Trip to Wales~Part III

The rest of this story can be found here:
Part I
Part II

Because we had missed our original flight to the UK, we lost an entire day of our trip, cooling our heels in that misery known as Newark. For our last full day in Wales we had to make a choice between going north to Aberystwyth and doing research in the Welsh National Library there, or taking our last day and heading to the coast to see St. David's Cathedral and some cairns along the way. Technically, this was a research trip, and we should have gone to Aberystwyth, but we unanimously decided that we would get more out of seeing the coast. We tucked away our last prodigious traditional Welsh breakfast, which we felt compelled to photograph for posterity, before we hit the road. Here you see my dad and the hub-man oohing and aahing over our breakfast, while our lovely hostess looks on a bit nervously. I don't know if anyone had ever photographed her cooking before!

Our hosts were delightful people, and their B&B was immaculate and quite comfortable, but I think we were maybe just a bit too much for them, being Ugly Americans, and all. However they felt about us, the breakfasts were incredible! Fried bacon, which was closer to what we would call ham, fried tomatoes, eggs over easy, and fried toast. Add to this fresh grapefruit, orange juice, toast with the most incredibly tart and delicious marmalade, and fabulous french-press coffee. We did eat breakfast at a couple of inns during our trip, but none of them could touch the home cooking at Cwmgwyn Farm.
We left Llandovery early Thursday morning, headed for St. David's and the coast. We drove through Carmarthen and some other smaller towns on our way east. We were starting to wonder just how far this drive would be, when I sniffed the air and exclaimed, "I smell the ocean!" We rounded a bend in the road and there was the coastal town of Newgale and my beloved North Atlantic. Its kind of an odd sensation, to be looking at your same old ocean from the other side of it. It was breathtakingly beautiful, but I confess; as I looked to the west my heart was thinking of home. Not long after our pit-stop at Newgale, we drove into the very picturesque town of St. David. The sun actually deigned to show itself at this westernmost point of the country and the sky was a brilliant blue. The salty delight of the air paired with a cool crispness was possibly the most perfect air I've ever breathed into my generally allergic lungs and chronically outraged sinuses.

We parked and walked through the town to St. David's Cathedral. St. David, or Devi/Dewi, is the patron saint of Wales, and his Cathedral is considered to be the most sacred site in Wales. It was one of the earliest Christian centres in Britain, dating from the 6th century, and many early missionaries travelled from here to Ireland and Brittany. But considering the Prescelli Hills were just up the coast, I'm not sure I would agree with St. David's being the most sacred site. The Prescellis are the place of origin for the bluestones in the center circle at Stonehenge and are also the site of many Iron-age and neolithic burial mounds. These are the ruins of the Bishop's Palace at St. David's Cathedral. There was scaffolding around parts of this, as a restoration project was underway. I loved the checkerboard mosaic aspect of the upper stonework. The stone used to build St. David's Cathedral is of a local origin and it's purple. It was hard to really see the purple color in the bright sunlight, but it did show up in the photos. Something else I noticed in the pictures that wasn't apparent when standing next to the immenseness of the church is how irregularly it's shaped. The tower is off-center and the back of the church is built into a hill as well, giving it an uneven aspect as well. This is the interior of the main nave of the church. The ceiling was completely panelled in intricately carved wood and the lower arches all had different patterns carved in them. The flat ceiling was put in later, because of structural issues in supporting a stone roof. In the High Gothic style, you would see barrel vaulting or rib vaulting giving the height, instead of these massive rows of arches supporting even more arches above. Don't you just love the Jesus-on-a-trapeze thingy hanging from the ceiling? Who knew he was so talented? Obviously, this church has been added to over the years. I don't know what happened to the original 6th century structure, but what we see here is called Transitional Norman, with an arches supporting arches structure. It was embellished at some point in the Gothic period with the beautiful ribbed vaulting and the intricate coat of arms painted between each rib. I meant to take pictures of the many tombs inside the church, but my camera was not liking the dark gloom of the church's interior. We bought a map of the Welsh coast in the gift shop at St. David's that showed several neolithic burial mounds quite close by. Following the map, we found ourselves on a narrow, one lane, dirt road that turned out to be someone's driveway, more or less. At one point we had to come to a complete halt in this narrow lane, for fear of running over one of the chickens and roosters who had excitedly come out to greet us and now unconcernedly blocked the way. Finally getting past the chickens, we surreptitiously parked our car on the grassy hill behind the house and began the climb up to a peninsula of land known as St. David's Head. As we crested the hill we looked off to our left and saw this:
The sunny and blue skies had disappeared, covered over by a rapidly moving front of wind and rain and lowering clouds. It was so very Bronte sisters-like, to be walking the moors, and watching the storm come in, but I was with three men, so I kept this thought to myself. We struck out across the moors towards the north, with the mist rising and swirling around us. Halfway across, we encountered a quintessentially British couple, and stopped to say hello. The wife had the horsey look commonly associated with the Royal family, and the husband, with his tidy little mustache and tweeds responded to all our remarks with a "Yes, yes, yes!" that we still love to use. They were very nice, really, and I feel a little guilty writing seeming disparities about them, but remember - I am an Ugly American, so I kind of can't help it. We walked out to the water, which was roiling and thrashing up against the rocks that made up the shoreline. There wasn't really any beach at this spot, but we didn't care; walking the moors was a novel pastime, and a plain old beach would have just been a letdown.

