Rebecca and Tony trip 2011

Tenby is a seaside town in south Wales, where Rebecca spent her early years (from 2 to 10 years old). We spent 4 nights in Tenby, in a guest house that as it happens is at the end of the short street in which Rebecca and her family lived.

Here is a shot of Tenby harbor, with the tide in. The sands are so shallow around this part of the coast that when the tide goes out, all the boats on shot are stranded on the sand.

Tenby has the north beach and south beach, separated by a raised piece of land. The above photo is on the north beach side, this photo is on the south side. You can see how steep the cliffs are, down the shallow sands, and also how much development of paths and stairs has taken place. The place is very geared to pedestrians, with not a lot of room for cars.

When Rebecca's parents visited in 2003, they knocked on the door of their old house and talked to the current owners, Ray and Barbara Poole. We did the same. They are a very friendly and gracious couple, and after taking for 3 hours, we discovered that it was 8 o'clock, and Ray suggested that they join us for dinner! Local knowledge of Tenby's many restaurants led us to the excellent Baytree. Here are Ray and Barbara.

Tenby town centre is surrounded by the largely intact remains of the original Norman wall. The historic main entrance to the town is now known as the five arches, shown here. While cars were allowed to be driven into the arches in days gone by, this is now longer allowed, and in fact there are large parts of the town centre that are closed to visitor traffic in the summer season.

The centerpiece of the town is the old church, St Mary's. Here is a nice twilight shot of the church.

For our final shot in this introductory piece on Tenby, here is a shot of the small island off Tenby, called St Catherine's, as in the monastery whose ruins you can see. The island is reachable on foot when the tide is out.

More on Tenby later, including a special privilege received through Ray being the person who looks after the St Mary's clock!

Rebecca and I both woke at 2 am, feeling wide awake, so had a bit of a slow start in the morning. After picking up the rental car and then getting our luggage, we were finally on our way.

We drove a slightly indirect route, taking the M4 to Wales, and clrossing the Severn bridge.

We then headed north on A roads. We took an extended stop in Monmouth, which is a lovely small town.

We finally got to Llangollen about 6, which was later than expected, and had a nice chat to out B&B hosts. Quick meal in town, then we collapsed at the end of quite a tiring day.

Llangollen sits on the valley of the river Dee, which runs roughly west to east. As you can see from this shot of the river from the bridge in the middle of the village, it's quite a steep valley and the river is not navigable.

However, there is a canal in the vicinity. I imagine the these things were not built just to provide tourist attractions for hundreds of years into the future, so I would say that the canal was built for transportation, servicing Llangollen.

At Llangollen, the canal runs north of the river. It actually "begins" a little further up the valley, at a place called Horseshoe Falls, where the canal and the river are at the same level. This is Horseshoe Falls on a rather misty morning.

To the left of the falls, looking downstream, a small piece of the river feeds under a small building and into the top end of the canal. As shown in the following:

Remember, this is upstream from Llangollen, and because canals are more or less level, and there are no locks in the part we saw, by the time it reaches Llangollen, it is already well above the river level. Some way down the valley from Llangollen, the canal runs away south, away from the Dee river. Since it starts out north of the river, and heads off south, it has to cross the Dee. At this point, it is about 30 meters above the river.

To achieve the crossing, a remarkable piece of engineering was built, the Pontcysylite aqueduct. Here are some shots of the aqueduct which hopefully give you a feel for just how impressive this work is.

We walked across it and back - boy it was high! It is possible to take a canal boat trip across, but we didn't think we could handle the prospect of the sheer drop over the side.

On Friday we visited the slate caverns at Blaenau Festeniog. These were extensively mined in Victorian times, although open-cast mining continues in the present day.

As you can see, the surroundings are not pretty, and our hosts had warned us off, but Rebecca really wanted to see something reminiscent of the work her ancestors carried out, albeit in coal mines.

Slate was mined by teams of four equal partners, each team working their own chamber. On the tours we took, photography was a bit hit and miss due to the darkness, but this photo gives some indication of how the chambers were made.

Layers of slate alternate with layers of chert (sp?) and the layers are inclined. Chambers were formed by delving out a 36 foot wide hole following the slate. Between chambers a 30 foot wide portion was left, to hold up the roof. The interesting thing was that deeper and deeper series of chambers were dug, and it was critical that the pillars were lined up so that there was support all the way up.

The photo above shows a chamber four layers deep. As part of the tour we climbed down the stairs to continue the tour one layer lower down. There were 8 layers still below us. Chambers were connected by very low tunnels, even Rebecca bashed her helmet protected head against the roof on one occasion!

One fascinating aspect of the miners' life was the "caban", a stone-walled structure in which miners from different chambers gathered for the one meal break of the day. The miners had semi-formal discussion forums in the break, which were minuted by the chairman. This formed a significant part of the culture of the mining society.

Unfortunately, it would seem that most aspects of the miner's life were less positive. Silicosis claimed many lives of miners in their 40's, and accidents were all too common. This photo shows how volunteer workers would climb long ladders in the evenings, after the miners had finished, to clear loose rocks for the chamber ceilings. The top of this chamber has been opened by the opencast mining that continues. This is removing slate from the pillars left in the original mine.

By the way, that's not a real person up that ladder, just a dummy!

All in all, a very worthwhile and interesting place to visit. And I haven't even mentioned the famous blind harpist, Dafydd Fisher, who was born in a house on the site!

We headed further into north Wales today, spending some time in Bettws-y-coed. Nice little town, lovely church and boasting a railway museum. It is obviously a "destination", because the place was packed, but we couldn't really se the attraction.

We then visited the slate mines in Blaenau Festiniog. This was not recommended by our hosts, but we found it a fascinating place. Two very good tours of the historical mine, including one that took us 500 feet underground. More on this to come.

A very nice meal back in Llangollen, and now it's time for two tired kiwis to go to bed - still adjusting to new time zones.