8 July: Home Again & U.K. Reflections

We told our hosts at the Castle Guest House that we didn’t need a hot breakfast this morning – just a little toast and coffee would be fine. (John wanted to get out of there without any breakfast at all but I told him we were paying for it, after all!) We chowed down as quickly as we could in the slightly creepy basement breakfast room and high-tailed it out of Dover as fast as the E-Class could carry us. We easily made it to the Euro Tunnel terminal, about twenty minutes away, for our 8:30 train to Calais. The return train ride was noneventful. We were very happy to return to normal driving (although I have to admit that for weeks afterwards I kept having “English moments” when I had to ask myself if I was driving on the correct side of the road!) We stopped for gas somewhere in France and went into the shop to buy some snacks. The lady at the register asked me if we were buying gas and without even thinking I said, “Wir haben schon bezahlen.” (“We already paid.”) The lady just laughed – I guess she knew what I meant. It took me another ten seconds or so to come up with “Nous avons payé.” I thought it was interesting how quickly my brain slipped back into German! The drive home to Stuttgart took the expected eight hours, and fortunately was more or less traffic-free.

So our grand British adventure has finally come to an end. We drove upwards of 3,000 kilometers in 17 days, traversing nearly the entire length and breadth of England and Scotland twice and exploring some of the best scenery that the island has to offer. Our favorite locations were Cornwall and Glen Coe, which is rather ironic because I was told by some people that they were too far apart to visit in one trip. But I had my heart set on visiting Tintagel and hiking in the Highlands and I’m so glad we managed to fit them both in. Scotland as a whole will be high on our list of future vacation destinations. The British people were generally friendly and warm, and I was thrilled to finally be able to place the myriad British accents I have heard over the course of my life with their proper geographic region.

With the exception of one or two meals, our dining experiences were quite positive (who hasn’t heard nightmare stories about horrible English food?), albeit dreadfully expensive. I can't sum up our experience without putting in a word of caution to anyone researching B&Bs in Great Britain: they can be fabulous and cheaper than traditional hotels, but we were very surprised by the wildly inconsistent ratings. The differences between the 5-star Elmview and 4-star Castle Guest House were positively shocking. Overall, food and lodging in the U.K. are considerably more expensive than in continental Europe when compared in U.S. dollars. While this wouldn't prevent us from making future trips to the U.K., it's certainly a factor to consider in trip planning.

As for cities and towns, Edinburgh was fabulous, Stirling looked interesting, and we enjoyed York, but we came away with the overall impression of many of the towns we passed through as being rather dreary and run-down. We suppose that this is partly a reflection of the U.K.’s rather turbulent economic past. For this reason I was pleased that I had planned this trip with a focus on scenic drives and countryside – in that respect, we got exactly what we’d hoped for.

I’ll make no bones about it; the driving was definitely tough. We were warned ahead of time that it would be slow going, and I never planned for us to drive more than about 250 miles in a day, which was a wise decision. Between the impossibly narrow roads, ridiculous number of roundabouts, and low speed limits, it really takes a lot longer to get from point A to point B than you might think when looking at a map. And did I mention the speed cameras? Yes, "Big Brother" Britain has a lot of speed cameras. Or rather, they have a lot of signs indicating that there are speed cameras hiding thereabouts. We didn't actually see the cameras very often. The best roads in terms of driving enjoyment were in northern Wales and around Glen Coe (but Scottish drivers really are nuts!). We felt very lucky to have our big, comfortable car with automatic transmission and a navi, which certainly saved us a lot of angst. Driving on the “wrong” side of the car was not a problem (especially when you have a co-driver to watch for oncoming traffic from the right at difficult turns and roundabouts), and we felt it was far better than the alternative of renting an unfamiliar manual transmission car without a navi and driving on the right side of the car for the first time (which means shifting with your left hand). But I have to admit that our giant E-Class with German plates got more than a few funny looks. We couldn't help feeling like we should have a sign in our window that said, "We're Americans!"

In sum, I have finally fulfilled a lifelong dream to visit some of the most famous ancient and medieval sites in Great Britain. The waves crashing on the rocks of Tintagel, the windswept landscape of Stonehenge, the echoing halls of Caernarfon Castle, the mist-shrouded peaks of the Highlands...these are memories I will keep with me forever.

