Wales

I am, by some reckoning, half Welsh -- or at least Welsh and Cornish, both of which point to Celtic roots. Ten years ago our family spent the night in the little village in southern Wales that some ancestors on my mother's side left a 150 (or so) years ago. But we had never been to northern Wales, which is supposed to be the most scenic part. Last week we fixed that by going on a scouting trip in anticipation of taking students on a field trip there next spring.

The weather was absolutely terrible. We seem to have a knack for picking the worst possible weather for excursions (see posts regarding Ireland, below). It was rainy, foggy, windy and cold pretty much the entirety of our trip, so some of the scenic aspects were lost on us. But our B&B in Llandudno, the seaside mecca for geriatric British tourists, provided some nice views of the bay between showers.

Llandudno, Wales

Sheep and mining seem to be major themes of Welsh history: We visited a woolen mill that looked as if it had been built at the height of the Industrial Revolution. It was water powered, though the old belt and wheel system had been replaced by an electric generator attached to the water wheel. I always imagined steam power running these things, but coal cost money and water running down the mountains was essentially free. The actual carding, spinning, and weaving machinery still in use was remarkably ancient.

We visited several slate mining sites. One was commercial, expensive, melodramatic, and made us wait endlessly in line (or "in a queue" as the Brits say). It didn't help that every family in Britain who had come to Wales on holiday was looking for someplace to be out of the rain! The other was a free national museum in which we saw and learned more. It, too, featured water power -- a gigantic water wheel with a belt and wheel system still operating through the facility.

There was significant emphasis on the tradition of the working class Welsh, despite long hours in the mines, to take time to sing, read poetry, discuss sports, or debate politics. It reminded me of my maternal grandfather -- a farmer with an 8th grade education who read incessantly and had an encyclopedic memory for baseball and politics.

Castles are also a big part of Welsh history. Those pesky Celts simply refused to be conquered, so the Romans, the Normans, and the English all built fortifications to try to keep them under control. Conwy and Caernarfon castles were on our list. Both are remarkable accomplishments of Edward I "Longshanks," an English king who had his hands full with both Celtic Scots and Celtic Welsh. The movie Braveheart portrayed him as an evil tyrant, which he may have been. But he was an evil genius when it came to castle building.

Mark (half Welsh) in the rain at Caernarfon castle

The Welsh language is another feature that's held onto with great pride. It's best for those of us who don't speak it to simply understand that nothing is spelled as it sounds, "w" is sometimes a vowel, and we won't pronounce it correctly, no matter how hard we try.

On the way home we stopped in Shrewsbury (boyhood home of Charles Darwin, sometime residence of Charles Dickens, another castle, and Medieval architecture), Iron Bridge (Industrial Revolution again), and Coventry. Coventry Cathedral is quite an amazing site! It was a lot of driving in three days, and it was good to get in touch with my Celtic roots, but even better to get back home.