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.

Day 4: Island Hopping (Welsh Style)

I had a quite morning in Prestatyn, doing a bit of research on trains and catching up on some videos (I hadn't left much to do in Prestatyn before my train).  I caught the hour and a half long train ride to Holyhead.  Holyhead is the largest town on Holy Island, a small island off the coast of Anglesey, a relatively large island off northwestern Wales.  I was surprised to learn that a. Holyhead is the largest town in the county of Anglesey with only 11,500 people and b. Holyhead has 84% of the island's 13,700 population.  To get to my new destination, I had to pass through Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch, more commonly known as Llanfairpwll or Llanfair PG.  It has the distinct honor of having the second longest place name in the world and the longest place name in Europe.

Both guidebooks I've been using were pretty down on Holyhead, but I wanted to keep an open mind.  So far, I've had a mixed experience.  Holyhead is a transition town.  It used to be the major access point between Ireland and Britain, with ferries going back and forth.  With the rise of affordable airfare, this travel died down and so did Holyhead.  I think this has made the community somewhat wary of visitors, though they still have many come through on the ferries.  As I walked through the town I got many stares, presumably as I was obviously a tourist (big backpack, camera around my neck, constantly checking signs and my phone, etc.).  The stares were neither friendly nor hostile, but (with a few exceptions) it's the iciest experience I've had on the trip so far.

There's not terribly much to see in Holyhead.  I went straight to see St Cybi's Church, also known as Caer Gybi (Cybi's Fort).  The small church is built within the walls of a small Roman fort.  The Roman fort, whose Latin name is unknown, is fairly unique as it was a three walled fort; the fourth wall of the fort was the sea.  Though the sea has retreated since Roman times, it used to come to the bottom of the ledge on which the church sits.  The fort walls were also built down to the water, creating a protected harbor.  The fort had a series of towers along the walls, presumably with parapets and ramparts running between them.  It is thought that the fort was built in the 4th century to help deal with Irish raiders.  This means it may have been linked to the Roman watchtower on top of Holyhead Mountain (where I'm headed tomorrow!).  It is possible that the watchtower could have warned Roman naval forces, who then motivated from this fort to deal with the coming barbarians.

After visiting Caer Gybi, I walked around Holyhead more.  I quickly learned that there is a Royal Air Force station nearby because I saw six or eight military jets fly over and had a startling experience when a Sea King, a search and rescue helicopter, flew very low overhead.  Unfortunately, the Maritime Museum, one of the few things to do in Holyhead, had already closed for the day, so I wandered to the Ucheldre Centre, an art gallery and performance space housed in an old chapel.  From there I wandered along the coast and spotted an interesting way the teens of Holyhead entertain themselves: jumping off a 25 or 30 foot pier.  I watched these kids jump off over and over again and I was not the only spectator.  Can't say I was tempted to join them.

I had a nice dinner at a hotel near my B&B and tried a strawberry and lime cider that was delicious.  Then I headed back to my room for a quiet evening.  I'm hoping to head to bed on the earlier side as I have a long day of walking tomorrow.  I'm going up Holyhead Mountain (which is not a mountain, but a 720 foot hill) and from there go to South Stack, which is on the other side of the island, but home to a spectacular lighthouse.  Hopefully it will be a fun day!  But it will require well rested feet.

Fun Fact #4: Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, trained and flew search and rescue helicopters out of RAF Valley (the station on Anglesey), making him the first British royal to live in Wales since Henry VII.