The weather gods delivered a sunny day for our touring around Wales today, leaving our guide slightly giddy with the fun of actually seeing the hills of Snowdonia instead of a curtain of rain and mist. As always I wish I had another day to explore the cute stores, including one selling a huge range of posh Barbour clothes, that closed before we got back from our excursion. We started taking a 13 mile historic train ride thru the hills and moss-covered trees that looked like Tolkien's Ents; the train originally carried slate from the quarries to ports for shipping all over the world. At the end of the line we went to Portmeirion, a tiny kind of Disneyland of fantastic Italianate architecture and salvaged decor from old mansions, built in the 1920s by an architect named Sir Clough Williams-Ellis (great eccentric name). The Beatles' manager Brian Epstein rented a house regularly, and George Harrison had a "fab" (as he wrote in the guest book)'birthday celebration there. Ellis's daughter started the famous Portmeirion pottery line decorated in her botanical drawings. We had a walk around and good lunch followed by more picture-taking. Then back on the bus into Snowdonia National Park, where the tallest peaks reach 4,000 feet with a little snowcap. Only grass, a few shrubs, and sheep cover the mountains so they're brown now. My little phone camera couldn't capture the sweeping vistas but they were stunning. Coming down from the peaks we visited an unlikely museum called the Slate Museum, about the mining operations and workers who blasted the slate out of those mountains. The workers took great pride in their skills but what a rough, dangerous life they led. We learned that the famous Welsh men's choirs grew out of the mining industries as a way for the workers to bond and have something to do besides get drunk or agitate in the workplace.
And our tour director snagged us a chance to hear the well-known men's choir of Caernarfon rehearse tonight! About 50 guys, most of them well north of 40, and their young female director rehearse in a church basement. You didn't need to know Welsh to get the drift of her instructions, especially "better diction". and they put on quite a show with tear-jerking songs from Les Miz, Welsh tunes, and American collection including a medley of Dixie, Battle Hymn, and All My Trials - not something you expect to hear together! They sounded just fabulous. Followed that with a pint at a pub dating from the 1300s, and chat with a Yorkshireman who said he'd be glad to see the Scots go independent since they cost so much in taxes, and off to pack.
Steam engine to Portmeirion
Ents thru the train window
Portmeirion shots
Looking at Mt Snowdon
Slate hill at the museum
Men's choir rehearsal
Sign for the oldest pub The Black Boy, also called Black Buoy.
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