It wasn’t until we got to Conway, and couldn’t find a pier, that we realised that we misread the web site. The pier was in Colwyn Bay, further along the coast. Since Conway is not far from Llandudno we decided to drive to the top of the Great Orme for great views and to stretch the dogs’ legs, before browsing the internet to locate the pier at Colwyn. We discovered that Colwyn pier had been scheduled for demolition in February, although was still there, and that Rhyll had been demolished many years ago. No wonder the website only included old photographs. The pier project was proving a bit of a failure. We headed to Colwyn Bay anyway, where we found the pier, fenced off and inaccessible.
We returned to Llandudno to photograph the pier from the top, and to go back up the Great Orme to see a wonderful sunset. Tia and I walked down the steep moorland slope to the beach, and nearly got lost trying to find our way back to the car park in the gathering gloom.
We had picked up a leaflet extolling the tourist spots of North Wales, a map with each venue marked by a numbered spot. We got into the habit of deciding where to go by Chantal choosing a number which I located on the map. We found a Roman Fort, an angular mound near Snowden just visible through driving rain. We drove down a long narrow valley road to an old chapel, now a tiny hydro-electric power station, which was inaccessible, although the adjacent river cascading down the hill adjacent to the pipe supplying the water for the power station was picturesque.
On some days we had to practice rain avoidance, either by settling down for a chilled time in the leaking “conservatory”, or finding where the sun was shining, and heading there. We went in search of sun, sea and sand, and found it in Liverpool, where we visited Crosby Beach, the home of Anthony Gormley’s “Another Place” exhibition, 100 life size iron men scattered along a mile or so of beach. Tia was not at all sure about men that looked like men but didn’t smell like men! We walked around Albert Dock reminiscing about our visits there when Claire was at university in Liverpool, but were disappointed to find that the various gift and art shops had mostly been replaced by chain restaurants.
On our last day we headed up to the Llyn Peninsular, once again to avoid rain in central Wales, rain, visiting small seaside resorts, after which we abandoned Satnav and use good old fashioned maps to find a single track road that led up into the hills, descending again to the coastal village of Trefor, with a small harbour busy with people crabbing. On our way home we stopped at a reservoir to photograph the sunset from the dam.
As is usual when we stay at our friend’s cottage we spent that day when we left earning our keep, cleaning the house, weeding and digging in the garden, and “bracken bashing”, using a long handled blade to beat down the bracken that invades the field at the front of the cottage. More photos in Our Recent Photos
Technically we live in Oaktree House, but sadly the tree had to go.
We now have a thriving Oakstump at the front of the house.
