We wake-up in a grey world. It’s 16 degrees, wet and windy. We leave to visit the Isle of Anglesey, at the North-West tip of Wales. A poster in our holiday house says the Western tip is the sunniest part of the UK so we have hope the weather will be better there.
The wind blows the rain horizontal against the car when we cross the bridge to the island. We look forward to visiting Beaumaris Castle and hide from the rain, but we arrive at a ruin without roofs.
Beaumaris Castle should have been the most beautiful castle of the UK, but it was never finished because of money shortages. What we see today is the result of five years of intense labour, before the work force quit because their wages were not paid.
We should have known better, as the castle is part of the Welsh Heritage subscription, which are usually ruins, while the National Trust membership gives access to the fully furnished manors and castles.
We’re soaked from only walking from our car to the entrance, so we just surrender to the water and start building the unfinished castle with building blocks in the castle courtyard. And what the workers could not manage 700 years ago, we manage in 10 minutes in the pouring rain!
We try to hide from the rain in the castle walls and find some rooms and a chapel inside, but we go back soon as we only get more wet. Although the castle is not finished, it’s huge. It has a complete outer curtain wall which surrounds the actual castle which has massive towers and walls.
We skip the drone session as it’s raining anyways and continue our drive west. The poster was right: the rain stops when we arrive at the Western tip. There are many birds and a howling wind. Despite this wind, Tim does a drone session and captures the wild coast.
Then he disappears. Zeno fell asleep, and Cleo and Olga entertain themselves close to the car, but after an hour Cleo already thought of several scenario’s what must have happened to her dad: he found a castle, he was running after a flying bird, he was taken by the police. Luckily he just saw some seals. So we wake Zeno, as seals always remind us of him (in a cute way), and we follow Tim and indeed see 15 seals swimming and playing in the waves. The wind blows our clothes dry.
We pass Holyhead when driving south to visit a South Stack, a bird cliff which has 10 breeding pairs of puffins, but we only see seagulls, guillemots, razorbills, and cormorants. In the cabin are binocolors and the staff there sometime shout puffin, but we don’t see any in the choppy sea as they all have left there nests for the sea. The children get craft books and coloring pages.
On our way back to the car we pass a man lying down on the stairs. His glasses are broken and he’s bleeding, but responsive to our questions about his name (Paul) and his company (Karen). While Tim walks back to find Karen, Olga stays with Paul, and other visitors go up to the visitor center to get help. We we’re just chatting that luckily it’s not raining when rain starts falling down from the sky. Luckily the local staff wraps the head of Paul quickly in band aid and Paul and Karen hurry inside to recover.
Reminded of how fragile life and luck can be, we get in the car to drive back home. We skip all the viewpoints on our way home again, as rain and storm clouds meet us as we reach the bridge.
