White Castle, Monmouthshire, Wales

Not such a beautiful day to take photographs -
and the dull skies make the castle look a little grim!
This castle is along a country lane
about 7 or 8 miles from Abergavenny,
and is perched on a hilltop (like many other castles).
The views must be stunning on a clear day.


Here is the entrance - two large defensive towers
and a nice archway,
accessed over a modern bridge over the moat - there
once would have been a drawbridge, of course.



An arrowloop - good for shooting arrows out of,
hard to shoot arrows into,
and therefore protecting the archer.



A view of the curtain wall (the outside wall) of the castle,
where you can see two of the towers.



There's not much left of the insides of the castle.





The views from the top of the tower
are stunning - but not very clear on this glum day.

Skenfrith, Wales

Skenfrith is a beautiful small village between Abergavenny & Monmouth. In addition to a ruined castle and wonderful church, there are some interesting old houses, and 'The Bell at Skenfrith' - a fabulous pub restaurant in which to eat superb food!

Here are some pictures of parts the castle:

I have no idea what this feature once was!


The remains of an old fireplace.

A window, with some of the original
13th century ironwork still in place.


The watergate, in the plain high walls,
leading to the nearby river
(viewed from the river side).


Inside the tower - you can clearly see the square holes in the walls, where big wooden beams once rested, supporting the wooden floor of a room.


The tower itself.
Not much of the castle remains,
other than the tower and the external walls.

Below are some pictures of old gravestones in Skenfrith churchyard - they may have fallen over as the years have passed, and now they are positioned against the churchyard wall:





This is an interesting window,
in a wooden 'lean to' extension or garage
on the side of one of the houses


A beautiful original door in one of the village's old houses


One of the church windows


The beautiful church tower.

If you want to know more about Skenfrith castle, look here:

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

and more about the Bell at Skenfrith:

http://www.skenfrith.co.uk

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.