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.