Be sure to check out all of my photos at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/hausfrau/collections/72157601997561583/

29 June: Castles of Kings

Just about everything at Tan-y-Foel is extraordinary, including breakfast. The breakfast room is swankily decorated with warm wood tones, a wall of wavy mirrors, and bright accent lighting. I usually don’t like to mix old and new, but they have done a really tasteful job here. After taking our coffee order, the man of the house (Mr. Pitman, I presume) gave us menus from which we could select two dishes. We both started with the mouthwatering porridge oats (a.k.a. oatmeal) topped with golden syrup and thick cream, followed by a hearty full English breakfast for John and poached eggs on toast for me. Thus fortified, we headed out under partly cloudy skies towards Conwy, the first of three of King Edward I’s mighty castles that we planned to visit today.

Edward I, who ruled England from 1272 to 1307, was quite an ambitious warmonger; he is perhaps best known for conquering the Welsh in the early years of his reign and later attempting, unsuccessfully, to do the same to the Scots (although he did manage to capture and execute the rabblerouser William Wallace of “Braveheart” fame). Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, self-proclaimed Prince of Wales, refused to pay homage to the English crown, which led to Edward I’s first campaign against the Welsh in 1276-77. Llywelyn was allowed to keep his title, although he was eventually put to death. His younger brother Dafydd started another rebellion in 1282, which was quickly quashed by Edward, who captured, tortured, and executed Dafydd the following year. To hammer his conquest into the hearts and minds of the Welsh people, Edward commenced construction of an “iron ring” of fortified castles across northern Wales, effectively hemming in the ancient Welsh stronghold of Snowdonia.

Of all of Edward's fortresses, the massive Conwy Castle, with its huge crenellated towers, tall curtain walls, and strategic position on a rocky promontory overlooking Conwy estuary, retains the most character of a classic medieval stronghold. The old town of Conwy is still enclosed by medieval walls, and the castle looms over the town as a crowning achievement of defensive architecture. After the ten-mile drive to the coast from Tan-y-Foel, the castle was the first thing we saw as we approached Conwy, its imposing bulk rising from a chunk of rock on the edge of the estuary like a stone sentinel right out of a fairytale (photo, right). We parked in a pay lot just outside the walls and entered the town through one of the mighty gates, approaching the castle by way of the “wall walk” – a narrow walkway on top of the ancient town wall. The walls are remarkably intact and you can circle nearly the entire city on the elevated walkway.

At the entrance to the castle we learned that our English Heritage visitor’s pass is ineligible for discounts in Wales (you only get the discount if you are a full English Heritage member), so we felt a bit duped. If it didn’t work here, that meant it probably wouldn’t work in Scotland either. That’s certainly not what they indicated when we bought the pass at Stonehenge. We ended up paying £17,50 for a three-day Welsh visitor pass, which would get us into all of the castles we wanted to visit today.

Conwy Castle follows the contours of the mound of rock it sits on: a long, narrow plan punctuated by eight huge towers with a gateway at each end. A cross wall divides the castle into two baileys – the larger, outer bailey, where the Great Hall and garrison buildings stood, and the inner bailey, which contained the royal apartments and private offices (the photo at right is looking down into the outer bailey). We entered the outer bailey from the west side, which was originally protected by a long stairway (now destroyed), a drawbridge, and three fortified gates. Interpretive signs guided us through the castle and into the towers, several of which you can climb all the way to the top via dizzying spiral staircases. Four of the towers have crenellated turrets that rise even higher, from these the defenders would have had a fantastic view of any approaching enemies. Little remains of the living quarters inside the walls (some of which were made of wood), but you can see the shells of several of the structures, including the Great Hall and the royal apartments. Many of the towers and the Great Hall itself still have their empty stone hearths built into the walls, even though the wooden floors are long gone, and fragments of the stone arches that supported the ceilings give some hint to the grandeur of the rooms. The crumbling towers were very atmospheric with their thick growth of clinging plants, many of which were in bloom, turning the castle into a hanging garden of sorts. We climbed up several of the towers, including two of the high turrets, for spectacular views out across the town and the harbor, which was full of moored sailboats. The weather was cooperating for once – the clouds had dispersed and we had more sunshine and blue sky than we’d seen in a week.

