Chester

Saturday was field trip number three! We went to Chester in England with stops first at Bodelwyddan Church and St. Winefrede's Well. Bodelwyddan looks kind of small on the outside but seems huge on the inside. It is also known as the Marble Church because there are at least 14 different types of marble used on the inside and the Wedding Cake Church because it is the classic structure of a church one sees on a wedding cake. Inside is gorgeous! Everything is carved in detail from the pulpit to the ceiling. It has beautiful, massive marble and stone columns; and the stain glass windows have extremely detailed pictures of biblical scenes. An interesting thing about the church is that there are Canadian troops buried in its churchyard. When I first saw this I was a little surprised to be at a church in Northern Wales and see rows of graves with small Canadian flags standing in front of them. However, during World War I, their camp was based just west of the church; and the Canadians buried at Bodelwyddan were soldiers who died from Spanish flu pandemic.

Our other stop before Chester was St. Winefrede's well. We were allowed to see the outside of the buildings but we could not actually see the well itself because of some work being done on the building protecting it. I was honestly a little disappointed because seeing the well is pretty much the point in going there, but the story of St. Winefrede was still interesting. I felt like I was listening to Greek mythology or something. It is said that Prince Caradoc wanted St. Beuno's niece Winefrede. She refused his advances and attempted to reach a church for sanctuary. Caradoc , however, caught up to her and cut off her head. It rolled down a hill and where it stopped this spring immediately emerged. St. Beuno attached her head back to her body and she miraculously survived. St. Winefrede can always be recognized by the scar around her neck, and the spot has been a place of pilgrimage for Roman Catholics for centuries. Because the well is suppose to have healing abilities, it was not destroyed during the Reformation; now, this site is one of the few medieval shrines still around today.

We spent the rest of the day in Chester. We got to shop around the Row a little bit and then we went on an audio tour of the Chester Cathedral. This was the first time I have had an audio tour, and to be honest I did not like it. No one told me how it was suppose to work so I didn't realize until near the end that there were very small stations in a very large cathedral you had to walk near to get the speech about that section. So I missed a lot of information about the things I was looking at because nothing was coming to my headset. Once a section was done the audio tour also told you where to head next. This was a challenge because it would tell me to go east/north/south/west in a giant building with no clear windows to look through in a town I had only been at for an hour. This further frustrated me because I couldn't tell if passages led to more of the cathedral or to nowhere, and I didn't dare explore because I was afraid of losing what little of the group I could still see. I eventually gave up trying and just admired the architecture while sticking with the people I had found. It was a very impressive building. I don't know the best way to describe it besides massive and extraordinary.

We also had a guided tour of the town. The Romans founded this town, and there is a stone wall surrounding the older part of the city. The tour guide took us up the path on top and we walked the wall for some time. We started out on a shorter end of the wall so it wasn't that impressive at first. But the farther we walked the higher it got until it was about two stories high. Once the tour was over he dropped us off at the Row (pictured above) where we shopped around for a couple hours. The Row is a section of Chester full of little shops. It is really cool because there is an upper and lower level. The ground level has little shops that step down a little lower than the street and the upper level has even more little shops that sit on top of them with sidewalks being the lower shops roof. These shops were packed and sometimes hard to move around in and the streets were full of people. It was an interesting experience different from what we had seen in Wales so far. I loved the old churches and cathedrals and can't wait to see more. Our next trip is to Liverpool, but it isn't for another couple weeks. Classes start tomorrow (Monday) and I don't know what to expect at all. Wish me good luck!

Castles

Monday, we finally got to see some of the castles. I'll be honest, this is one of the main reasons I chose Wales to study in. I love castle's architecture and history, and Wales is full of them from ruins to livable structures. We toured Caernarfon, Cricieth, and Dolwyddelan Castle and the Slate Mines.

Caernarfon (top left) was our first stop. It was everything I had imagined a castle would be. The walls from the outside were 9 to 10 feet thick, the passages numerous and hard to navigate, and the towers tall. Edward I had this castle built in 1283 after the English conquered the Welsh mainly to symbolize England's control over Wales. That is why Caernarfon is so grand and massive but doesn't have defense systems as impressive as some other castles in Wales. Edward I's eldest son became the first English Prince of Wales, and the castle was also used for the ceremony when Prince Charles became the Prince of Wales. Being we came in January, we pretty much had the entire castle to ourselves. First, we watched a 20 minute video about Caernarfon staring a very over dramatic actor. Then we got to walk up a narrow, steep, spiral staircase to the tallest tower of the castle (Eagle Tower) where we saw the amazing view that I took the picture above from. Then Molly and I wandered around on our own, finding random rooms and following different passages trying to guess where they would lead. This castle is so enormous that we didn't even have time to explore it all before we had to leave.

Our next stop was Cricieth Castle (top center). This castle was much different than Caernarfon Castle. It was on top of a steep hill looking over the ocean and in ruins. Only the front wall stood mainly intact, but it was obvious it had been significantly smaller than Caernarfon. I believe it was built by the Welsh in 1230. Climbing up and down the hill was kind of scary because the concrete steps were slippery and slanted downwards. I don't believe I ever feared steps until I came here where my automatic reaction now is to grab the first railing I see. But like how many places we have went to so far, the view was spectacular. You could look down at the town on one side, the shore stretching for miles in another, and misty mountains hiding in the distance on the other.

