Llansannan Holiday Days 3 & 4

Day Three::

Touching history together at Conwy Castle. It was The Mother's birthday and she had asked to go to Conwy to do the castle for her special day. It was a rather magnificent place to visit! 

The castle was huge and imposing, mostly a ruin with bare walls or part walls in the centre but the staircases had been restored so you could walk around the battlements and look out over the town and harbour. It must have been fairly daunting to see if you had come to attack it, with great big stone walls rising seemingly out of the bedrock underneath but, amazingly, it was built in only 4 years - that's a lot of hard work!

It was used defensively too - some castles are all brawn and no brains but this one took part in several wars. The last time was during the English Civil War where royalists loyal to King Charles I held it after the outbreak of war in 1642, until 1646 when they surrendered to Parliamentary armies who then damaged the castle so that it couldn't be used again in any other revolt. 

After the castle we went for a little wander around Conwy itself, pausing for a lovely lunch from a bakery there and finding ourselves on a long path out into the harbour where you could look back at the town and castle from a different viewpoint and really see just how big of a structure it was. There was a fair amount of wildlife too and we watched a couple of crows catching crabs from the rockpools. 

Tucked up next to the castle is the Conwy Suspension Bridge, which is looked after by the National Trust (the castle is looked after by Welsh Heritage). You don't have to pay to cross it nowadays, although by foot it would have been 1d (1 penny) a person, and when we visited the old toll house wasn't open so it was just crossing the bridge, admiring the seemingly delicate ironwork features and listening to the trains rumble past in the next tunnel bridge over, or wave at the boats passing underneath. 

The bridge was designed by Thomas Telford, who is a very famous bridge engineer and the toll house was home to David and Maria Williams and their family. It seemed a very tiny building but apparently could house the family of six who would take the tolls at all times of day and night, seven days a week.

Can you see the stalactites hanging from the bridge arch?

The house appeared boarded up when we went so I don't know if it opens seasonally or if it's having some work done to it, but there was still a little garden there. Apparently the Williams' had a garden where they grew vegetables to sell any excess crops to people passing through, and Maria took in washing to supplement their income so there would have been a fair amount happening here when it was in proper use. 

Day Four::

Considering that we were holidaying in Wales, and had packed all of our waterproof gear thinking it would be constantly raining (as you would expect), it was actually very warm and sunny so we decided that a beach day was in order and headed out to Rhyl. 

The beach there is vast, and sandy - quite compact sand actually which, after a little bottom shuffling session, Baby F decided that he really didn't like in his nappy so he sat where he was instead and expected people to come to him. The boys had great fun here, there was lots of sand to eat (yeurgh, why do babies do that?), shells to examine and stack, a ball to kick around on the flat surface...they had a blast. 

There were lots of shells, and I also very much enjoyed myself with some shell collecting. Luckily I'd taken a bag with me to collect things in, and I might make a Stitchscape using some of them to remember the holiday by. They're still in the bag waiting to be washed though!. 

Huge piles of these Razor Clams and Common Cockles were washed up by the groynes, although quite a lot of the cockles still appeared to be inhabiting their shells so they were left. 

We spent all morning wandering around the beach, popping in to look at the huge boats and vehicles in the Rhyl Lifeboat station and mooching into the town. The town itself was very busy, quite touristy and with lots of cheap shops selling beach toys and plastic flowers. Oddly the beach had barely anyone on it which we preferred so we bought our lunch and made our way back to sit on some benches outside the SeaQuarium in a huge circular area which looked a bit like a flat amphitheatre - not quite sure what it was called or what it was used for. 

In the afternoon we split up as the parents and a couple of others wanted to go for a walk to a beauty spot, but we'd learned that there was a miniature railway around the corner that the little ones would love. Rhyl Miniature Railway isn't very big and basically goes in a huge circle around a boating lake - it even goes through the carpark which was quite funny as we could have lent out and touched our car as we passed. The carriages were a squeeze but Baby F had a blast (he has a thing for trains. And tractors. And yellow skip lorries.) and cho-chooed the whole way round. 

The edge of the lake nearest to the carpark was crammed full of people crabbing, and in fact that seemed to be a thing in the coastal areas we visited this holiday, you could buy buckets and crabbing kits and people were just filling their buckets with them! My nephew was offered the chance to have a proper look in one family's bucket, not that he got too close, just near enough to peer over the edge. I'm not sure what happens to them at the end of the day, presumably the crabs get put back into the lake/sea?

We managed to get our train ride in just before they closed so afterwards we pootled homeward for another dinner with a glorious view over our sheep field.