After touring the castle we stopped in at the knight’s shop across the street, where you can buy reproduction swords and crossbows or research your family crest, then walked down the quay, past the smallest house in Britain (it’s six feet wide and ten feet long, if you really want to know). At the end of the quay the medieval wall stretches out into the harbor. We walked out on it to get a nice view of the castle and waterfront, then we found a staircase in the wall and climbed up to the wall walk. We peered down at the rows of cheerful townhouses and glimpsed tiny backyard gardens dripping with greenery and summer blooms. At periodic intervals, huge half-moon watchtowers rise up above the wall, and some of these you can climb for even better views. The town is set on a slope that falls gently to the sea, so the wall climbs steadily upwards to a high point directly opposite the castle. From here we had a sweeping view across the town, protectively encircled by its ancient stone walls, and out to the brilliant blue harbor and the whitecapped sea beyond (photo, right). Behind us, the mountains of Snowdonia rose above verdant hills dotted with…sheep, of course!

Our next stop was Beaumaris Castle on Anglesey, the largest island directly off the shore of Wales and England. To reach it we took the coastal A55 and crossed over to the island on the Britannia Bridge over the Menai Strait. We took a slow, meandering road around the southeastern edge of the island to the small town of Beaumaris, where we found a free one-hour parking spot on the street. The town, a pleasant collection of pastel-colored Georgian townhouses and shops, grew up around Beaumaris Castle in the late 13^th century, the last and largest of Edward I’s fortifications. Built on a nearly level bit of land protected from the surf (Beaumaris means “beautiful marsh”), there were no topographical anomolies to disrupt the castle’s perfect symmetry. Of all the castles I have visited, its layout best exemplifies the classic features of medieval military architecture: a lower outer bailey, or defensive wall, with towers placed at even intervals, surrounded by a watered moat with a dock on the south side (photo, right), and an almost perfectly square inner bailey with 15½-foot-thick walls, a massive tower at each of the four corners, two more towers on the east and west walls, and two enormous gatehouses on the north and south sides (the north gatehouse is pictured below). The south gatehouse was the main entrance and is protected by a barbican, a stone wall that juts out from the righthand tower, turning at a sharp right angle to be parallel with the bailey wall. The barbican would have forced attackers to be funneled through a narrow corridor and turn sharply to the left to go through the gate. Defenders on the walls above could then attack them from all sides. A wall walk links all of the towers of the inner bailey except for the gatehouses, where the walk is barred by doorways and a short open section. In medieval times, these open sections would be crossed by wooden bridges that could be removed if necessary, separating the gatehouses from the rest of the walls. The gatehouse towers were thus the last line of defense, should both the outer and inner baileys be penetrated.

Beaumaris was never completed and has been significantly dismantled. It looks like someone chopped off the upper half of the towers with a sweep of a massive sledgehammer. The interior of the castle is completely empty save for a few stone foundations. But you can wander through the long, dark passages of the inner bailey and climb up on top a section of the walls, from which you can see back across the Menai Strait to the lush Welsh coastline and the brooding mountains of Snowdonia. After we toured the castle we walked outside the walls along the moat, but unfortunately I couldn’t get the classic “Beaumaris and Snowdonia” shot that I had seen in posters without climbing over a fence into a sheep pasture, which I figured would be frowned upon.

We crossed back to the mainland via a chain suspension bridge designed by Thomas Telford in 1826 and headed southwest along the Menai Strait to Caernarfon. We found a parking space in town and walked through a small, rather rundown shopping district towards the castle, which we had only glimpsed from the road. It was late afternoon already and the town looked pretty dead. The castle, however, was most impressive; its walls and towers are the most intact of the castles we visited today. It stands on a strategically important site near the mouth of the Menai Strait, originally the site of a Roman fort and later an 11^th-century mott-and-bailey castle. The castle we see today was begun by Edward I in 1283, after his armies had overrun Snowdonia. It follows an hourglass-shaped plan with two gatehouses and nine high towers. The castle’s polygonal towers and walls of striated light-and-dark stone were influenced by those of Constantinople, as Edward I was also an ardent Crusader. The castle was taken by Welsh forces when it was still under construction in 1294, but later withstood sieges in 1403 and 1404.