Those prodigious Welsh breakfasts always lasted just long enough to find us somewhere without lunch prospects, but this time I was prepared. We propped ourselves against a boulder that blocked some of the wind and ate sharp cheese and crackers we had bought back in Cheddar, washed down with garlic stuffed green olives and water. We gazed out at the rapidly disappearing Atlantic, as the fog came in quickly and completely obscured our vision. as we headed back up the hill to the cairn, I could well imagine people getting lost in an influx of this stuff.

The fog and mist were, in the words of Yukon Cornelius, "thick as peanut butter". At some points we couldn't even see each other as we walked along together, but the obscurity came and went, with helpful gusts from the wind. It did make for an eerie scene as we approached Coetan Arthur, a 5,000-year-old burial chamber, that is reputed to be King Arthur's resting place. Of course, there are a number of cairns throughout Wales that are reputed to be Arthur's tomb!

While my brother and I posed for this shot, the old man headed up and over the hill. We joked that he was looking for the old elephant/ancestral graveyard. What he actually found up at the top of the summit was a concrete pad that had been used as a lookout during WWII. If there had been more time and better weather, I would have liked to explore this area further, because we missed a number of ancient sites here, due to time restraints and fog. Back in the car, we headed north towards the coastal towns of Fishguard and Newport, where there are ferries to take you across the channel to Ireland. In a future trip to this area it might be fun to fly into Ireland and take the ferry from there to Wales - it can't be any further than driving all the way across Wales from Bristol, England, and it would be fun to see a bit of Ireland.

In Newport we made our first pub stop of the day, at the Golden Lion, a cozy little hotel and pub right on the main road. I had tried to book rooms for us here, but a band of bike riders beat us to it, booking the entire place. A shame, really, because it looked like a nice place. We had a few pints, played some tunes on the jukebox and chatted with the guys playing pool, before setting off to find our next cairn.

