Highlights of the British Isles Trip, part II

This is a continuation of the best parts of my spring break trip to the British Isles. Find part I here.

As promised earlier, this post is to contain details on Northern Wales and an awakening of sorts. Let’s start with Wales.

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Caernarfon was calm and empty, which probably contributed to 1/3 of my enjoyment there. I shared the hostel with no more than two other people the entire time, and had a six-bed room to myself the whole time. They furnished cereal for breakfast, which was easy for them, but was an extra treat for a person who hadn’t had cereal for breakfast in way too long. The hostel also had surprisingly fast internet, though this was likely due to the emptiness. ALSO: They had a brand new puppy. Like, they brought it home the day before I arrived. It figured out stairs while I was there, but still didn’t quite get the hang of running and barking. So cute!

The city is situated right on the Strait of Anglesey with a view of the similarly-named island (the island is not also called “Strait of Anglesey – it’s not a strait. Duh). Snowdonia National Park is very close, but wasn’t visible from Caernarfon due to the welsh fog and/or night time. The castle was about 100 meters from my hostel, which itself was only separated from the Strait by the town wall and a bike path.

The castle is “where the Prince of Wales gets princed,” which how my dad contextualized his recommendation. Another part of his recommendation was written in a journal from the days of film cameras: “I went overboard and took ten photos that day.”  In the 21st century, I enjoyed not having the film constraint, as is made obvious in this post.

When I visited the castle, I kept saying “WOW!” Thorough recommendation on that one. It had the ruiney good looks that castles should have, but it also had plenty of information on why the ruins were the way they are (not that I’m mad or anything…Heidelberg!). Plenty of passages to scramble around, plenty of tiny staircases to climb. There was also a fair deal of head-bonk danger, but the cool factor made up for this.

One weird thing about Caernarfon – there were uncomfortably many parts of dead birds, just hanging out all over the place. Seagull wings, complete skeletons of smaller birds, and the like. I didn’t particularly care to know how they got there or what happened to the rest of the birds.

Quite close by is a rather unremarkable place with a most remarkable name: Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch, often shortened to Llanfair PG. The sign at the train station was particularly suited to being recorded in a panorama.

Just in case your eyes glazed right past the long, foreign, and likely unpronounceable-for-you word, take a look at four L’s in a row near the end. Welsh orthography will catch you off guard if you’re not careful. Here are a few tricks I picked up:

1. “F” sounds like “V”, but “ff” sounds like regular “f”.
2. A “w” goes “oo”
3. A double “dd” makes a “th” sound
4. The double “ll” is when your mouth makes the shape of an L, but then you breathe out. This is the best way I’ve come across to explain this particular noise. It’s not that easy.
5. Everybody in Wales speaks English, so just do your thing. They’re accustomed to you butchering their words, but are nonetheless really friendly and welcoming.

After Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch, I walked along the strait towards Beaumaris (“beautiful marsh,” approximately french), another nearby castle. Along the way, there were some fantastic views of Snowdonia. These mountains aren’t particularly high, but they apparently pose enough of a technical challenge that they served as a training platform for the team that first summited Everest.

Beaumaris would have been pretty thoroughly awesome had I not been to Caernarfon Castle the day before.  It was still cool, don’t get me wrong.  But it just wasn’t nearly as well-groomed as Caernarfon. However, the ruin-factor made it nonetheless VERY enjoyable. What it lacked in amenities was more than compensated by the sheer size of the place.

The complex has a concentric design, with a taller “keep” surrounded by a wall with an open-ish space between the two. The whole place is massive, in a way that could be explained, but is really best left to personal experience. The ruiny quality of the castle was also quite cool. Plenty of stones to scramble around, and plenty of staircases to run carefully walk up and down, and plenty of opportunities to imagine Castle life in the 1200s.

While we’re on the subject of castles and fortifications, let’s talk briefly about moats. Moats are not filled with alligators – this is Europe, not Florida. Rather, they’re open-ish areas that make attackers easy to fill with arrows. Bonus points for the defense team if the attackers are slowed down, for instance by the muddiness one might find in a beautiful marsh.

My least favorite part of Beaumaris was definitely the multitude of seagulls and pigeons that were hiding out in the nooks and crannies, waiting to fly out and scare you shirtless. At the very least, very few of these birds seemed to be dead or mutilated.

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And now for the awakening. This was in Cambridge. Last day on the trip, before heading back to Germany. Of course I’m going to spend my last day in the English-speaking world watching the new Star Wars film – The Force Awakens, of course! And what a treat it was. The theater was as empty as Caernarfon, and the film lived up to all of my expectations. I was embarrassingly excited, which made the emptiness of the theater even better.