Caernarfon is perhaps most famously known as the birthplace of Edward II, the first English Prince of Wales. Edward I promised to give the Welsh chieftains a ruler who spoke no English, and so it was to Caernarfon that he sent his wife, Eleanor of Castile, to give birth to a son “who spoke no English, had been born on Welsh soil, and whose first words would be spoken in Welsh.” Every generation thereafter, the eldest son of the English royal family has been invested as the Prince of Wales at this very castle, as Prince Charles was in 1969.

We entered the castle via the King’s Gate on the town side and spent the next hour or so exploring the labyrinth of walls and towers. We hiked up to the top of the King’s Tower with its three turrets, from which we had a magnificent view down into the castle (photo, above), the surrounding hills, and the tidal waters of the strait. We stopped to watch a 20-minute film about the history of Caernarfon and the rest of Edward’s castles and the role they played in the subjugation of the Welsh people. The film left us with haunting images of the mountains of Snowdonia, which served as the last stronghold of the Welsh fighters. John went into the museum of the Royal Welsh Fusiliers while I scrambled around the walls for a while longer. It was after 5:30 when we were ready to leave, only to find ourselves locked in; the man at the ticket window had to unlock the door in the massive gate to let us out.

We drove out along the road opposite the castle to get some pictures (photo, right)and then made our way back overland through the Llanberis Pass to Betws-y-Coed. Along the way we spied the remains of Dolbadarn Castle, built by Llywelyn ap Iorweth sometime before 1230 to guard the route into Snowdonia. Apparently the Welsh didn’t have the same access to military engineers – or large pocketbooks – as their English rivals. The ruin is dominated by a round tower which stands lonely watch over the waters of Llyn Padarn. A bit further on we passed Electric Mountain, a power station built inside an abandoned slate mine so as to protect the scenery of Snowdonia, as well as the Welsh Slate Museum. As we continued towards Capel Curig, we stumbled upon the gorgeous craggy valley of Llanberis, where we finally got to see the real splendor of Snowdonia – albeit half-obscured in the clouds – and began to understand why the park is such a mecca for hikers and climbers. The road winds up a narrow valley, lined on either side by low slate walls. Dozens of waterfalls cascaded down green slopes all around us, sheep grazed on the impossibly steep hillsides, and more slate walls crisscrossed the pastures as if they had grown right out of the earth. Mount Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales (though not that high at 3,560 feet), was up in the clouds somewhere to our right. We were running late and it was starting to rain again so we couldn’t stop for pictures – I had to settle for the less-than-stellar shots I could snap out the window. We drove through Betws-y-Coed on the way back, located a bank and a gas station, and decided to come back to check out the town in the morning.

We made it back to Tan-y-Foel just before 7:00, so we had to hurry to get ready for dinner. Our meal was not quite as spectacular as last night (although the ambience was a bit more lively with three other couples there). I had a slab of roasted “stripy” bacon with red cabbage and honey dressing, while John had the confit of mullet with spiced sweet corn relish and mango and lime dressing. We both had the halibut with runner beans, salmon potato cake, and a port wine cream sauce, accompanied by a nice Australian chardonnay. We had homemade pannatone bread pudding for dessert, which was positively delicious! After dinner we retired to the lounge again, where John tried another port and I had a very generous glass of Sauternes.

And so ends our brief forway into Wales – tomorrow we head back to England, for a brief stopover in the Lake District on our way north to Scotland.

28 June: The Wilds of Wales

Mrs. Nixon served us our full English breakfast in the dining room, with canned peaches and prunes this time. The portions were a bit smaller than usual, for which I was grateful – I cringe at what these meals must be doing to my cholesterol level. When I went to check out, Mrs. Nixon took my credit card, looked at it for a moment, and asked if we were American. I said yes and she said, “That explains it – you didn’t sound German on the phone!” I asked her if they got many American guests and she said quite a few, so I guess they don’t all sign the guestbook.