Carreg Coetan, also a reputed burial site of You-Know-Who, (No, not Voldemort, silly! King Arthur!) was right in Newport, down a side road. It was like a little park, nestled in a small neighborhood. My brother took this picture and he was all excited that he had caught the tiny gap between the capstone and the stone holding it up (look at this picture up close and you'll see it). My dad surprised himself by really loving these ancient tombs. He had kind of scoffed at the idea of seeing ancient sites (its what he does, we just ignore him), but after St. David's Head, he not only understood our fascination, but he was getting into it as well. See the little leprechauns hiding in the cairn? Our last cairn of the day, Pentre Ifan, was the biggest and most impressive. Looking through the cairn you can see the Prescellis and Carni Ingli; Mountain of the Angels. I don't know how we did it, but we encountered very few people at any of these sites, which greatly enhanced our ability to get a feel for the energy at these places. We took a group shot as well, which is a little dark, but I wanted to show the massive proportions of Pentre Ifan, as compared to the smaller cairns we had seen earlier. Because of its size and extreme age (built around 3500 BC) this is considered one of the most important sites to see in western Wales. Pentre Ifan was the last planned stop of the day. We got back into the car and headed a little further north to hook up with the highway that led back to Carmarthen, where we had booked rooms at the 16th century coaching inn, The Boar's Head. Along the way, we noticed signs for a historic castle, and decided to stop and check it out.

Cilgerran Castle, first built in the early 12th century and improved upon in the early 13th century, was the site of quite a bit of Welsh history, both legendary and factual. It sits on the tidal river, Teifi (Tiffy), right outside of Cardigan. Again, we missed the crowds and had the entire castle to ourselves to explore. Unlike the ruins at Carreg Cennen, Cilgerran was more intact and we were able to climb the ancient stairs inside and feel truly immersed in the history of the place. Never a believer in the theory of Ancestral Memory, my father had an immediate connection to this place, and said that he felt like he had been there before. We could hardly drag him away from the place; this from the man who said he didn't want "to see a bunch of churches and castles".
Cilgerran is built of local slate and the construction was fascinating. I loved the stack of slate discs that form the support for this staircase.
It was kind of maze-like to follow your nose around this place, and I got lost from the others more than once! As we were headed back out of Cilgerran, we met the curator, who had just realized there were visitors over at the castle. It had been a slow day, so she had nipped out for a cup of tea. We felt bad for crashing and offered to pay the admission, but she waved us along. So we headed back to Carmarthen and the inn for our last night in Wales.

I hate to even say it, but I'm afraid this is going to have to extend into a Part IV. Even I feel like this is way too many parts but I don't know any other way to do the trip justice. For my rambling and allusions to self-importance, I ask patience and forgiveness of you, dear reader. In the future, I will attempt to only tell short stories!

Part IV: Our night at the Inn and the trip back to England, and then it will be done, done, DONE, I swear!

Trip to Wales~Part II

Part I can be found here.

On our third day we went to the Carmartheshire County Museum, which is housed in the former Bishop's Palace in Abergwili. We stopped off in Llandovery to take this picture of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd (Hloo-well-an ap Griffith, for the phonetically curious) after discovering his line was intermarried into the Toys. He was a lesser Welsh lord and landowner near Llandovery who led Henry IV of England all over Wales for several weeks on a wild goose-chase, looking for Owain Glendower, the other irascible thorn in the king's side and the leader of the Welsh revolters. When the jig was up, he was brutally tortured and murdered as an example to the Welsh up risers. Unfortunately for the English, his martyred death only served to solidify the Welsh cause. To this day, the Welsh are adamant about maintaining their language, their culture, and their right to govern themselves. You can see why we loved them!

The Bishop's Palace in Abergwili was the site of where William Salesbury wrote much of his Welsh translation of the New Testament, a document that Welsh historians agree was pivotal in preserving Welsh as a living language. My interest in seeing this book stems from the knowledge that Humphrey Toy paid completely for the publishing of this culturally vital tome. Granted, he was from an early printing family in England, and I believe he published it at his mother's insistence, but he still is the guy who's credited for making it happen. There is a copy of it in the United States; in the Archives of William and Mary College, in Williamsburg, VA. I'd love to know how it ended up there, as Williamsburg is mighty close to Gloucester County, VA. which was the home of another Humphrey Toy, from 1655 to about 1700. The first printing press in Virginia was also in Gloucester County, which leads to even more speculation.

