One of the great things about this trip to the UK is having the opportunity to visit a small part of Wales. Nikki is doing about ten days in this part of the country, looking at a lot of ancient sites as research. As I’d never been to Wales before and was being offered practically a free ride through part of it, I joined Nikki on the long and winding roads.
Monday morning we left Harper Adams University at 7am, skipping breakfast and hitting the road to give us as much time as possible. We drove west out of England, eventually crossing the border into Wales.
With the change in border came the change in language and our vowel sightings diminished. Nikki had researched the Welsh language and attempted to impart some of her knowledge to me but I still pronounced ‘ll’ and ‘dd’ incorrectly (along with just about everything else).
Our first stop was a holy well belonging to St Winefride. (I almost wrote Winefridge. Wouldn’t that have been fun?) There’s a chapel at the site which was closed when we arrived, as we got there before 9am. We did a bit of a walk to find Bueno’s well, finding some ruins and deciding that it would do, when really Bueno’s well was much further around and in an even greater state of disrepair (so we were told later).
We went back to the chapel and went in as soon as it opened. The site is well known as a helling well, with lots of records and tales of people throwing away their crutches after a visit to the well. The chapel is old, the buildings surrounding the well are old too with some beautiful decorations. The spring went into a couple of different areas, one well undercover and looking quite gloomy and atmospheric, whereas the other was outside and looks like a plunge pool (that needs a bit of a scrub).
From St Winefride’s we trundled off to St Dyfnog’s Well. This was behind a church, through an archway, and into the forest. There’s a bit of stonework there that’s crumbling down, and the springs kept open with a terracotta pipe, however, it’s pretty picturesque, a forgotten place in the forest. We drank from the spring, the water pure and fresh (and hopefully we didn’t ingest some kind of parasite).
St Dyfnog’s Church is also very old, and I was impressed with the old wooden roof with its carvings, the very old books left to rot on the windowsill and the jesse window. All this in a little old church out in the middle of nowhere.
We then went through the horseshoe pass, over some mountains and stopped at the Ponterosa Cafe on the top. A quick lunch, a look at the gift shop, and then down the long and windy road towards Dinas Bran Castle. Nikki had in her itinerary to stop at Valle Crucis Abbey but we were getting short on time so we decided to skip it. However, on the drive down we passed it and it was too beautiful to go by, so we did a U-turn and went in.
Valle Crucis Abbey is a ruin but it’s picture-postcard-perfect. Old stonework, some walls, a complete roof over one area. Just beautiful and a great place to take photos.
From there we headed towards Dinas Bran Castle but it was only accessible by walking and it was on top of a very high hill, so we drove past. It looked pretty impressive from what we saw.
Next was our first yew tree of the day. We saw five really ancient ones (about a thousand years old or more each) in a churchyard. In pagan times when someone died, a yew seed was put in their mouth and then they were buried. The yew seed grew and these sites took on sacred significance. Pretty amazing to be standing next to (and sometimes in) a tree that’s older than Christianity.
Our next stop was going to be Pistyll Rhaedr, a waterfall that is one of the seven wonders of Wales. We followed the sat-nav and the sign, which took us down a very narrow road (one of many we’d already been down) that was one-way but had two-way traffic on it. We just kept going and I thought maybe we’d got it wrong, so we turned around and went back into town. Once there, I asked about it and we were headed in the right direction but hadn’t gone far enough. The first drive down that road was harrowing for both of us and the thought of going down it again was too much.
This is a good time to point out how insane drivers are here. There is only one lane available for two lanes of traffic so we drove slowly, especially when there is no way of seeing around a corner at what is coming the other way. We are obviously not Welsh because every one else is happy to zoom down these horrible little lanes at 50mph into possible death. It was horrible and stressful.
We then went to Pennant Melengell, the church of St Melengell, patron saint of hares. It’s another church that’s in the middle of nowhere but with lots of significance for the Welsh. The church had been restored in the past hundred years or so, but it’s a very old site, harking back to pagan days. There are plenty of old yew trees there. We also found some massive slugs and took great delight in taking photos of them.
It started to rain while we were there and didn’t really let up for the rest of the afternoon. We were due to check out a few lakes and another tree but time had gotten away from us and clear views were now impossible. We headed to Betws-y-Coed to check in to our accommodation.
My B&B was a bit further down the road from Nikki’s so we went to mine first – Oakfield House B&B – where I checked in, quickly changed and ran out again. We went to Nikki’s next, unloaded then went for dinner at the Pont-y-Pair Inn (we called it pontipines pub, after that kids’ TV show). We ordered some drinks to settle our nerves after the treacherous driving we’d done surrounded by made Welsh-people, and ordered a great pub dinner.
After we finished our meal and the waitress came to clear the plates, she also took away the £10 note and coins that were sitting on top of the table, despite us having already paid. So she wandered away and Nikki and I were a bit slow on the uptake but then wondered what had happened and how we were going to get the money back. Soon enough, the waitress returned with the money and a dazed look on her face, mortified at what she’d done. We had a good laugh about it.
We called it a night just after nine and I walked back to my B&B, which was about a mile down the road, singing Men of Harlech the whole way back. Being summertime, it doesn’t get late until 9:30 or later so I had a clear view down the rushing river. Bets-y-Coed is a beautiful place.
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Travels with Dan 
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