There are so many people who made my semester incredible. I’ll try to cover all of you. If I forget you, leave a comment yelling at me and I’ll add you in. Here goes, in no particular order: Anna: Thank you for being my first friend over here, showing me around Cardiff, reciting the entire …
When I was winnowing down my list of UK universities, I read the blogs of a lot of former UBC students. Many of these blogs were both rollicking good yarns and extremely informative sources of information. Unfortunately, as far as I know, there is no Cardiff Uni blog yet. So in this post, I’m going …
I’m back in Portland, staving off jet lag with my first proper cup of coffee in six months. Thus ends my semester in Cardiff. I thought I’d close out with a little semester-in-review. Stay tuned for two more posts. 10 Things I’ll Miss 10. Cornish Pasties The ubiquitous finger food. 9. Grease cookies at Lidl …
This is a Marcher Lord castle… …onto which the Victorians grafted a mansion (after demolishing an inconvenient tower). The castle isn’t open to the public, but today there was some kind of garden show just wrapping up when we arrived and nobody noticed a couple of American tourists wandering onto the grounds. There’s a nice …
I would tell you more about it if I could remember the name so I could Google it.
There’s no way down the cliffs to this pristine beach, which is probably why it’s still pristine.
Pentre Ifan (PEN-dray EEV-an) is a Neolithic tomb a short walk above the Pembrokeshire hamlet of Felindre Farchog (vel-IN-dray VAR-[death rattle?]-og). What you see is only the roof and two walls of the original tomb, which was completely surrounded and buried beneath a cairn of smaller boulders. It probably dates to ~3500 BC, and while …
The thing about the UK is that you’re always stumbling across things like, oh, say, one of the top three walled towns in Wales, or the best-preserved Celtic cross in the UK, or the largest Neolithic monument in Pembrokeshire, or a burial mound in a suburban backyard. You don’t go looking for it. It’s all …
Mom and I took a boat from Tenby to Caldey Island, a tiny speck of an island in the bay which has been home to a monastery since early Celtic times. The current Caldey Abbey was built in 1910. This is what an abbey from 1910 looks like: To support themselves, the Cistercian monks of …
Took a cliff walk.
We’re staying in Tenby. This is Tenby: This is one of Tenby’s beaches: This is a bit of medieval city wall atop a cliff: Tenby is considered one of the top three medieval walled towns in Wales, along with Conwy and Caernarfon. Having now been to all three, I think I can say with some …
A 13th-century watchtower on the hill overlooking Tenby:
These are from the tops of the picnic benches at Pembroke Castle. What makes them especially fun (other than the ratings out of five stars spelled out in severed heads) is that each of these reviews is written by, and reflects the experiences of, a figure from the castle’s history: Roger de Montgomery was a …
This is the interior of the keep at Pembroke Castle. For those of you who aren’t history nuts, the keep was a castle’s fortification of last resort. If the outer walls fell, everybody (or at least everybody important) would withdraw into the keep and bolt the doors, and, in the case of Pembrokeshire Castle’s keep, …
It’s so lovely to travel with someone who loves food as much as I do. I’m going to miss British High Teas.
Throughout the 18th century, headstones were inscribed with words of comfort or caution for the living. Here are some from the churchyard of St. Illtud’s in Llantwit Major. From the grave of Joan Baffett, died 1739 at the age of 36: Husband now my life is past My love for you so Long did …
The Brits are so blasé about living across the street from a castle: This is Coity Castle, built by the Norman knight Payn de Turberville. And here’s the plaque, which bears the unfortunate title “Growing Payns.” Since everything here is bilingual Welsh/English, I’m not sure I want to know what the Welsh translation actually means. …
This is the beach near Llantwit Major. This area was raided frequently by Vikings and Irish pirates. The story goes that the townspeople of Llanilltud once won a great victory against the Vikings: they lured them inland with ale and dancing girls, then ambushed them. The victory is celebrated annually to this day. Here’s a …
Mom and I are staying in a shoebox cottage in Llantwit Major. As far as I can tell, there’s no such thing as Llantwit Minor. The name of this town in Welsh is Llanilltud Fawr, which actually means something like Great Church of Illtud, or else Church of Illtud the Great, or Illtud’s Great Church…My …
At seven in the morning I ate my last Aberdare breakfast and then finished packing my entire dorm room into a suitcase and a duffel. I had to sit on the former. The latter burst a zipper. At seven at night, I retrieved my very jet-lagged mother from the Sophia Gardens bus station. We installed …