We departed Nottingham with continuing great weather but with a very hazy view of the Midlands as we headed south, trusting TomTom’s frequent advice on changing highways. Roads were generally crowded everywhere but the traffic is pretty well-behaved by NZ standards, the main difference is that everyone keeps left on multilane roads, ie overtake and then merge left. Very few police around, but a myriad of speed and or traffic cameras control traffic flows. Interesting at one point we had overhead signs saying “Pedestrians on Motorway ahead” and the speed limit lowered to 50 mph as a consequence. Sure enough a couple of miles ahead there was a walker with a police car pulling in behind him to deliver the bad news.
We had a couple of stops, once at a service area for
a coffee and comfort and then for lunch alongside the river at Ross on Wye.
Arrived in Y Fenni (aka Abergavenny) around 2 00 pm so plenty of time for a
walk around the town. Lovely to hear the local accents, and the signage is all
in English and Welsh, thank goodness for the bilingual approach, Welsh alone
would be a real challenge.
The local church, St Mary’s was a priory at the time of the
dissolution of the monasteries, but escaped Henry’s destruction by becoming the
local Parish church and the old parish church became Henry VIII Grammar School
in 1542. The old tithing centre alongside the church has been restored and is
now a museum and more, we had a quick peruse but couldn’t do it justice in the
time, so will return later in the week. The town’s Millennium project, a
tapestry 24 ft by 6 ft, made with 400 coloured wools on a canvas backing, took
60 people 4 years to complete. It is an impressive piece of work, depicting key
features of the Abergavenny area.
One thing the Welsh do poorly is signage, places are
actually quite difficult to find. We did finally find the lane to take us up to
Pen-y-Fal (aka Sugar Loaf) car park for our walk to the 596m summit. Set off in
cool misty conditions, nice easy walking (a bit on the steep side according to
Grannie Ann), but the mist did eventually close in so the spectacular views weren’t at all.
A bit of a shower on the way down but it was still a good leg
stretch even without the gratification of the anticipated views. Navigating the
one lane road system on the way down was a bit more complicated with more traffic
around but we did manage to come through unscathed.
After lunch we headed to Blaenavon to visit Pwll Mawr (aka
The Big Pit) up over the hill and into the next valley, it’s a mine where 1300
men once worked and is now a museum. We did the very interesting tour with “Monk”,
a retired miner, and spent about an hour and a half 90 metres underground.
Wayne aka Monk was a great guide and covered the whole mining experience, history, safety developments and the horrific employment practices that were the norm. A bit sobering to hear some of the history, like 6 year old children who were taken underground to work 12 hour shifts, six days a week. Their job was to open and close the doors which controlled the mine ventilation system. These were kept closed to prevent air from the ventilation system in the primary shaft taking a short cut to the exit shaft. After 1842 things improved and you had to be 10 yrs old and a boy before you were allowed to work in the mine, women were banned from employment, and girls were sent to school. The blokes had to make do with "sunday school" on their day off. Everyone worked six 12 hour days, and had Sunday off, plus Christmas Day, that’s it, you worked all the rest. Things got really easy when miners were given two weeks’ holiday in 1880. For the last week in June and the first week in July, the mines closed down and those two weeks became known nationally as the Miners' Holiday. Even the horses which lived underground came to the surface for a holiday. The mining industry was nationalised around 1948, and then survived until the mid-eighties when loss-making mines were closed. Eventually the industry closed down with the loss nationally of about 30, 000 jobs. The coal is still there and the final message in the museum display is “We’ll be back”!
The Blaenavon area has had mines or extraction of various
sorts for about 2000 years, ironstone for the ore, limestone for building and
then the coal, which was laid down about 300 million “yers” ago. The best quality
Welsh steaming coal was exported all around the world, and formed a part of the
economy and employment here that has been largely unreplaced. The paper
headlines just a few days ago were that “the Valleys” would be hardest hit by
proposed social welfare reforms.
Scotland voted No thanks to independence and now the post
mortem begins. 75% of the 16 year olds voted for independence. Salmond’s home
region, Aberdeen I think, also voted 69% to stay in the union. Seems that the
devolution model may go wider now to give the English more say in matters
affecting them, ditto for the Welsh and Northern Ireland. People want a
“fairer” model that gives them more control over income, taxes and the way
money is spent. It would be really surprising if there is a fix in establishing
more socialist economies, the models which show this works per se don’t exist.
