June 13 Conwy and Conwy Castle, Wales

June 13 Conwy and Conwy Castle

The B&B where I am staying, Gwynfynn, is quite nice, and my room, the "Violet Room," would be very roomy except - perhaps consistent with the name - it is badly over-decorated, with decorations that eat available space to no good purpose (chintzy little unusable stools and tables, glass bead flower arrangements, etc.). The bathroom is roomy and comfortable, and the bed is good; altogether it is a nice place. Conwy is loaded with B&Bs, only a few of which can be found in guidebooks and on the web - my hunch is that the rest do just fine with repeat business and word of mouth. It is a lovely little town and I would recommend it highly as a place for 2 or 3 days in Wales - much nicer to my taste than Caernarfon, although that village would also do nicely.
I got up three hours before breakfast, as usual, so had a cup of coffee in my room then took a long walk around the town wall - about half of it is in good enough repair to walk on - then down to the waterfront and over the bridge. I got several good pictures of the castle from the bridge and across the water. I came back to a very nice breakfast, then walked over to the castle for a slow tour and about a hundred more pictures, half of them repetitive (re-taking when no-one was in the way or the light looked better). It is a very interesting castle; some of the inner walls are fallen in and the wood-beam roofs are of course long gone, but enough of the inner walls are still standing that you can get a very good idea of it. It is a long castle, slightly irregular in shape. The main residence curves slightly around the right side; there are foundations along the left side where stables and the like were located. The castle was built with several towers, and smaller towers standing up above the towers. You can still see the ledges where beams were emplaced to support the floors, both in the main hall and in the towers. The castle is built of relatively soft stone; the arrow slots haver holes where grills were fitted to impede attackers from widening the slots enough to squeeze through.
I spent nearly two hours in the castle, bought a few things in the souvenir stand, and by the time I had reached a little coffee shop to get a light lunch it was beginning to rain. I had hoped to get a nice walk in the mountainous national park nearby, but by the time I had finished lunch it was raining hard enough to convince me that wouldn't be a lot of fun - I'd rather sit in the room and work on the laptop while listening to the gulls squawking outside. It looks likely to rain on and off all afternoon, then probably clear up for most of the week - but who knows? British weather is even more unreliable than Oregon.