It’s at places like this that I wish I had a drone.

There is no easy way to capture the grandness of a castle using an iPhone. But, we must work with what we have, and I did try a few panoramic shots – some better than others.

 

After a good sleep in this morning, Mick and I decided we would have an easy day today, following our previous two big days of travel. The only thing on our agenda was a trip into Caernarfon town and a visit to the castle.

The population of Caernarfon is around 10,000 people. So it is not a huge town, but it does have a UNESCO World Heritage Listed Castle right in the middle of the main part of the town, and I am sure it attracts lots of visitors, but not too many in winter.

This entry is known as The King’s Gate, and it is through this that visitors enter to see inside the remains of the castle. Mick and I headed up the ramp and into the entry foyer where two young Welsh men working at the castle were having trouble with the credit card machine. There was one other man who wanted to go and visit inside the castle and the machine would not accept his card. This gave Mick and I a chance to look through the glass doors into the inside of the castle ruins, and really there did not look like too much more to see than what we could from the outside.

Now this is going to sound cheap of us, but we decided to spend our time (and save our money) outside the castle. The entry fee was £9.90 each (or $AUD38 for the both of us). –

The construction of Caernarfon Castle began in 1283 and went on for a long time – more than 50 years, and apparently it is still not finished as it was planned. The castle is cared for by the Welsh Government but is still owned by….

….the Queen. But I doubt she spends many nights here.

We parked down here near the castle, and wandered around the castle and the town for a few hours.

Mick was very frustrated because he was keen to visit the Tourist Office, which was opposite the castle, but for some reason, unbeknownst to the staff in the castle, the office was not open. So, Mick would have to rely on the car’s GPS to get us back to our accommodation.

The Tourist Office is the building on the right in this photo with the dark blue, firmly bolted doors.

A huge marquee had been installed in the town’s central square (you can see it the right of the Christmas tree), and we had our suspicions that this was where the Tourist Office staff were – we could hear people giggling as they tried not to slip over on the ice rink inside.

Mick and I wandered through the ‘high streets’ – there seemed to be more than one.

These consisted of narrow roads with colourful shops on either side. The most common shops were cafes and pubs, closely followed by charity shops. It took us over half an hour before we could find a bakery, and slightly less than that before we found a chemist. We could not help but compare the difference with our experiences in France – beaucoup de boulangeries and beaucoup de pharmacies, no matter how small the town.

The window in this cake shop (not a bakery) was very different to those we’d seen in France too.

The homemade bread pudding looked interesting, but both Mick and I are trying to be good, so we resisted. Sultanas seem to be a common ingredient in Welsh cakes and slices.

Today the weather is not so great, but we are off on a longer tour of north Wales – to the island of Anglesey after a stop-off in Bangor.