Salmond has resigned and Sturgeon is the pick to take over, one should refrain
from punning.
Next day dawned fairly drizzly so we had a slow start, doing blogs, emails, postcards and a chat to Auntie Marie and then Ross and Michelle who popped up “On Line” as well while I was updating blog. Into town to finish our tour of the Tithe House museum, have a coffee and then home for lunch. We are staying at Llanwanerth Cottage, a few miles from town. We walked along the local canal and had a view of UK style canal boats, have to say we are not tempted to give up on our Pennichette 1120 R from Locaboat, much more space! Lots of the houses had patio areas with BBQ on the canal bank abutting their properties. There is much joy to be had in watching boats go by! The walking path is the old tow path for the days when these vessels were hauled by horses.
We then spent the afternoon travelling some of the byways
of the valley, through some lovely villages, tiny lanes and bridges, and
appreciated the lovely scenery of the valleys of Wales.
Today we headed south towards Swansea, weather still quite
hazy, the road busy and plenty of roadworks. Less scenic on the way down,
more industrial style towns, some open cast mines like the Tower Open cast mine, but also densely wooded
sidings giving a good touch of green.
We had pre-primed TomTom with the addresses for Ann’s
heritage visits in Swansea. Stop one was St Gabriel’s Church where Ann’s grandparents Len
and Grace Ace were married in 1919. The sign outside the Church said Mass
Sunday 9 00 am, so I said are we at the right place? It’s normally a Holy
Communion or Eucharist service in Anglican churches! The church was locked up,
but we could hear some activity inside, so I tried the door. As we walked away
the door opened and Ann went back to explain what we were doing. The reception
was just fantastic, and in we went to check it all out. A lovely church, and
very helpful people - Jane went and got their copy of the parish register and
found the wedding certificate from June 12 1919. Ann was thrilled. They
took details so they could let the Vicar know of our visit and write
it up for the Parish Newsletter.
Next stop on to Len’s parents’ house (Arthur Samuel Ace and
wife Caroline Bessie) at 29 Catherine St, (the light cream one in the photo) - another successful hit and pictures
to prove it.
The third place on the list proved a little more elusive, but we did eventually find Christ Church, not far away and adjacent to Swansea Prison! The church and vicarage looked decommissioned, but this is where Arthur Samuel and Caroline were married on August 28 1886. (The next day being Sunday we noticed it was open, and Ann was able to drop in, with a service in progress, so looks can be deceiving.) So that was a very successful contribution to the Heritage Tour.
We visited the Dylan Thomas Centre display, sadly mostly
undergoing a bit of a reno in preparation for his centenary, so didn’t see much there. Fortunately the Swansea Museum
does have a good display of the very famous Welsh poet and we enjoyed the
visit there, including a lifelike replica of one of the many pubs he haunted on
a regular basis. (Drinking seems to have cost him many a job and opportunity during his lifetime.)
We then headed out to the Mumbles, at the end of Swansea Bay and saw the lighthouse where two daughters
of Abraham Ace (brother or uncle of Arthur Samuel) were involved in a heroic
rescue in 1841, which is celebrated in a poem called “The Women of Mumbles
Head”, it’s not a Dylan Thomas one!
We watched the RNLI lifeboat being retrieved after its day’s
work. They have some excellent equipment, and an operation that is funded by a
national lottery which is a bit of an institution and has provided fantastic
funding for many, many years. One of the Coastguard people confirmed that yes,
this is the lighthouse where the afore mentioned heroic rescue took place, with technology of a more primitive
basis – ropes and scarves!
A very successful day one in Swansea, and then the next day
we went out on the Gower Peninsula to go further back in Ann’s genealogy. We
could call this day TomTom’s party, she took us down kilometres of lanes
barely wider than our car; thankfully everyone else’s GPS systems were
programmed to avoid these narrow lanes. That said, even on more conventional
sealed roads we did our share of backing up to a passing place, or being backed
up for. One lane was called “Shady Lane”, engendering a bit of a sing-along, but most others weren’t grown up
enough to have a name.
