Day 14: Missing the Museum

Today I headed to the "Detroit of Wales," as described by a gentleman I met in St. Peter's Church yesterday.  The town that earns this lovely title is Port Talbot.  I've never been to Detroit, so I can't attest to the comparison, but I think it's certainly an exaggeration.  Port Talbot seemed much more like New Haven, Connecticut to me, with a mixture of affluent portions, residential areas, and purely urban sectors.  Sadly, there is much less to do in Port Talbot than there is in New Haven.

I came to Port Talbot to visit the Margam Stones Museum, a small museum with ancient and medieval stones from around Wales.  I made my way from my hotel, towards the museum, with the trusty help of Google Maps.  Twenty minutes later, I found myself standing outside a video rental store (that was shockingly still open!).  After walking confusedly around the block, I asked the woman working in the store and she had never heard of the museum.  She recommended I head towards the Margam Country Park, around 3 miles down the road.

I decided to see if Apple Maps would have better luck and it did!  The Margam Stones Museum popped up and I started my quest again.  Another twenty minutes of power-walking, and I was at the location of the museum...supposedly.  Once again, the map had led me to the wrong location.  I was able to figure out where the actual museum was by exploring the map on my app, but it was still about a mile and a half away.  At that point, there was no chance I could make it to the museum before their last entry.  Sadly, I had missed what I had come to Port Talbot for.  I may try to go tomorrow morning, but I probably won't have time to head out again.  So I took around 7 mile walk today, searching for a museum that is very hard to find.

My mother put it best thought: "You've done remarkably well so far in getting to everything you meant to see, using all modes of transportation. If you miss this one you are still scoring high."  And many of the pieces in the museum are online, so I'm not totally out of luck.

Since I spent most of my day power-walking around Port Talbot, I didn't end up taking pictures of anything I saw.  So I decided to dedicate the pictures to an important aspect of the trip: how I keep myself entertained when I'm not doing research.

Here are the two guidebooks I am using for my travels, published by Lonely Planet and Rough Guides.  I'm not going to comment on their quality, as they I have not been using them as thoroughly nor as intended (they're not really designed for touring Roman Wales), so it would be unfair to give a review.  They are handy to have in a pinch and do give some fun facts.  I think if I was just exploring Wales, they would be great resources.  Right now they mainly just give me tiny bits of information on the towns I'm heading to next.

There has been no better way to pass the time on the many train rides I've had than knitting.  I started this cowl before I left for the trip, but hadn't done much.  Now I'm pretty proud of my progress and I'm around halfway done.  Although I get some strange looks, I also get a lot of smiles when I whip out my knitting.  And it's nice to do something productive while stuck on a train!

My real winning combo is knitting while listening to some of my favorite podcasts.  I was able to get a replacement cushion for my earbud, so my music and podcasts were back in business.  I have a lot of podcasts I love, but some of my favorites are those in which people come on stage and tell a true story from their life.  An hour long episode of The Moth, a podcast in this vein, got me through my long walk back after my failed attempt at finding the museum today.

I've also been keeping a journal since I've been on my trip, writing an entry everyday (or the next morning when I forget).  I've never really kept a travel journal before, and really only started this one at the request of my boyfriend.  The idea is that we will both write entries once we are traveling together in Bath and London.  As I want to keep the contents a surprise for him, I can't say much else at the moment!

Finally, having non-academic reading has a been a lovely addition to the trip.  I talked about how much I loved "The City and the Pillar" by Gore Vidal in multiple earlier posts.  I also have along one of my favorite collections of short stories.  The collection was a text in my freshman year English class in high school and has a wonderful collection of diverse and beautiful stories.  Still a collection I can always get lost in.

So although I've been focused on going from town to town, seeing Roman site after Roman site, I've found a bit of time to unwind and do somethings that aren't quite in the sphere of the ancient world!

Day 6: Clambering Around Castles

Today I had a bit of a break day, which my feet definitely approved of.  I checked out of my B&B in Holyhead and headed to the train station.  Since there was not much to do, I got on the first train leaving, and one stop later, I was in Bangor.  Here I was to grab a bus to Caernarfon.  I realized that if I took the first bust that came along I would make it into Caernarfon over three hours before I could check into my new B&B.  I decided to wait.  I plopped down on a bench in the train station and read for about an hour and a half and it was truly a pleasure.

I'm currently reading "The City and the Pillar" by Gore Vidal.  The story follows a young man, Jim Willard, as he chases his best friend from high school (and lover for one night) around the world.  It's beautifully, if not starkly, written and a very engaging story.  It's particularly striking because it was first published in 1948 (although the ending was apparently reworked by Vidal in 1965), yet it tells a very frank and open story of a young man questioning his sexuality and entering a world very different from that of heteronormative society.  I've been devouring the book and will quite likely finish it tonight.