There were a lot of cool things in the County Museum. They had several standing stones, some outside as well as inside. This stone was probably made long before the Latin inscription was added, commemorating the leader of the Demetae, Voteporix, as their protector. The cross in the circle is an ancient, pre-christian symbol for earth. The early Christians borrowed it and then conveniently forgot where it came from, which is pretty much how they do things everywhere they go.

Outside, on the grounds of the Bishop's Palace, we encountered some odd trees and plants as we strolled around. There were things that looked like Rhododendron bushes, only with bright yellow flowers, and oddly shaped pine trees called "Monkey Conifers". This tree was just an oak, but it made a good backdrop.

Carmarthen and the area around it is reputed to be the birthplace of the Arthurian wizard Merlin, the original spelling being Caermyrddin (Care-Myrthin); Caer, meaning fort, and Myrddin, meaning Merlin. We walked down to the fields and lilypond behind the palace, hoping to catch a glimpse of Merlin's Hill off in the near distance. This Hawthorn tree was immense and if you've ever watched the film Elizabeth, with Cate Blanchett, this is the same kind of tree she meets her new council under when she's made queen.

After the Bishop's Palace, we headed down the road to Carreg Cennen, or at least, the ruins of it. The first castle built here was in the 13th century, but legend has it that Urien Rheged, a knight of the Round Table, built the first fortress here. Modern excavations have also found Roman coins and prehistoric human remains in the cave underneath the castle, so this place has been in use for some time! We stopped in at the Castell Farm below, to pay our admission fees and browse their wonderful shop of handmade crafts, which were nicer and far cheaper than anywhere else we went. I also bought some of their Caramel Sticky Bars as a quick energy burst before climbing the hill. Oh my god - they were Sin Incarnate!

The climb to the top seems deceptively easy, until you've been at it for 15 minutes or so, but the view from the top is incredible.

I had to stop and catch my breath when we finally made it to the top. I love the fact that we're sitting on the wall, right next to the caution sign. "Visitors are warned to take every care to avoid accidents." You think they meant sitting on the wall in a high wind?

The wind was really kicking it up at the top of the ruins. My brother was standing on the opposite wall when I took this, and I swear it looked like he was going to take off and catch a mighty draft! The sun came and went all day, so sometimes we took beautiful, sunny shots, and five minutes later, the pictures would be all dark and cloudy looking. Hey, at least it wasn't hot and there was nobody up there with us, so the experience was that much more intimate and powerful.

" Yes, yes, yes!" The descendant of Welsh royalty tips his hat, and we play along, because we know he's buying the first round at the pub, later on. I should never have told him about Llywelyn ap Gruffydd. There's another guy with the same name who was the last Prince of Wales, but I don't think he was the guy we're related to. Try telling that to His Royal Highness. Yeah, not so much. It was hard enough to convince him that the Welsh would be speaking their own tongue in some places. He was just astounded when he figured it out, kind of like the amazement of toddlers at Christmas. It reminded me of Steve Martin, talking about visiting France; "Its like those French have a different word for everything!"

The coolest and creepiest part of Cerreg Cennen was the natural cave that sits underneath the castle. This is the beginning of the tunnels that take you down, down, down, to the cave. I think this shot is looking back up the way we came.

This would be my Lovely Assistant, coming out of the tunnel above.

This is the view from where my Lovely Assistant was standing. Note the bizarre little red caution sign, showing a guy slipping. My dad, after seeing this sign, responded, "Well of course he fell down. Look at how he's dancing around!" I know- he's just a Laugh Riot, isn't he?

Ahh! Entering the cave! It was so dark and slippery in there I about busted my ass twice. The floor is really uneven, as well as slick, so you can see why that little guy on the sign was looking all discomfuckulated. My brother took these shots, because he had the better camera and let's just say it; he is a far better photographer than I am!

Supposedly this spring in the cave is a magical site. I swear it - I read an entire book about sacred sites in Wales and this one is supposed to be a wishing well. You're supposed to bring a pin with you, wish on it, and throw it in the well. Our B&B hostess even asked us if we had wished while we were there. I am sad to report we did not take advantage of the wish potential of the place, but honestly? It was way too dark and creepy down there to want to hang around for long.