We drove back down the crazy narrow lane and headed north on “A” roads (one step below motorway, meaning they are two full lanes wide, thank goodness) through rolling countryside populated by more sheep than people. (I’m not joking – Fodor’s says there are 2.9 million people in Wales and 5.5 million sheep.) We drove through the old spa town of Llandrindod Wells, its streets lined with incongruous Victorian mansions. From there we headed northwest into the Elan Valley, Wales’s equivalent of the Lake District (photo, right). We decided to check out something called Devil’s Bridge, which turned out to be a bit of a tourist folly. Here you can see the rushing River Mynach carving its way through a jagged chasm, complete with several “punch bowls” – nearly-symmetric bowls that have been eroded out of the rock by the river’s passage. The narrow channel is spanned by three separate bridges built literally one on top of the other, the first dating back to the 11^th century, the second from 1708, and the third from 1901 (photo, right). Why they decided not to tear down the previous structures is beyond me! We paid £1 each to go through an ancient metal turnstile and hike down a zigzag trail to see the punch bowls and the trio of bridges. On our way back we got stuck because the turnstile jammed and we had to exit via another door.

We continued west to Aberystwyth on the coast (home of the National Library of Wales) and then turned northeast, passing through Machynlleth, its streets lined with handsome Georgian townhouses. By midday we had entered Snowdonia National Park and the landscape grew increasingly wild as we continued northwards (photo, below). The image that probably comes to mind when you think of Wales is really only one small part of the country, concentrated in the northwest amidst the mountains of Snowdonia. We stopped in a particularly rugged valley to admire the scenery – steep hillsides carpeted in ferns, topped by jagged slate cliffs, with the ubiquitous white sheep grazing in lush green pastures on the lower slopes.

I talked John into taking a scenic drive over Bwlch y Groes (Pass of the Cross), the highest road in Wales. I figured if it was listed in Fodor’s, it couldn’t be that bad. We started out from a lake called Llyn Tegid near the town of Bala and headed towards a bulbous rocky mountain in the distance. When we arrived at the turnoff for the pass (a road so small that it didn’t even have a name on our map), John was rather dubious. There was a sign posted that warned, “single-track road with few passing areas.” I had to show John the description in Fodor’s again to prove that we were in the right place and we weren’t going to get lost out in the Welsh wilderness. The road began winding through tall hedges, then opened up as we climbed the side of a narrow valley occupied by a lone farmstead. We encountered more sheep than cars on the road – a good thing, since sheep are smaller and easier to avoid. We stopped at a little pull-out where a stream came cascading down the hillside to eat a light lunch (salami, crackers, and a tomato and an orange left over from our Sussex Pad breakfast). Our huge Mercedes stood out peculiarly in this empty landscape. Tucked into the pull-out, it resembled a disguised Polizei car waiting for speeders. Just as I asked, “Do you think we are the only people out here in an E-Class?” we watched an older couple drive by in a silver E-Class with British plates. Apparently we were not the only crazy tourists out today. We also got some funny looks from three guys in an offroad-equipped Land Rover coming down the mountain. Remember that we have German plates, so we were definitely a bit of an oddity on the backroads of northern Wales.

After our snack amongst the sheep, we continued onwards, the road narrowing to barely a car’s width as we crept up the side of the valley, watching constantly for pull-outs in the event that someone came at us from the other direction. Fortunately we didn’t see any more cars until we got to the pass, where we got out and climbed a nearby rise to survey the landscape. It was overcast and the clouds kept spitting cold rain at us, but we could see the ridgeline of the Aran Mountains through the mist. A sign was posted that read “This is Sheep Country – you are legally required to keep your dog on a lead.” Right next to the sign stood a blocky stone marker with – you guessed it – a sheep sitting on top of it. An interpretive sign told us that the dark wavy lines on a distant hillside were the edges of ancient peat bogs – an increasingly rare sight even in this unspoiled landscape (photo, right).

We continued on over the pass, rolling treeless grassland stretching out around us. We arrived at a crossroads and admired the view down another steep valley (photo, right), but our route took us in the other direction. On the way down the other side we had to keep our eyes peeled because we encountered several oncoming cars. A couple of times John had to back up quite a ways in order to give the other cars room to pass.

