After a very pleasant breakfast at Snowdonia Mountain Lodge, we went for a walk along the creek near a slate mine. It’s amazing that they use slate for everything – walls, fences (including huge fence posts) and curbing on the road. The lady in the office told us that this valley (and only this valley in this part of the world) was glacial in origin. You can see that it is different.
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| Snowdonia |
Just outside our room at the lodge was one of the 7 peace flame monuments established around the world in 1999 (there is also supposed to be one at Byron Bay although I'm not sure where?). To quote Archbishop Desmond Tuto, “The symbolic flame is an expression of our shared humanity. We are created to cooperate together for the common good to make this a world where caring and sharing matter more than things, where tolerance and understanding are fostered and justice brings hope and security to all.” We lit candles before we headed off.
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| The Peace Flame at Snowdonia |
Next stop – Bangor. We couldn’t work out where/why the song “Day trip to Bangor” originated as we couldn’t find a lot of the ‘things’ mentioned in the song. They do have a pier and that’s about it. Googled it later and someone reckoned that the song was actually written about Rhyl a bit further along the coast but that Rhyl didn’t fit the song.
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| Bangor Pier |
On to Penrhyn Castel (a national trust site). It was very impressive both in what you could see (set up as it would have been in the 1890s) and the fact that every room had an attendant that was very informative and obviously loved their job. The kitchen was particularly impressive with plastic meat, fruit, veges, cakes etc depicting how it would have been.
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| Penrhyn Castle |
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| The dinner 'spread' at Penrhyn Castle |
The castle was originally a medieval fortified manor house and was added onto several times in 1438 and in the 1780s. The present building was created between 1820 and 1840 by Thomas Hopper who expanded and transformed the building into the ‘Norman Castle’ look alike we see today. Hopper's client was George Hay Dawkins-Pennant, who had inherited the Penrhyn estate on the death of his second cousin, Richard Pennant, who had made his fortune from Jamaican sugar and local slate quarries. The eldest of George's two daughters, Juliana, married Grenadier Guard, Edward Gordon Douglas, who, on inheriting the estate on George's death in 1845, adopted the hyphenated surname of Douglas-Pennant.
From Penrhyn, it was quite a drive to Llangollen. Had a nice late lunch and a nice coffee at Frouzie’s. Went for a walk along the river and bought some fruit. We then went searching for the Aqueduct. Got to see it from the distance but couldn’t find a road that would take us close to it. Perhaps you had to do it as a boat trip from Llangollen.
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| LLangollen |
From there it was on the expressway to Chester where we stayed at the Premier Inn on the edge of the city. Dinner at the pub next door.
