae Sulis would have required.  This is because the holiness of the site would have drawn many to come visit the baths, much like tourists flock to it today.  Below are some of the hypocausts found beneath the floors of the heated rooms in the baths.

After we finished the baths (and escaped much of the crowds), we headed into Bath Abbey.  I believe that yesterday I called the church Bath Cathedral.  This is not accurate, although the Abbey was once a cathedral.  Bath Abbey was founded in around 675 as a convent, but was later changed to an abbey. Bath Abbey was purchased in the late 11th century and turned into the seat of diocese.  It only held this title for seventy-eight years, before the diocese seat was moved again.  The church eventually fell into disrepair.

Moves to restore the church were made as early as the 1570s, when Queen Elizabeth I personally advocated for the restoration of a grand church for Bath.  The majority of restoration to the church happened in the mid-19th century, restoring the exterior and the interior of the abbey.

The famous fan ceiling of the abbey was completed in the 1860s, but had been the brainchild of a 15th century bishop.

The organ of the abbey was replaced in 1997 with this beautiful Klais Orgelbau pipe organ.

Ethan and I wandered around more in the afternoon, including walking along the River Avon.  The picture above shows Pulteney Bridge, a Georgian addition to the city.  The bridge is lined with stores and restaurants.

We made our way up through The Circus and went to the Royal Crescent.  The Crescent is another Georgian architectural wonder of Bath.  The building was originally designed as thirty terraced homes, but now only ten remain single family homes.  Twelve have been split into apartments, one is a museum for the Crescent, and one is a hotel.

With many of the maps of Bath we've collected, Ethan and I have found many options for discounts for food and beverages.  Sadly, none seemed to be available on a Saturday night.  But we did have a lovely restaurant at a French restaurant.  We seem to be taking a tour of Mediterranean cuisine!

Fun Fact #22: In the bath complex, there is a depiction of a legendary King of the Britons, Bladud.  He has no basis in history, but seems to have been a creation by Geoffrey of Monmouth.  On top of founding Bath (in the 9th century CE), he is credited with being educated in Athens and founding a university in England that was later suppressed by Augustine of Canterbury.  Seems like a busy (fictional) guy!

Day 21: Reuniting with Ethan

Today was all about travel and reuniting.  I left my hotel in Cardiff after a lovely stay and headed to the train station.  I had misread and thought I was aiming to be on a train at 11:00, but it was actually at 11:30.  This was no problem, as I knew I would beat Ethan to Bath.  But I was excited to hear that he had landed safely and we texted as he made it through immigration, to Paddington Station, and on the train to Bath.

At around 1:30 we were finally back together in Bath, after a long month apart.  We headed to our hotel, which is on a quite residential street a few blocks away from the historic center of Bath.  We took a short break before venturing back out to find some food.

We headed towards the center, where the cathedral is visible from most every street.  The cathedral was closed for the day, as it was being used for some graduation events for the University of Bath.  I think this is for the best, allowing us to visit the cathedral when we are both better rested.

Just next door to the cathedral are the Roman baths, which I cannot wait to see.  I got a few peaks of the building surrounding the Roman site and it is gorgeous.  I'm very excited to see how the baths are preserved in this 19th century center.  I think it will be a fascinating mixture of Roman ruins and Victorian re-imagination of the past. 

As we had missed lunch, we decided to go for a proper afternoon tea.  We shared a pot of Earl Grey tea and many delicious treats.  These included scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam, a lemon meringue tart, a lemon poppyseed cake, a strawberry and cream tart, a brownie, and an assortment of finger sandwiches.

Even though we were both quite hungry, we couldn't finish the tray of delights.  It was a lovely way to spend an hour or so, though.  We were right in the middle of Bath and were able to catch up over good food and good tea.

We wandered around the center a bit more, stumbling upon some odd sights.  A man, some sort of street performer, was putting pigeons on to people.  Both Ethan and I were extremely confused by this.  Why would you want pigeons on you?  Doesn't that just seem like a recipe to be covered in bird poop?  And why would you trust this man to put crazy birds on you?  Just so many questions.

We walked by the Victoria Art Gallery,  an art museum dedicated to Queen Victoria in honor of her diamond jubilee.  The museum is known for its collection of British oil paintings from the 17th century to present.  We may stop in and see them for ourselves in the coming days!