Eventually I decided to catch a bus and made it into Caernarfon still too early to check in.  So I abandoned my suitcase and decided there was no time like the present to explore the castle!  It was a gray day, with light rain/mist, so obviously the ideal conditions to climb lots of steep, stone staircases.

The castle has so much history that I cannot try to capture it in this post, nor do I think I fully understand it.  The present structure that stands today was built in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, as an English statement of power in Wales.  The first non-native Prince of Wales, and future king of England, Edward II, was born here, according to legend.  The castle was believed to be set up as possible royal seat for the English monarch when in Wales, but was probably not used for this purpose.  In its later history, the castle became the battleground for during multiple Welsh rebellions and the English Civil War.  In 1911, it was first used as the sight of the Prince of Wales's investiture and again in 1969, for the current Prince of Wales.

The castle is large, consisting of a fairly well preserved outer wall, dotted with towers.  The inner structures of the castle are destroyed, but the passages and rooms inside the towers and wall are there for the exploring.  I first made my way up the Granary Tower.  I followed the spiral staircase with a rope bannister (the design for all the tower staircases) up all the way to the top of the tower (the highest bit towards the left of the photo below).  Luckily, I was alone in the Granary Tower because I looked quite foolish.  The stairs were not pleasant to climb and then atop the tower I did a bizarre dance of trying to take pictures while simultaneously clinging to something that wasn't too close to the edge.  There was nothing of the sort so I sort of ran between the edge of the tower to take a picture, then towards the staircase, which was equally unpleasant, and back towards the edge.  After maybe a minute or so up there, I had had more than enough and retreated back down the tower.

I walked along the walls of the castle, which after the tower seemed barely off the ground, and explored the old rooms.  In one part of the castle, a thoroughly amusing and informative movie about the history of the castle played.  It isn't possible to walk the walls all the way around the castle, and wanting to see everything I could, I was constantly climbing down from the walls to read a sign, or climbing back up the walls to get to the next tower.  Above the main entrance to the castle, the unfinished King's Gate, I explored the Well Tower, which contains a 50' well within the walls, and the small chapel, directly above the entrance.  The chapel had a lovely window that would have looked over the medieval walled town and small inset with two basins in the stone for holy water.  I'm unsure if the chapel was finished, as it was towards the unfinished areas of the Gate.

Perhaps the most striking, and best intact, part of the castle is Eagle Tower (below).  The tower is thought to have been the main residential part of the castle, designed for royalty (although probably inhabited by the King's representative in Wales).  The interior has been restored to some degree to show what the rooms might have looked like with wooden floors and plastered ceilings.  The bedchamber was massive, with two lovely windows, completed with staircases up to them and window seats designed to look out over the water.  Continuing up to the top of the tower, the views were equally stunning.  The tower looks out of the Menai Strait, which separates Anglesey from the rest of Wales.  It was possible to climb up one of the two towers added on to Eagle Tower, but I didn't feel any need to do that again.

As I was leaving the castle, it seemed like an acting troupe was setting up in the castle grounds.  They had a small stage setup in what seemed to be Juliet's balcony and rack of period costumes.  It certainly would make a striking scene!

As I wandered out of the castle, having successfully killed enough time to finally check into my B&B, I was struck by the colors playing in the arches of King's Gate.  It seems that from any angle, Caernarfon Castle is a beauty.

Fun Fact #6: The Romans are impossible to escape (not that I would ever want to!).  In Welsh mythology, Caernarfon was home to a Roman emperor named Macsen Wledig.  Clearly not a Roman name, but he was actually Magnus Maximus, a Western Roman Emperor from 383 to 388 CE.  The legend says that Magnus Maximus had a dream of a castle and a beautiful maiden.  He sent his men to find this place and this woman, and eventually they found both at Caernarfon.  He travelled there and married the woman, named Elen or Helen, immediately.  Accounts vary, some saying that he left and his power was encroached, forcing him to return and never leave, or that Elen refused to live in Rome so he ruled the Empire from Wales.  In reality, Magnus Maximus usurped power from the emperor Gratian and was given control of Britain and Gaul.  He ruled from Trier (in Gaul) before deciding to try his luck at taking Italy under his power as well.  His co-emperors did not approve, and Theodosius I defeated Magnus Maximus at the Battle of the Save and exiled him to the Italian Alps.  It seems pretty unlikely that Macsen Wledig and Elen had their happily ever after in Wales.