First stop was Three Cliffs Bay and a walk along the cliffs,
to a view across to Oxwich which was the next stop on the tour. Scenery is
spectacular, the weather today was our warmest day yet, maybe 22 degrees and
the haze had all but gone. The peninsula was more settled and built up than we
were expecting, that aside we were really impressed by the views. It’s a very
rugged coastline, and one of the local industries was smuggling in the old
days; there was also a bit of piracy went on and ships were lured to their
destruction by those who then helped themselves to as much of the cargo as they
could recover. There were some nasty pieces of work around back then even.
Next we found the church at Oxwich, St Illtyd’s, (sorry can’t
help with the pronunciation) and photographed a number of Ace graves. We found
graves for William and Samuel Ace, but the dates don’t quite line up with Ann’s
great great and great great great grandfathers. They were very fond of
reusing names, so undoubtedly they will figure on the less central branches of
the tree. Obviously this requires some further work when we get home. That's not to say that the actual gravestones weren't there, in fact we are pretty sure from records that they were buried at St Illtyd's, but many stones around the churchyard were weathered to indecipherability!
Then it was off to Rhossili Bay, which we were informed, had been
declared the 10th best beach in the world last year. It’s a long
beach and it’s a long walk down from the cliff top to get there, it has a 6m or
so tidal range. Yes, it’s impressive, but we have our doubts. We weren’t there
at a suitable time to do the walk out to Worm’s Head at the eastern end of the
bay. It is a couple of offshore islands connected to the point by a rocky causeway
at low tide. There were lots of locals and tourists out on a beautiful Sunday
afternoon.
On the northern side of the peninsular are saltmarshes that
are famous for the pre-seasoned lamb from the animals that graze on the salty marsh area.
It’s a local delicacy we didn’t get to taste unfortunately. There are also the
marsh ponies, famous for standing their ground when the tide comes in and they
are sometimes seen submerged with just heads above the water while the tide
does its thing. The only ones we saw were actually on dry land, but they do
have very big feet which would suit their boggy, soft environment.
We stopped for a pint and a half at the Royal Oak pub in
Penclawdd while TomTom had a break before the drive back to Swansea. She’d had
a very exciting day, stellar in fact, for narrow, unpaved lane driving, and warranted a wee rest.
So a quiet night, and a short trip tomorrow to Cardiff to
stay a couple of days with Megan's cousin Nicholas Williams and his wife Elizabeth.
Uneventful trip through to Cardiff through some slightly
industrial areas and through some lovely rolling farming hills. A stop at Caerffili Castle gave an interesting insight into the battle for control of Wales. The castle was initially built to resist the Normans. With no handy cliffs in the area to build on, Gilbert De Clear, an English baron built the initial castle to fight off the Welsh princes. As there was no hill he diverted a river to form a significant moat, with two levels, which allowed a water wheel to operate within the castle wall, keeping the populace fed in times of siege. (Wheat being easier to store than flour.) The castle has been restored significantly, but for once it is the English Civil War rather than Henry VIII who must take the blame for the destruction. It does boast a section with more lean than the famous Tower of Pisa. The fourth Marquess of Bute restored parts of it in a philanthropic move. Remember his name.
Walls at least 2m thick!
When we arrived we decided to
do the Lonely Planet Cardiff city walk just to get a feel for the place, and then
headed out to meet Nicholas and Elizabeth Williams.
We spent the evening looking at Nicholas' mementos from his grandfather Bert Winfield, famous for his key role as fullback, in Wales beating the 1905 All Blacks. The letters Bert wrote from the trenches in WW1 are interesting; he was invalided out of the front line before the Battle of Mametz Wood in France which decimated his unit. We will visit the Wood on the France leg of the trip.
We had a cup of tea and
then headed back into town with them, to look at houses lived in by relatives in the distant past. We strolled around the lake, formed by damming a couple of streams and flooding land given to the city by....the Bute family. It becomes apparent as you look around
Cardiff that it has benefitted from some fantastically generous behaviour from
some of its citizens. John Logan Campbell did very well for Auckland, but the
Bute family, one of Wales wealthiest, gave huge amounts to the city, land,
buildings lakes and more. Back to this later.
After a very pleasant evening at home we set off with our hosts next day
for a guided tour and some walking in the Wye valley, north of Cardiff. Ann was
delighted when the first stop was Tintern Abbey.