We finally emerged at Lake Vyrnwy and decided to drive counter-clockwise around the lake and then hook up with a B road that would take us back to Bala. We could have taken another mountain road to get back, but John decided that he had had enough of that sort of driving for one day! The lake – or what we could glimpse of it through the trees – was very pretty, with not a house in sight to disturb the landscape of dark forest and green pastures. We stopped at the southeast end of the lake to cross the late 19^th-century dam (constructed to provide water to Liverpool) and used the award-winning loo there (yes, these things are important).

I navigated us back to a nice wide A road (who knew we would ever be so grateful to see a dotted white line down the middle of the road) and we headed west to Trawsfynydd and then north for the final push to Betws-y-Coed. We passed the Llechwedd Slate Caverns en route, where you can tour the slate quarry. The scenery in that area was amazing – enormous piles of slate literally poured out of the mountainside like shards of black glass. Unfortunately it was now raining heavily so I couldn’t get any pictures.

We turned off before reaching the popular resort village of Betws-y-Coed to find our lodging for the next two nights: Tan-y-Foel Country House. It is located several miles from town, up yet another winding single-track lane between high hedges. We were quite relieved when we finally arrived at the gorgeous 16^th-century stone farmhouse nestled in the woods (photo, right). This was our big splurge on the trip and I was anxious to see which of the six individually-decorated rooms we would get. We rushed inside to escape the wind and wet and were greeted warmly by Kelly, daughter of the proprietors. She told us that we were the only guests for the night so they had upgraded us to a larger room. Kelly threw on a coat and took us back outside, around the side of the house to our private entrance. We had our own little vestibule where we could take off our coats and shoes. A second door opened onto the room: a cozy, low-ceilinged chamber with ancient wood beams, a king bed swathed in a gold quilt, two comfortable leather armchairs, a dressing table and large closet, all done in soothing cream and beige tones with lots of atmospheric lighting and artsy fixtures. The bathroom was enormous, simple and modern, with cork flooring, a separate shower and tub, and huge fluffy white bath towels and robes. We were in heaven!

Tan-y-Foel is known for its fine cuisine, cooked up by co-owner and Master Chef Janet Pitman, so we were really looking forward to a wonderful meal. We were seated all alone in a nook in the modern dining room, looking out on a little walled garden where a tabby cat was snuggled in a box under an umbrella, oblivious to the rain. Our meal was simply fabulous, starting with the homemade bread – white with Welsh cheddar and brown flavored with molasses. For starters, I had chicken livers on toast with mixed greens and raspberry-mustardseed vinaigrette and John had roast salmon with tomato fondant and olive tapenade. We both had the Welsh pork tenderloin with crisp pancetta, potato cake, apple cider sauce and something called “bubble-and-squeak,” which is a crispy sort of cracker made from the pork drippings. Can you imagine a more perfect meal for a dark and stormy night? To go with it we had the recommended Jackie Janedot Moulin-a-Vent Beaujolais. For dessert, John had rhubarb fool and I had apricot Tarte Tatin with crème Anglaise. Kelly was our server and sommelier and, since she didn’t have any other guests to take care of, stopped to chat with us several times about our trip and living in Germany. After dinner we retired to the cozy lounge, also very tastefully decorated in a modern style, where I had Earl Grey tea and John had a glass of port, which he picked because it was described as tasting of pencil lead. It was raining sideways when we finally turned in for the night. Full of good food and exhausted from the day’s journey, we relaxed in our cozy room, quite safe from the raging Welsh weather.

27 June: From Cornwall to Wales

John had the Bottreaux’s English breakfast again and I had scrambled eggs with smoked salmon and chives. Our hostess came over to greet us – after talking to all of the other guests first, just like yesterday. I felt sort of second-class. She seemed nice enough, although they never did turn on the heat. John loaded up the car while I checked out and chatted with the hostess. For some reason we got on the topic of Africa because she used to live in South Africa.

