Wales

May 19 Day 12

We ventured into the land of Marilyn's forefathers on the Hanks side. Wales is a part of the United Kingdom and part of Great Britain, but is still its own country in a way. They are fiercely proud of being Welsh, and the biggest insult you could give them is to refer to them or their country as being English. When the Anglo-Saxons came to the British Isles, they pushed the native Celtic peoples to the north and the west and the southwest, and kept the best farmland for themselves. Wales, therefore, is very hilly and mountainous, and has a very rough coastline. Still, it is a very beautiful country, with green rolling hills and beautiful forested valleys.

We visited an old ruined abbey called Tintern Abbey, nestled in a beautiful forested valley along the river Wye. In 1547, when King Henry VIII left the Catholic church and formed the Church of England, he systematically dismantled all of the abbeys and tore most of them down. He took anything of value and kept in the royal treasury, and most of the stones were used as building material elsewhere. So there are hundreds of these ruined abbeys throughout Britain, most of them nothing more than a pile of rocks, but some of them having most of their walls intact. This was the case with Tinturn Abbey. Although many of the buildings in the abbey were reduced to rubble, the main church's walls were mainly intact. It was interesting to see the great stone walls of the church with the intricate stone moldings used for the windows, and the stone pillars intact, but weathered and worn, and used as a roost for pigeons and doves. If I close my eyes I can almost hear the chanting of the monks who were here about 700 years ago.

We had a snack at this cute little Tea Room

We went to a Welsh national history museum near Cardiff. This was an open-air museum, with a recreation of a Welsh village, showing Welsh life through the ages. These were actual, authentic building, moved from their original spots throughout Wales and put together here for the education of all. Marilyn's Welsh ancestors were coalminers, and they lived in very simple and humble circumstances. We saw some of the cottages where they would have lived, and they were very basic, with a small sitting room with a fireplace, an area for sleeping and a very small room for preparing the food. Outside, there was a very small plot of land, about the size of their small hut, where they could grow their own vegetables. It made us very appreciative of what we have.

This is one of the miner's cottages

At the Welsh National History Museum, we chatted with one of the native Welsh who staff the Museum. He was very friendly and open and willing to share his views of being Welsh and some things about their culture. He even spoke some of his native Welsh to us. He said he hadn't even heard English spoken until he was six. I'm glad they're keeping their language alive. In Wales, everything is written in both English and Welsh. It is a very different language, and I can't even begin to try to pronounce the names of most of their cities. Thankfully, most of the big cities have the English equivalent written on the maps as well as the signs, but many of the small towns are Welsh names only (try pronouncing Llanwrtyd or Pontrhydfendigaid).

In Cardiff, in the very center of the city, lies a castle parts of which have been there since Roman times. The Normans built a fortress on the ruins of an old Roman fortress. THe Normans had a wall surrounding the fortress with a castle and a keep in the center on a large mound. The Castle grounds eventually fell into the hands of a wealthy railroad family, and one of them, the 3rd Marquess of Bute, built a fairytale castle out of the existing one. He Kind of reminded my of William Randolph Hearst, who had tons of money and a desire to build a castle based on his idea of what a medieval castle was. However, he didn't want to give up any of his 19th century comforts, so it was kind of a mixture of elaborate Victorian architecture with a medieval flair.
When his grandson was faced with the horrendous post-war death taxes of the castle, he just gave it to the city of Cardiff so all could enjoy it. That is why so many of these castles and elaborate Manor Homes are available for the public to see, because the families couldn't afford the death taxes.

To wrap up our visit to southern Wales, we went to Merthyr Tydfil, where Marilyn's ancestors Elizabeth Edwards and her mother, Sarah Morgan Edwards lived and from where they emigrated to America in the mid 1800's after joining the Church. We drove around town a bit, but the part we saw was fairly new, so we didn't get a chance to see the old part of town that would have existed when her ancestors lived there. This was a coal mining town in the 19th century, but now the mines are closed and there are large mounds of dirt and rock and other leftovers from the mine throughout the valley, left wild and now covered with shrubs and other plants that grow here naturally. We ate at a restaurant in town, called Ben and Frankie's that looked like an American restaurant chain, kind of like Red Robin, serving similar food. Actually, it is only found in Britain and in Spain. Our waiter was a nice young native of Merthyr Tydfil, and had a very strange accent. "Will ye be havvin' any say'd deeshes", he asked, wanting to know if we wanted anything on the side. It has a Scottish sound, with its own Welsh flair.