We then headed back to our hotel, exploring Henrietta Park on the way back to our hotel.  I had noticed the ruins of a chapel from our hotel window so we crossed the street and went to St. Mary's Churchyard.  The churchyard dates from the 1800s as a parish church and graveyard.  The graveyard quickly filled to capacity and the parish church was torn down and a new church, St. John's, was built.  A mortuary chapel, used for funerals and baptisms, was built in the churchyard, but also fell out of activity.

The site was left in neglect for many years, and only really begun to be preserved in the early 2000s.  Now it is a quiet place to walk through.  They have put out little signs of graves that are of interest, although Ethan and I didn't understand the significance of any of these.  The on pictured labeled a slab of stone as "A mystery!"  I think they might have been stretching at some points.

We had another little break in the hotel (Ethan took an accidental nap) before heading out to dinner.  After investigating some of Bath's culinary scene, we settled on an Italian restaurant just off the Pulteney Bridge.  I feel like maybe I shouldn't have taken Ethan to an Italian restaurant on his first night in England, but too late now!  Now, we're back in the hotel, getting ready for bed.  Have to say I'm awfully impressed Ethan is still up at 11:20 pm!  Time for sleep now though!

Fun Fact #21: Bath has been known for it's natural hot springs for over 2,000 years.  The hot springs were used both as curative and religious places by native peoples, utilized by the Roman invaders, and by basically all those who have lived in Bath.  The spa had a major heyday in the Georgian era, influencing the design and architecture of the city.  Today, you can still have a relaxing day in the baths, but sadly not the Roman ones.

Day 16: Moving into Cardiff

With not much else to do in Newport, I had a relaxed morning in my hotel and then headed to the train station.  I knew I would be arriving in Cardiff earlier than I had told my next hotel, so I decided to wait for a later train.  The trains came so often, that waiting for three trains to go to Cardiff before boarding, I had only been in the station for about 20 minutes.  So I took the train and decided to have a long lunch in the station to arrive at my hotel at a more appropriate time.  I also decided to wait for the rain to lighten up a bit before walking the mile to my hotel.

It's hard to describe how excited I was to get to my hotel.  The walk to it, although a bit long with a  heavy suitcase, was through the center of Cardiff and I was really intrigued by the city.  But the thing that was the most exciting was the fact that I will be in my hotel for five consecutive nights.  No long haul to a hotel for a single night, a quick pack in the morning, and back on the train.  It feels like I am moving into this hotel.  This may become my new home.

After an hour or two of decompressing, I decided to wander towards Cardiff center.  I entered Sophia's Garden, a large, green park along the River Taff.  I walked right on the river bank, enjoying the quite of the setting.  I noticed what I believe is a grey heron fishing in the shallows.  As I worked to switch my camera lens to a longer zoom, the heron took off and I was able to capture some pictures of it flying and landing farther down the river.

I moved farther along the banks, trying to get closer so I could get more pictures of the bird.  As I walked, the poor heron began to be harassed by a flock of seagulls.  Before I was close enough to get photos, the gulls had chased the heron far down the river.

I crossed over a footbridge from Sophia's Garden to Bute Park, another part of Cardiff's "green lung."

I wandered aimlessly through the park, so I stumbled upon things, rather than knowing what I should be finding.  I saw the preserved layout of an old friary and a circle of standing stones, which I'm doubting are original.  Even in the rainy weather, the blooming flowers and the greenery reminded me of warmer seasons.

I angled my way towards Cardiff Castle and walked around the walls.  I'm already a big fan of the castle, and I've seen very little of it so far.  It has a dramatic, tall wall that is surrounded by a very proper moat.  I think the moat may be reformed and different from medieval times (certainly Roman times; the River Taff now runs a different course than it did in ancient times).  But still, it looks fantastic today!

  I got quite hungry pretty early in the evening so I started heading back towards my hotel and some restaurants in the area.  On my route back is the Animal Wall.  The wall was thought up in 1866, but not constructed until 1890.  The wall originally had nine animals climbing over the wall and six were added later.  They were renovated in 2010 and look fantastic.  It seems like the local zoo has had a massive escape and you'll see an elephant on Castle street at any second.

One last site I saw on my way back to my hotel was the Millennium Stadium.  It was built for the 1999 Rugby World Cup and has been used to host rugby and football matches, as well as concerts and large events.  I don't think the picture really does it justice, but it is a very interesting building! 

After my wandering, I stuffed myself with a gigantic calzone and had a quiet evening back at my hotel.  Excited to do more exploring tomorrow!