Today’s route was slated to take us back through northern Cornwall to Exeter and northeast along the Bristol Channel. We planned to take a short detour to Glastonbury to visit the famous Tor and then continue on past Bristol, across the channel, and into Wales. We had reservations this evening (including dinner) at a bed & breakfast called Brynhir Farm near Llandrindod Wells in central Wales. Susie said the drive would take about four hours.

We followed the narrow winding roads back through Cornwall and I was reminded of a comment I read somewhere expressing frustration about the hedges being so high here. All we ever seemed to see were masses of tangled green shrubs, with glimpses of rolling hills (dotted with sheep, of course) flashing by through the occasional break in the hedge. Of course John’s eyes were always on the road, anticipating the next car to come speeding around the bend. English drivers don’t seem to expect an oversized German sedan to be coming at them and they often barely give us enough room to squeeze by. (I’m laughing as I write this since an E-Class is considered a mid-size sedan in the U.S.)

We soon hooked up with the welcoming broad swath of the M5 motorway and made good time through the rolling countryside to Glastonbury. Susie guided us into town and, amazingly, even knew exactly where we should park, as you cannot actually drive to Glastonbury Tor. The parking lot was right next to Glastonbury Abbey, site of the first Christian settlement in England, and, according to legend, where Joseph of Arimathea brought the Holy Grail and founded a monastery in the 1^st century. We could see bits of the ruined Abbey over the high stone wall, and I hoped that we could take a peek inside (after all, it is rumored to be the site where King Arthur and Guinevere were buried), but our primary goal was the Tor, long-revered as the heart of the mystical realm of Avalon.

We decided to get something for lunch first since it was almost 1:00. The town – at least what we could see of it – looked like your normal sort of college hangout, despite Glastonbury being a major draw for druids, hippies, and various other New Agers attracted to its mystical past. We walked down the street a ways (figuring it was probably a good idea to put a little distance between us and the tour bus throngs descending on the Abbey) and ducked into a cozy pub with red velour seats and red curtains and a very frazzled bleached-blonde barmaid. We ordered a couple of toasted baguette sandwiches and sodas. While we waited for our lunch to arrive, we watched with mild amusement as the barmaid told some teenagers of uncertain origin to turn down the music that they were blasting on their cell phones. They pretended not to understand English but did what she asked and left soon after. We gobbled down our sandwiches and then set off on our jaunt to Glastonbury Tor.

We walked about a mile through town, past a park, and then along a trail through a cow pasture to the base of the Tor. It sprinkled on and off but fortunately never turned into a serious downpour. The dirt path angled steeply upwards and we could see the massive dark tower looming on the hill above us (photo, above). When we arrived at the top we had the place completely to ourselves, although there was plenty of evidence of past visitors of the bovine variety – evidence splattered rather unceremoniously all over the base of the tower. The striking square edifice is all that remains of St. Michael’s Church, which collapsed in1271 (photo, right). From the open archways at the base of the tower we had magnificent views of the surrounding countryside, out across the red-brick houses of Glastonbury and the vivid green fields of the so-called Vale of Avalon (photo, below). A circular stone slab set into the ground nearby pointed out nearby landmarks. We found Cadbury Castle, one of several contenders for the site of King Arthur’s Camelot, about 13 miles distant. Or rather, I think I identified a dark green, flat-topped hill as the location of Cadbury Castle.

We took our pictures and then hiked back down the hill in a light rain. We peeked in the entrance to Glastonbury Abbey but didn’t have time for a visit (it would have cost £18) which was too bad, because the ruins looked very atmospheric in the rain. (The abbey was completed in 1524 but destroyed in 1539 when Henry VIII called for the dissolution of the monasteries.) We looked around the gift shop instead and bought a fridge magnet with the Wilkinson family crest (Wilkinson being John’s grandmother’s maiden name).

Then it was back in the car, a quick stop for gas, and onwards to Wales. I called Brynhir Farm on my cell phone to tell them when we would arrive; Mrs. Nixon said she had to attend an important meeting in town and was leaving dinner in the hands of her husband (she actually said, “I think everything is under control!”). We bypassed Bristol and headed across the very new, very modern Severn Bridge (whopping £5,10 toll!) into Wales. We were greeted by a “Welcome to Wales” sign printed in English and in Welsh, and I was pleased to see that all of the road signs are printed in both languages, with Welsh on top. On the down side, this meant that my navigational instructions became completely incomprehensible as I tried in vain to pronounce the jumbles of consonants that pepper the Welsh language.

