Grosmont Castle

Grosmont Castle is near Abergavenny, Wales.

Once upon a time it must have been a spectacular sight.

If you want to know more about the castle
and it's history, here is a link:

http://www.castlewales.com/grosmnt.html




The walls remain quite high,
but it is not easy to work out what was where.




It was a very misty winter's day today,
but the setting is quite beautiful.



This is what's left of a 700 year old
chimney - and it's still pretty impressive!

Bronllys Castle

Bronllys Castle is about 10 miles from my home - it is a ruin which is too unsafe to enter, but can be admired from the exterior.

Gerald of Wales mentioned it when he undertook his trip around Wales in 1188...



If you want to know more, check this link out:

http://www.castlewales.com/bronllys.html

Caernarfon Castle

Caernarfon Castle - built by Edward the First to dominate the Welsh.
The castle was built on the site of an old Roman Fort,
which had been replaced by a motte and bailey castle.

The name Caernarfon means - fort (Caer) yn Arfon
(by the Arfon, the name of the river next to the Castle).

Edward had been to the middle east as a Crusader,
and modelled the striped walls on those of Constantinople,
where huge striped walls dominated the straights of the Bosphorus.

It cost him a fortune to build Caernarfon Castle,
over £12,000 in the 1280s,
and he had to bring craftsmen from all over England to do it.
(well, you couldn't expect the Welsh to co-operate!!!).

Several hundred years later,
the castle brings lots of visitors and their spending money into the town,
so what began as a symbol of dominance over the Welsh
has ended up being an asset to Caernarfon.

Don't forget you can click on the photos for a better view.

The wall above the main entrance,
with a carving of Edward 1st.

The windows were beautiful,
and may even have had glass in them once.
Many windows of this time were shuttered as glass
was new technology and very expensive!

A view of the inner ward of the castle,
looking from the Eagle tower.

This block houses the Welsh Fusiliers regimental museum.

Views of part of the castle walls (above & below)

The Eagle Tower - so called because there was a large carved eagle on one of the turrets - it is still there, but is so weathered that you might not recognise it as an eagle. There may have been eagles flying free in north Wales at the time the castle was built, but they have been extinct in Wales for many many years.

As well as building the castle,
Edward built a town wall - to keep the Welsh out.
Only the privileged and English lived in the town!

You can see some of the wall above, and below.

Cymer Abbey

It was a wild, wet, windy, Welsh winter's day, when I visited the remains of Cymer Abbey, just north of Dolgellau. I will come back and see if I can get better images in the summer....

The Abbey as seen from the car park.
This was once home to many Cistercian monks.
These ruins are more than 800 years old.
The Abbey was dissolved over 500 years ago.
If you want to know more about the Abbey,
have a look at this website:

http://www.castlewales.com/cymer.html

A doorway looking out over what was once a cloister?

An arch in the wall - I must find out what this was.

A set of 3 beautiful arches.

Christmas day walk - aka the Holy Tree walk

We went for a walk on Christmas Day morning, as the weather was good.

We started off about 4 miles from home at a small village called Llanfrynach, and I saw the magnificent Yew avenue leading to the church door. Yews are often planted in and around churchyards, and can live to be very old - thousands of years old - they are the longest living plants in Europe. Every part of the yew is toxic, but some birds are immune to the toxins and can eat the berries. The yew was exceptionally important to the Celtic people, and perhaps the planting of yews in and around churchyards is another example of the early church taking existing pagan symbols and ceremonies and incorporating them into the 'new' religion so that it would be somewhat familiar to those who joined. yews were also a very important tree in medieval times as the wood was particularly good for making longbows. In fact, there was a serious shiortage of yew wood for longbow making in 1350, and king Henry II ordered his bowyer to enter private land and cut as much yew wood as he needed.

The church porch window with holly branches as decoration.

A large oak tree, with an enormous growth on the trunk. I wonder what causes this?

A close up of the growth

This is also oak bark, but with lichens and moss growing on it.
I love the texture and colours.

We saw many trees with hollow trunks and holes, I took pictures of a few of them. This one appears to have very little inside, and yet it didn't look dead - I did wonder how it remained standing, though!

This was another hole - this time at the base of a tree.
We decided it would make a nice hole for fairies to hide in!

This was quite a large tree - you can see a small hole roughly in the centre of the picture but the large irregular shape at the bottom right was also a hole right through the tree...

This tree was just spectacular - unfortunately there is nothing nearby to give any idea of scale, and I had to stand quite some distance away to be able to get the whole tree in shot.
We estimated that the distance from the ground to where the first branches leave the trunk is about 12 foot, making the tree over 100 feet tall... and wide...
I must come back in summer and take a picture of it in leaf.

This is an old abandoned farmhouse. The views are fabulous in all directions. I guess there were either no children to inherit the farm, or maybe it was just too small to be profitable. There is a deep valley between the front of the buildings and he hills in the distance.

This is a close up of the farmhouse wall - wonderful colours
and textures provided by the local stone, ferns & lichen.

Carreg Cennen

Carreg Cennen castle, near Llandeilo.
The castle is built on a huge rock, and there is a sheer drop on the other side...
It was a wild, wet & windy day, and I didn't take too many photographs.
If you want to know more, check this site out:

http://www.castlewales.com/carreg.html

The walls are pretty dilapidated - the 'doorway' near the person is actually the exit shute from the garderobe (toilet) in the apartments high above...

A good example of an arrow slit, also showing how thick the walls are.

A close up of some of the stonework (apologies for raindrops on lens!).

A musket hole - unlike the arrow slit you don't seem
to be able to see who/what you are firing at...

The walkway down to the cave.... which was steep, dark, and spooky!

The cave entrance, we didn't venture in too far,
as our torch batteries were running low.

Deeper and deeper - next time I visit,
I will take a wind-up torch, and go deeper into the cave....

Cricieth Castle

The castle from afar - don't forget you can click on photos to enlarge them and have a closer look! Once upon a time, this castle would have been rendered with lime mortar and limewashed white, so it would have been a visible from a long way away. This castle was built in 1230, and was obviously difficult for enemies to approach without being seen.

The view of the front entrance to the castle, from the outside.

The view of the front entrance to the castle, from the inside. Much of this castle is ruined.

You can see the holes in the wall where the ends of huge wooden beams
once were, supporting a floor.

Wonder where the stairway originally went?

Looking from the castle at Cricieth town - notice the differences between the roofs - the original roofs are in local slate, the refurbished darker ones are not. Sad that it is cheaper and easier to import slate form China and other far away places than to bring it 20 miles from the local slate mines.

The view of Snowdonia from the castle