Day 7: Finding A Flat Fort

Today the weather in Caernarfon was much improved.  I woke up to sunny skies and a warm day.  After a nice breakfast in my B&B and a relaxed morning, I headed out of the main part of Caernarfon, towards the Roman fort Segontium.  The fort sits just outside the medieval part of Caernarfon on a slight rise near the Seiont River.  From the position, the fort would have had views of most of the countryside and out towards the Menai Strait and Anglesey.  Sadly for me, the visitor center at Segontium was closed, so I dove straight into the site.

The ruins are solely the foundations of the buildings in the fort and a few bits of the walls.  This made it quite difficult to get a sense of the fort initially: just an expanse of low-lying stones.  Also, with just a small pamphlet with a barebones information, it took me a few minutes of walking around to identify where I was with in the fort.  But once I got the lay of the land, things fell into place.  The majority of the structures were barracks for the Roman auxiliary troops stationed in Segontium.  Based on the number and size of barracks, it seemed that the fort, if fully manned, would host around 1,000 soldiers.  Other structures in the fort included storage buildings, troop headquarters, the commander's home, and a small bath complex.

The headquarters, part of which is shown above, contained the regimental shrine, offices, and a judgement hall.  Not all of the foundations of the headquarters were visible.  They disappear into a hedge and then into someone's (a very lucky someone) backyard.  Sadly, this is true for a lot of the site; there are structures over parts of the fort and a major road leading into Caernarfon cuts right through the fort, even overlapping with the via principalis for a ways.  It seemed that the room depicted above was a large, two-story hall, based on the slots in the floor to fit wooden columns.  It also could have been some sort of porticoed entrance or meeting room to the headquarters.  In a small room, towards one end of the headquarters, a strongroom had been added in the 3rd century CE. 

I was struck by how large the commander's house was, especially in comparison to the headquarters.  As I realized that I couldn't see the entire layout of the headquarters, I was less confused, but the commander's home still seemed far too large to be just a residence.  There were many rooms of varying size and a large courtyard of the building.  It seemed to be a building of quite importance.  Segontium was the most important fort in northern Wales, acting to control the region in conjunction with other forts, like Chester.  The size of the commander's house makes it seem like the fort would have also served a more administrative and political function in the area, possibly as way for the  Romans to establish greater control over locals or establish more of a Roman population in the area.

According to my little pamphlet, there was a civilian home within the fort at one point.  This seems odd to me, but I'm not certain of its abnormality.  It did seem to fall into the idea that Segontium served a more political function, especially if the building was home to an official in the province or someone of such importance.  The home was later converted into a bath complex, but not completed. This part of the fort was across the road leading into Caernarfon, surrounded by a wall and with a locked gate.  Despite seeing multiple locals hop the wall or gate, I decided to not test my luck.  I think there are things the Welsh locals can get away with more easily than an American tourist.  I settled for walking around the remains of the walls of the fort.  The site of the fort had been built up by the Romans and presumably a defensive ditch had also been dug around the fort.  Along the wall remains, I came across the base of one of the towers in the wall.  Along with this tower base, I was able to see the foundations of two of the four major gates of the fort.  It was very cool to see how the  gates perfectly aligned with the major Roman roads of the fort.

After wandering around the walls, I had seen what I could of the fort.  Still in the mood to walk around, I headed to a church a few dozen feet away from Segontium.  The church was closed, but the grounds were open so I walked around.  The church was surrounded by a graveyard, but quite a unique one.  I'm not sure why, if it was through lack of care or intentionally, but the entire graveyard was filled with wild grasses and flowers.  It was quite amazing to see; the stones stood, but the land had been reclaimed by nature.  It felt very appropriate for some reason.  I loved the contrast of the fixed, unmoving tombstones in the fields of waving grasses and blossoming flowers.

I came back to Caernarfon for a nice, quick lunch and decided to explore the exterior of the castle more.  Apparently, when it was originally constructed, the castle was banded with different colors (somewhat visible in the stones; look for a reddish tone) in a way similar to Roman forts.  I crossed the swing bridge over the harbor (after I saw it open and close for a tour boat) and walked along the coast.  I spent a relaxing while on a little, rocky beach skipping stones into the Menai Strait.

I walked lazily back, going along the promenade running alongside the Strait and the medieval walls. With not much left to explore, I headed back to my hotel.  I had a relatively uninteresting afternoon.  Caernarfon was my last reserved hotel, so the afternoon was spent trying to plan for the next coming days and running into many, many roadblocks.  It seems like I now have plan for the coming days, but I will update as I go!

I had a relaxed dinner and managed to finish "The City and the Pillar," which continued to be an amazing read and I'm excited to have finished such a good book, but sad it's over!  Hopefully I will continue to have good luck with books this summer!

Fun Fact #7: Gwynedd, the county in which Caernarfon is located, has the highest proportion of Welsh speakers in Wales.  The Caernarfon area also has a noticeable and distinct dialect, that is supposedly hard for even the Welsh speakers to understand.  I, who speaks and understands zero Welsh, was surprised to find that I could tell the Caernarfon dialect from other Welsh I've heard on this trip.

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.