Near Cardiff we left the M4 and headed north on winding roads through more rolling green countryside that gradually became more rugged and barren. I am beginning to understand why people are always joking about how many sheep there are in the U.K. There are a few cows, too – I spotted my first Highland cows, the cute ones with blonde bangs and long curved horns. We made our way through a string of quaint little towns until we finally reached the tiny hamlet of Howey, just south of Llandrindod Wells, where, after one wrong turn, we found Chapel Road and followed the signs to Brynhir Farm. The road became a narrow one-lane track with high hedges on either side, and we just hoped that no one would come at us from the other direction because there was nowhere to pull over. We passed several other B&Bs and farmsteads and the road finally ended at the entrance to Brynhir Farm (photo, right). It was pretty funny to see where the mapmakers had stopped – we drove right off the end of the white line on the navi’s display, our little arrow indicator heading into a blank sea of gray on the screen.

We parked in front of a rambling white stone farmhouse (photo, right), where we were greeted by a scruffy but friendly Border Collie. As we rooted through our stuff in the trunk, a grizzled man in mud-covered work clothes came out of a nearby barn carrying a bucket. He apologized for his appearance, saying he was dealing with a difficult birth (a cow, I assume, from the heart-rending lowing coming from the barn), and asked if we wouldn’t mind showing ourselves to our room. He gave us directions through the house and there was also a note from his wife for us on the door. Our room was on the first floor at the far end of the house, through two small parlors filled with frilly antiques. We were surprised to open the door and find twin beds on opposite sides of the room (I had simply requested a double), with a sink in one corner and a small but serviceable bathroom with shower. In one of the parlors there was a guestbook, which I peeked at; no American guests had signed it since last September. After we’d settled in, I decided to take a little walk before dinner. As soon as I started down the road, my friend the Border Collie jumped up and led the way. I got the feeling he had done this before. I took a few pictures of the scenery and then returned to the house. On my way inside I met an elderly lady who was seated at the desk in one of the parlors. She told me she was here with two friends on a walking holiday (apparently a very popular pastime for Brits). We chatted for a bit about the weather, as there has been some serious flooding elsewhere in Wales and England over the past few days.

Dinner was served promptly at 7:00 p.m. We were seated at a table in front of the stone fireplace, which was large enough for five people to stand up inside of it (photo, right). The woman from the parlor was there with her friends, along with another older couple. Dinner was efficiently served by a young woman dressed in a prim black skirt and white apron. It was a rather interesting meal. First we had a piece of honeydew melon garnished with an orange slice and a strawberry. The main course consisted of a platter of cold ham, accompanied by individual dishes of potatoes, rice and peas, pickled beets, halved hard-boiled eggs with mayonnaise, an iceburg lettuce salad, and bread and butter. The potatoes were the only thing served warm. In some ways it reminded me of the simple dinners we would eat on the farm in France when my brother and I stayed with the Nuttens in high school. Lunch was usually served hot and dinner was the leftovers, served cold…typical farm fare, I suppose. I saw that the other couple had a bottle of wine so I asked the young woman if they sold wine. She asked us if we wanted white or red. I asked for a medium white, and we got a very nice Riesling – from Bernkastel-Keus in the Mosel Valley, of course!

The best part of dinner was dessert – a fabulous raspberry custard topped with a thick layer of the richest cream I’ve ever tasted – homemade, I reckon. We finished with tea and coffee and then took a nice late-evening stroll down the lane. We stopped to watch a couple of horses grazing in a pasture (photo, right), but they wouldn’t come very close – apparently they didn’t smell any apples or carrots on us. We went on down the road until we reached a herd of plaintively bleating sheep, several of whom were sticking their heads through the fence to munch on the tender leaves of the hedge (you know what they say – the grass is always greener…). Finally we turned around and headed back to the farmhouse, marveling at this little idyllic corner of the world that we had discovered in central Wales.