Before we went to the last castle we toured the slate mines. Slate mines have been an important part of the economy here for a long time. Some of the towns were solely inhabited by mining families. Now, slate production has slowed here and some of the mines, like the ones we went to, have been turned into tourist attractions. If I remember correctly, our director told us that about only 40 people are employed to mine in this area we visited while over a 100 work in them strictly for tourism. We got to actually go down into the mines and follow lit paths while we were told of how mining worked in the olden days. I learned a lot here. I didn't know before that they had chapel areas and break huts under ground or that some teams use to work with only two candles in their whole cavern. I can't imagine what it must have been like to work down there in the 1800s.

After the mines, we made our last stop at the Dolwyddelan Castle (top right). We were suppose to have seen it the day before, but because of the rain it was postponed a day. We quickly figured out why when we arrived. Like Cricieth, it was on top of a huge hill, except this time in Snowdonia. The path was half mud and just as steep as every other place we had walked since we got here. Many of the castles today in Wales were built by the Normans or English, but Dolwyddelan belonged to one of the Welsh princes. Unlike many other cultures, 13th century kings in Wales divided up their possessions and land amongst all his sons, not just the oldest. Therefore, there were many kingdoms within Wales and brothers and cousins built castles such as this one to fight and protect their domains from each other. This one was more intact than Cricieth but perhaps just as small.

I enjoyed every single castle on this field trip. I have a feeling that I will be one of those people who will be excited to see every castle even if they all kind of look the same by the end of it.

Snowdonia

Yesterday we went on our first field trip of the semester. It was incredible! It rained the entire time but that didn't stop us from seeing the sights. We first stopped in a town called Llandudno. It is a tourist town along the coast between two peninsulas: Great Orme and Little Orme (Viking names!). We walked out on the pier and got to see some of the coolest views of the ocean and shoreline. After that we ate at the town Betws-Y-Coed and then started making our way to the mountains in Snowdonia National Park. Before we could go to the mountains, we stopped at this enormous waterfall and a little cottage called Ty Hyll (The Ugly House). Northern Wales has gotten an incredibly large amount of rain the last couple days so Swallow Falls was fast and powerful. There is a platform that goes right down to a "calmer" part of the falls. The river was so full that water would splash up over the platform and soak our feet. The Ugly House is an small house built the 15th century. I personally thought it was more cute than ugly so I'm not sure why it was named that. According to our director Tecwyn, this crude house is an example from the 15th and 16th century when a person could claim land by building a house under 24 hours so that smoke would rise out of the chimney. If they could do this, they were allowed whatever land was within range of throwing an axe.

In the afternoon we drove through beautiful Snowdonia. We passed gorgeous mountains that reminded me of the Blue Ridge Mountains and drove by Llyn Ogwen (Llyn means lake in Welsh) which is thought to be the resting place for Excalibur. The rain let up enough that we could walk up to Llyn Idwal (picture above). The path consisted of slippery, uneven stones, and it was hard to look around because we had to watch our step. But reaching the lake was worth it. The water was clean and calm and it sat at the bottom of a tall mountain. Many Welsh stories are associated with this lake. Another name for the area is the Devil's Kitchen because from the ocean, it appears as if dark clouds are rising out of this area. There is also supposedly a sea monster living in Llyn Idwal and that birds will never fly directly over this particular lake. The last story about this lake is how it got the name Llyn Idwal. During the 12th century, Prince Owain of Gwynedd gave Nefydd Hardd responsibility of taking care of his son, Idwal. Nefydd did not like Idwal because he was better than his own son Dunawd. Dunawd, one day, decides to push Idwal into this lake so he would drown, and Prince Owain was so furious he banished Nefydd from Gwynedd and named the lake after his son.

Unfortunately, we had to postpone seeing Dolwyddelan Castle until the next day because of the rain. I love history and folklore though so hearing about and seeing Llyn Idwal was awesome!

Getting to Bangor

I left from Des Moines Wednesday morning. I don't know if I was more nervous about going to Wales or for my first time flying. Fortunately, the flight from Des Moines to Chicago was smooth and on time. I wish I could say the same thing for the flight from Chicago to Manchester however. Instead, the plane arrived an hour late; and then once we loaded and where ready to leave we had to go back to the gate because a fuel light or something came on. We ended up sitting on the plane for two hours before they fixed it. I was so exhausted from the day that by the time we left all I wanted to do was eat and sleep.

My spirits lifted when we got there though. It was like a misty spring day in Iowa. The grass was green, and I was warm in just a t-shirt and my fleece. We arrived in Bangor early afternoon on Thursday and scoped the town out. Bangor is kind of in the mountains so the whole town is on the side of a large hill. The streets are narrow and the sidewalks are only a foot away from speeding cars. The town is broken up into Upper and Lower Bangor with our flats is Upper and most the shops in Lower. To get between the two sections one must walk a very steep path. We were forewarned of this road, but we did not realize how steep it truly was until we had to walk it ourselves. In less than the first 12 hours I had been in Bangor, my legs were already hurting.

Anyway, it has been a blast so far. We have pretty much just been buying supplies and phones, checking out the local restaurants, and wandering around town. Our first field trip is Sunday where I will get to visit one of many castles. I am so excited!