Fun Fact #16: Cardiff was named the capital of Wales in 1955.  Caernarfon was also considered for the capital city, but instead Cardiff was named and later became the seat for the National Assembly of Wales, now housed in a building called the Senedd.

Day 15: Making it to the Museum

Leaving Port Talbot, I headed to the "Pittsburgh of Wales," Newport.  People are really enjoying telling me what American equivalent I'm headed to next.  Again, I disagree, although I have never been to Pittsburgh either.  Newport reminds me of want-to-be Boston in a lot of ways.  It has a nice stretch along the River Usk that they are trying to develop into a center of arts and culture, but the process seems to be going slow.  There is a lot of construction and renovation happening around the city.  So the city really seems like a work in progress.

Traveling so much has made me lose sense of time.  I rarely know what day of the week it is, which almost became a major problem.  I was planning on heading to the Newport Museum, the point of my visit, tomorrow.  As I was walking to my hotel, I had a vague memory that today was Saturday and that most museums are closed on Sundays (you know, like most things).  So I thought to check the times on the museum, and turns out it is closed on Sundays.  It would have been horrible to miss another museum.

So I headed out towards the museum (and managed to get lost in the midst of the construction).  Once I found the museum, I was surprised to find a trove of Roman artifacts.  The museum contains many pieces from the excavations in Caerleon and Caerwent, two sites outside Cardiff that I will be seeing in the next few days.  The prehistoric and Roman room was well divided into different cases, such as ones dedicated to the region in the Iron Age and the Bronze Age.  Once it became more focused on the Roman occupation, the cases focused on Roman religion, domestic life, jewelry, the army, etc.  Here are just a few selections of the many interesting things from the museum.

This dish is from what is known as Caerleon ware.  The ware was produced in the Caerleon area and shows influence from other Roman pottery, such as the famous Samian ware.  Some of the pieces were even meant to imitate the Samian ware from Gaul, suggesting that the citizens of Caerleon wanted a cheaper, easier to get alternative to importing more pottery. 

There was also another style of local pottery, presumably more of a common, everyday pottery.  It was grey, rather than the preferred red tones found in Samian or Caerleon ware.

Another wonderful piece of the collection was a Roman glass urn with human remains still inside.  In the 1st and 2nd centuries, cremation was the main mode of Roman burial.  This changed later (and varied around the Empire), leading to many beautiful sarcophagi, but it is very cool to see the remains of a Roman, around 2,000 years later.  Or maybe I just find that cool...

The museum also had a beautiful collection of jewelry and clothing items, like this penannular brooch.  These brooches are a great example of Roman and Celtic fashions coming together.  They became particular popular in Roman Britain during the 3rd and 4th centuries, often adding images of animals to the brooches (not quite visible in this photo).

There were also some lovely fragments of frescoes discovered in Caerleon.  Most, like this depiction of a male figure, were done sometime in the 4th century, but there is evidence that there were earlier frescoes in some places that had been plastered over.

There is a great deal of evidence in this museum of the mixing of native British and Roman cultures.  Here is a depiction of a Celtic mother goddess found in a Roman home in Caerwent.  She seems to have been worshipped as a fertility goddess.  Other similar Celtic depictions included a male statue and an antefix tile with the depiction of a Celtic feline goddess (although this is not entirely certain).

A final, special gem was this Roman tile with a paw print in it.  It is very fun to imagine the ancient craftsmen making this tile and then watching a favorite dog run across it, ruining the tile.  It's wonderful when little bits like this survive in history!

After seeing the museum, I went a walk along the River Usk.  Below you can see the Riverfront Center, which houses a gallery and a performance space, and a pedestrian footbridge.  There is a nice walk running along the river itself.

My hotel, along with a many residential neighborhoods of Newport, lay across the River Usk.

A detail of the pedestrian footbridge.

Fun Fact #15: So this fact may not be quite a fact.  Like most museum displays, sources aren't cited, but the Newport Museum had a display titled "What money was worth at Caerwent in AD 122?"  I'm not quite sure where this information was derived, but here's what things cost in Caerwent 1,893 years ago!

Annual pay of a Roman legionary: 300 denarii

Half liter of wine: 1 as

Cloak: 5 denarii and 2 asses

Slave boy: 600 denarii

Loaf of bread: 2 asses

(Roman currency is confusing and variable, so for simplicity sake, at this time an as would have been worth 1/16th of a denarius)

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.