Coming back up and out of the cave, I stopped to take a shot of the farmlands out the window. I loved how the ancient and rough stone made an abstract kind of frame around the view. We are definitely NOT in Kansas, Toto!

We're smiling but my ass is so sore right now! The wind was ripping our hair and clothes so badly, we look like we've been on a bender, but for the moment anyway, we are quite sober.

We left and repaired to a pub for the rest of the afternoon. We actually were trying to find somewhere we could get a bite to eat, but everything shuts down at 3 PM, which is just about the time your immense Welsh breakfast wears off. So there we were, hungry, in a pub, eating "crisps" (chips) and drinking pints, in an effort to stave off hunger. The outcome? Four drunk Americans scaring the hell out of the local color. I do think the barmaids liked us, at least; Tipping is not only NOT a city in China, but it isn't a city in Wales either, which didn't keep us from doing it, no sirree bob. Looking back now, I'm all worried we were Ugly Americans. Aww man! At least we tried to learn some Welsh - cwrw da! (good beer) Iechyd da! (good health) Croeso (welcome) - which is more than I can say for the Ugly Americans we met later in the week. They reminded me forcibly of the tourist couple in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life, reading the philosophy trivia cards (do you know who I mean?) We did have to buy Dad a coffee mug with Iechyd da on it, so he could remember how to say it, but does that make us Ugly?

Jesus, so now I'm a pompous serializing windbag (I'm just teasing, Ray!) AND an Ugly American in the bargain as well.

Tune in next week, for the final installment of

The Epic Saga of Our Trip to Wales

Trip to Wales~Part I

Two Springs past, I took a journey to the UK with my husband, my father, and my younger brother. I was on a mission. They came along to drink beer, drive, and occasionally, pick up the tab and my luggage. This is the story of

The Epic Saga of Our Trip to Wales

It was a bit of a bumpy start, trying to leave. We huddled in a glass bus shelter when we first arrived at RDU, listening to the pinging and smacking of hailstones, hoping the bus would arrive before the imminent tornado, which I later learned from Bea, actually did, only closer to home. The weather delayed all of the flights out that afternoon, so when we finally arrived in Newark, we were just in time to watch our flight leave without us. Evidently bad weather is not a good enough reason to hold the plane, and since we were headed to Bristol, England, a smaller airport, we had to wait until the next day to fly out. As you can see, we were very excited to spend an entire day in Newark. We did try to make the best of it, but it was still a drag and we just wanted to be on our way to the trip we had planned, before we spent all our money on lunch in the airport. The transvestite waiter-ess was kind of diverting, but my god - no one should spend 200.00 on four burgers, even if the condiments do come in cute little bottles (Which I stuffed in my bag, just like my mother would have done. Augh!)

As soon as we touched down, rented a car, and stowed our gear, we were on the road, headed for Wales. Okay, I confess, we did take a quick detour down to Cheddar, to have some cheese shipped to us - a costly and kind of iffy venture, and what a tourist racket! I would just eat the stuff next time. But then we were well and truly off to the Brecon Mountains area of Wales. I had booked us rooms at an immaculate B&B, located right on the Tywi River. The main part of the house had been a 16th century drover's pub, and the huge inglenook fireplace made of river rock, and the black beams supporting the ceiling were all original. I chose this place because it offered direct access to the river Tywi, one of our main reasons for being there.

I know you're just dying to ask the question, "Why did you go to Wales?", so I'll tell you. We went to Wales to conduct genealogical research on the origin of our last name. I had done online research for about two years before we went, and found three groups of one Toy family living in London and Bristol, in England,and Carmarthen, in Wales. What made them significant and worth looking into was the use of several names that not only showed up all three branches, but were also the names used by a group of Toys who settled in the Jamestown, Virginia area, prior to 1660. What makes that significant, is that it proves the name Toy is not only of English/Welsh origin, but that they were here early enough to have one of them intermarry with a girl in the Swedish colony in New Jersey.

