Last weekend, we ventured off to Wales in search of some castles. We haven't really ventured out to see any of those yet and we had picked up some helpful brochures in Chester (with both English and Welsh translations) about castles in Wales. After reviewing the train routes, I decided that we only would really be able to get to two castles by train: Dolwyddelan and Conwy. After a nearly fruitless search for places to stay, I finally found us a hotel that had space and would allow us to book for only one Saturday night (we're on a budget, here) in Betws-y-Coed. It seemed that Betws-y-Coed is quite the hot-spot for tourists to launch their outdoor excursions, so it seemed like a good place to stay. Upon further searching, I found that there was what seemed to be a popular mountain biking trail in Betws, so I thought that might be a good idea for us as well.
After gathering the somewhat confusing train schedule information, Susan found out that a classmate of hers was planning to take a trip to Wales also. He was planning on leaving at 6:30 AM (ugh), which would get us into town at around 8:30 AM, which seemed much better than getting there closer to noon by train. So, I sucked it up and agreed to wake at that ungodly hour for the free and early transportation (mind you, a one-way train ticket isn't much cheaper than a return ticket).
So, we arrived in Betws and Alex and his friend, Bill, were hungry and we weren't sure what would be open, so we stopped in a lovely, though somewhat pricey cafe' where we could get some coffee/tea/breakfast. Alex and Bill were heading out to the wilderness to train for some foot race that involves reading a map, so they wanted to stop in the local outdoor sports shop to see if they had any maps that would be at the unusual scale they expected during the race (the unusual scale of the map makes things tougher, apparently) so that they could get used to it. While we were in there, Bill said that the book that he had an article in was in the store. Suze and I asked him to show it to us. To our surprise, the book was on the Sahara and Bill's article was about the care and feeding of camels, for desert travel purposes! Not what we expected at all. We glanced over the article and he showed us photos of him (which were indistinguishable because he was wearing a turban, etc.). Anyway, we were amused by the last sentence of his article, which said something like "I hope I never see another camel again."
Soon, Alex and Bill were off on their excursion and Suze and I ventured over to the Visitor's Information office to gather basic info. We found out where the bike hire place was and got the local train and bus schedule. So, we ventured over to the bike hire place and found out that they were all out of bikes. After Susan prodded him a bit, he did give up the information that there was another place that hired bikes. (Funnily enough, there was never a mention of the other place from the Visitor's Centre.) So, we found our way to the other place and they luckily had some bikes available. We dithered a bit, trying to determine whether to attempt to take the bus to Dolwyddelan Castle first or rent the bikes, bring them back and then go to the castle. The guy at the rental shop explained that we'd need at least 2 hours to do the castle, so we decided to go biking first and get a later train to the castle.
So, we changed into some biking clothes and got ready to go. We had a map that we got at the Visitor's Centre and which the guy at the shop had embellished with further information. He gave us some basic guidance on how to get to the trail and we were off.
An hour and a half later, we still hadn't found the trail. The guy at the shop made it sound very nearby and simple to find. What we discovered is that there are a number of forestry roads that were unmarked on the map and we took off on a road that had nothing to do with the map. We rode back and forth cluelessly, then, found our way to a very steep road, where we saw two guys with mountain bikes climbing up. This seemed like a good sign. We climbed and climbed up this steep road that was too steep to actually ride, so we were walking our bikes up the hill (me, more than Susan, of course). Then we came to a farm. We then saw a sign for a road to a landmark that was on the map. About 2 miles later, we found the trail. By this time, we were already winded and exhasted! We encountered a group of guys who seemed to be nearly as exhausted as we were at the trailhead. We then got out the map again to figure out how much of the trail we wanted to do (as there were a number of forestry roads that we could take as a shortcut), as we had already lost two hours in the search for the trail and were only planning to rent the bikes for a half-day). The guys were interested to see the map also.
So, we got on the trail, stopped for lunchtime break near a lake along the trail and got the useless map out frequently to try to make sense of where we were on the trail. The trail wasn't as long as it seemed on the map, but I felt like there was a LOT more uphill climbing than downhill (Susan said it was because it takes longer to climb and only SEEMED that way). Anyway, we saw some lovely scenery and the trail was quite nice, but near the end, I became exhausted and started hyperventilating (I'd forgotten to bring my inhaler with me), so we had to find the nearest path back. As it was, we had already taken the bikes for longer than we had intended.
So, by the time we got back, I was completely exhausted and had no intention of going anywhere but to our hotel room for some R&R. We checked in and found ourselves in a lovely room that had been recently remodeled with a HUGE bathroom. We were especially excited to have a bathtub at our disposal (a luxury we don't have in our current housing situation). Naturally, we took advantage of it and took a nice, long bath to wash off the grime and warm up from the dampness from the drizzly day. Susan inquired about whether we were going to the castle and I decided what I need was some food, hoping that would perk me up a bit. So, we ventured out to pub next door and had ourselves a pint and some good, hearty Welsh dinners. After dinner, we saw the guys that we'd met on the bike trail and they said that they got off the trail soon after we saw them -- obviously, they were worn out from all the hill climbing and now we knew why they were so interested in our map! That night was the World Cup rugby match between England and France, so we took a walk around town and went back to watch some of the game at the pub.
Sunday, we got up and enjoyed our lovely complimentary Welsh breakfast at the hotel. We both had ham and eggs, as well as really good Welsh yoghurt and cereal. We had some more confusion over bus schedules and went back to the Visitor's Centre to find out when we could go to Conwy to see the castle there. Unfortunately, we were told that the bus didn't leave until around 11:30, but we later figured out that there were earlier buses. Oh well. We finally got on the bus and took a ride through some very scenic Welsh countryside to Conwy, where we got to walk on the City Wall and paid our entry fee to scramble around Conwy Castle.
Conwy Castle was built around 1287 and is in impressively good shape. They had rebuilt many of the circular stairs so that tourists can walk all the way to the tops of most of the towers (I can't even imagine being the Queen in all her regalia walking up and down those stairs). The tops of the towers provided impressively good views of the city and surrounding areas. One of the towers was the Chapel Tower, where they held Christian services -- they had actually rebuilt the floors and roof, and on the lowest floor of the tower, they had a museum display about tower chapels used in castles. Most of the towers did not have floors in them anymore. The interesting tidbit about the Prison Tower was that the bottom-most floor was only accessible by a trap-door in the floor, i.e., it was a point of no return. Rather grim, but it was better, in my opinion, than the castle I went to in Ghent where they had a whole display about the torture devices used in medieval castles. There seemed to be no mention of this at Conwy Castle.
We spent a couple hours walking around the castle and then it was time for us to find yet another pub for our late afternoon meal and to catch a train back to Liverpool.
More photos of Betws-y-Coed and Conwy Castle here: http://picasaweb.google.com/barckhoff/WalesBetwsYCoedAndConwyCastle
