Trips

 

Tues., 5/31/16 – Holyhead, Wales
        What a wonderful day Marge and I had today! It was sunny, the sky was blue, and the beautiful Welsh countryside green and lush. Since we had done the tour that the groups would do today, not once, but twice, we rented a car and took off on our own.  It was an adventure!  First of all, even though the Hertz agency was in the ferry/port terminal we were not allowed to walk there because it is a working port and dangerous.  We did not find out until much later that the Stena Ferry Line shuttle buses would transport us so we waited an extra hour for our ship tour bus to take us to the terminal.
        We had reserved a Ford Fiesta with manual transmission (automatics are more than three times as expensive to rent), and, of course, right-hand drive. It was bright red! Marge drove and I navigated with the not too detailed maps we had collected. 
        Our mission was to find some of the ruins and standing stones Marge had researched before we left home.  It was like a scavenger hunt using a British car and driving around narrow one-lane roads that took two-way traffic.  There was usually a pasture wall or a hedgerow right at the edge of the pavement.  I could have picked a bouquet of flowers out of the window.  We have bike paths wider than many of the roads we were on today.
        We headed off of Holyhead Island onto Anglesey Island and tuned north to find the Presaddfed Burial Chamber near Bodedern (don’t even try to pronounce the Welsh names, it is nearly impossible until you get the hang of it).  We found the stones of two Neolithic communal burials: one, a large flat stone sitting on top of five standing stones, and a similar structure partly collapsed.

Isle of Anglesey Yellow lines mark the path of our drive around Anglesey and Holyhead Islands in search of ancient ruins.
MV Corinthian docked at Holyhead, Wales
Presaddfed Burial Chamber	Presaddfed Burial Chamber
Presaddfed Burial Chamber	Next we drove north to the cute seaside town of Cemaes where we decided to park and explore.  The tide was out in the bay and the boats and sailboats were all sitting high and dry.  The sailboats have three “fins” on the hull to enable them to sit upright, but they had no visible keel.  Maybe the three fins do the same job.  It was a beautiful day so we bought coffee and Welsh cakes (like scones) and sat by the sea watching people playing on the extremely long beach.  Tides here run 15 or 16 feet over a very shallow sandy bottom.
Town of Cemaes - beach and boat harbor	Town of Cemaes - tide out on the beach
Welsh signs	Welsh signs - at least there are pictures
Town of Cemaes -boat harbor	Town of Cemaes
Town of Cemaes	Penysarn copper mine
Penysarn copper mine	Penysarn copper mine
We continued on past the Penysarn copper mine (closed) and down to Moelfre and found a delightful site, Din Lligwy.  There was the shell of an early 12th c. satellite (closer to the village than the larger parish church) chapel - Lligwy Chapel - and the stone foundation ruins of a Welsh settlement founded (at least) during the Roman occupation of Wales from the 3rd and 4th c. CE.  There were outlines of several oval buildings inside a stone wall.
	Lligwy Chapel
Lligwy Chapel	View from Lligwy Chapel
Lligwy Chapel
Din Lligwy site from the air (photo from Anglesey: A Guide to Ancient Monuments of the Isle of Anglesey)	Path up to the Din Lligwy site
Din Lligwy	Din Lligwy
Din Lligwy	Din Lligwy
Next we drove southwest and found the Barclodiad y Gawres Burial cave or Giant’s Apron.  It is on a headland of another sandy bay (it was still low tide). The site was under construction with a bulldozer sitting at the entrance and a “keep out” fence surrounding it.
Plan of the Barclodiad y Gawres Burial Chamber (from Anglesey: A Guide to Ancient Monuments of the Isle of Anglesey	Barclodiad y Gawres Burial Chamber
Barclodiad y Gawres Burial Chamber	Barclodiad y Gawres Burial Chamber site
View of the beach from the Barclodiad y Gawres Burial Chamber	We drove back toward Holyhead and stopped to eat our picnic lunch at a new truck stop.  As we were ready to leave, I noticed a standing stone in the field across from the truck stop.  It was the Ty-Mawr standing stone we had been driving around  looking for.  It had been standing there from the time of the early Bronze Age (2000-1500 BCE).  The sheep use the field and the ranchers leave the stones as they were.
	Ty-Mawr Standing Stone
Ty-Mawr Standing Stone	We drove north and west to the South Stacks and saw two more stones on top of a hill but did not hike up to them.  Instead we drove to Penrhos, drove past the stones (not seeing them because they are in a yard behind a house), asked a lady walking her dog on the very narrow lane, she gave directions, backed up and turned around while another car waited for our maneuver,  found a place to pull in, and walked into another meadow to look at Penrhos Feilw, two early Bronze Age tall standing stones.
	Penrhos Feilw Standing Stones
Penrhos Feilw Standing Stones	Lichen on one of the Penrhos Feilw Standing Stones
View from the Penrhos Feilw Standing Stones	On our way back to port we saw the sign for the old Roman Fort, Caer Gybi, and stopped to take a look.  The fort walls now surround a church and graveyard.  The fort stones were recycled to build the church.
Holyhead Fort (Caer Gybi Roman)	Holyhead Fort (Caer Gybi Roman)
Church of St. Cybi at the fort	Church of St. Cybi - sun dial
Holyhead Fort (Caer Gybi Roman)	Millennium Bridge

        We drove around some more to find “petrol” to fill the gas tank before returning the car to Hertz.  It cost 9.65 British pounds ($14.50) to have driven 100 miles on this adventure.  We parked the car at the ferry terminal and asked three people before the security lady called a Stena Lines shuttle bus to come and take us to the MV Corinthian.  We got back to the ship at 6 PM after a wonderful, fun 8-hour excursion.
        After dinner we were entertained by a male Welsh choir.  The director was 93-year-old and introduced each piece with a bit of dry Welsh humor.  The singers were all over 65-years-old but they were quite good.  We enjoyed their entertainment.
        (Please don’t think I misspelled all of these place names.  They are Welsh names and the Welsh language is like no other!)

Continue on next page