I know, I've lost you. You're asking, "So what?" and maybe even, "What the Fu?" The reason for this convoluted explanation is that the results of my research proves that the data stubbornly adhered to by many of my fellow researchers of this family name is incorrect. Their Swedish ancestors didn't live in a cultural vacuum, and there is harder proof for cultural intermarriage producing the name Toy in the Swedish colony, than there is for it being a bastardization of a Swedish patronym.

And that is why we went to Wales. Well, that's why I went. My dad wanted to see the Afon Tywi or Towy River, my brother was there to drive like a bat out of hell and drink beer, and my husband was just "jazzed to be on the show", and to be my lovely assistant in researching, of course. What we didn't realize was that we would all come home raving about the Welsh beer. Even me, and I don't usually like to drink beer. I'm not sure what the secret to their outstanding beer is, but I drank like a proper sot the whole time and never got a headache or felt hung over. Welsh beer is awesome!

With that in mind, it shouldn't surprise you that our first stop, other than asking some poor, unsuspecting Welshman at the gas station for directions (he's probably still shaking his head!), was at a pub in the darlin' town of Llandovery. It was maybe 2 pm, so these are career drinkers hanging out in the background. A couple of them were friendly, but most of them had a hard day's drinking to do, and left us alone in our touristy-ness.

This stitch has flaws in it, but it gives you the idea of what it looked like inside.

When we toddled out of the pub and headed to the B&B, it was just a few miles down the road. I was a little worried my dad would be negative about staying in a nice place (he's got this whole "all I need is a sleeping bag and some frank-n-beans" stoic thing he likes to play), but he loved it, as did we all. Here we are upon arriving, taking time for a photo-op.

Then we headed down to the river to see our possible name originator up close and personal. We were all struck by how much it looked like Western Pennsylvania, only with more hedges and sheep, but with similar rolling hills and a lush verdancy that says home to me wherever it is. Even the rocks in the river were similar to the shale and fossil-rich rocks of our beloved Oil Creek back home. My brother went in the water and drank a handful of it, because he has a parasitic collection in his gut that keeps him from ever getting sick from bad water, the bastard. On at least one occasion I have gotten dysentery from drinking the water in his canteen, and water-borne bacteria is a personal nemesis of mine from way back.

The next day we headed into Carmarthen, the county seat and the 16th century home of the Toys I was researching. We had an appointment at the Archives later in the day, but we stopped in at St. Peter's Church to look around and see if there was anything to glean from there. Carmarthen was an odd town, ancient, crumbling buildings leaning against newer, uglier, and squat businesses. It had peaked as a town in the early 1600s, but a variety of economic pressures caused it to slide afterwards. The period I believe my ancestors left in was around 1640-50 a period when the plague was so prevalent that much of the regular government business was conducted out of town. Not hard to see why Virginia would have looked good, and there was many a Welshman who came and settled there during that time. Right inside the church doors was a Roman house altar that had been found in one of their restorations of the church. There had been a church or temple on that location since pre-Roman times, and in typical early Christian fashion, they erected their church on the site of an earlier pagan temple. This is a pet field of research for me, so don't let me get started on that digression - we'll never finish!

This is a view of what had been the south porch of St. Peter's, but is now a Lady's Chapel. This is where our boy, Humphrey Toy, was buried. At least until they turned it into a chapel - no one seemed to know where the people buried in these walls had been re-interred at, when the renovation occurred. I did find a book in the local library that had a copy of Humphrey's tomb inscription and where it had been, so at least we found that data to go with this picture.
There is more to tell, but I fear I have to break it into sections to keep it from becoming too long to reasonably read. I do hope this doesn't render me pompous. Rambling, I can live with. Long-winded, also okay. But pompous? Me? Ya think? Maybe its more like I need that serialization because I suck at writing short stories, and all my stories seem to be of epic lengths.

Coming soon; Trip to Wales~Part II

(I know- you just can't wait!)