This is a ruin of a very elaborate Cistercian abbey set up from around 1200 and
then wrecked in the fury of Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries.
Wordsworth wrote lyrically about these ruins, and while nothing has been
restored, it has been essentially well researched and the interpretive signage
covers very well what used to be in place and how the monastery all worked. The Cistercians did
well with the drainage layout and each abbey had a large infirmary for the care
of the sick and aged. They generated income to support their abbey from farming
activities, and in many cases became quite wealthy. The Cistercians relate back to St Francis of Assisi and Benedictine fame, new abbeys kept being founded by small groups of monks who splintered off when they thought the Benedictine's spartan approach to life was not being adhered to properly.
We then walked through the hills, down into the
next village and back to the car.
We found “The Boat Inn” for lunch, accessed by walking across a bridge over the River Wye, back into Wales. We spent the day crisscrossing the river to be alternately in Wales and England. There were a couple of regulars in the pub who kept us vastly entertained while we dined and rehydrated. One related how he no longer had his home kills done by the local butcher, they had a falling out after a pig he had butchered for him had come back with one side 8” shorter than the other!
Off then for another short walk to see the cave where Slippery Jem lived for thirty years, making slippers for sale in the local villages, and his wife gathered berries for sale in the village. Jem claimed not to have had a bath for thirty years, so I guess the locals would have known when he was in town. The cave was in limestone and other caves nearby have yielded lots of bones and artefacts from tens of thousands of years ago. The caves were inhabited over a long period of time and were in use at the end of the last Ice Age. No cave paintings here though. A further short walk gave us some spectacular Wye valley views from an area called the Seven Sisters.
On the way home we called in to look at a Roman amphitheatre ruin at Caerleon, near Newport. We had a chat there to another visitor who was taking a keen interest and writing lots of notes. A conversation revealed he was a Roman re-enactor, someone who took part in re-enactments of ancient times and battles. What did he do? He was the bear for gladiatorial contests. We had a chuckle.
At home again and back to family heritage, Ann showed Nicholas and Elizabeth pictures and some addresses for Bert Winfield, occasioning yet another trip into town to see if these places were still there. One was The Mount, 2 Clun Terrace, (a double storey brown brick with white trims narrow building) where Ann and Nicholas's great grandfather and his family were living by 1901. These were addresses Nicholas was unaware of, so the exchange of information hasn't been all one way. So we have done really again well in getting to grips with our forebears' lives and times.
We spent the evening looking at Nicholas' mementos from his grandfather Bert Winfield, famous for his key role as fullback, in Wales beating the 1905 All Blacks. The letters Bert wrote from the trenches in WW1 are interesting; he was invalided out of the front line before the Battle of Mametz Wood in France which decimated his unit. We will visit the Wood on the France leg of the trip.
On our last day in Cardiff, and Wales we spent on a guided
walking tour of the city with the Williams, with the benefit of an insider's insight into the buildings and statues. First stop the Museum (a gift from
the Butes), saw an exhibition of Monet, Manet, Sisley and other impressionists
and quite a bit of Rodin sculpture. Much of the art has been donated by the
Davies sisters, another wealthy Welsh family. Then to the Evolution of Wales
display in the natural history part of the Museum. This was stunning, covering in
sequence the factors which formed the country over the course of 600 million years. It’s the
best natural history display I’ve seen yet. We had a good look but really not time to do it justice today.
Then on to the Town Hall, (thanks again to the Butes), a
very ornate, magnificent building. On again to the Court building (thanks again
to the Butes, are you getting the picture?). The buildings are similar in style
externally and are a great asset to the city.
A boat ride took us down to the old docks area (the port was
originally built by you know, yes Bute, to handle coal and iron exports). The sea
is now excluded by a barrage and the old harbour is a fresh water lake filled by two of
Cardiff’s three rivers. The area is typical of port redevelopments in some
ways, but has a varied mix of architecture with many of the old buildings
retained. There is now a mini 'Cloud' but blue not white, a fantastic Opera
house, and the old port building. Robert Falcon Scott left from Cardiff on his
trip to the Antarctic and the port has a monument to him and his men.
We saw Cardiff Arms Park and the central shopping area. Didn’t
have time for Cardiff Castle. So came home to have a cup of tea and some Welsh
Cakes for Ann’s birthday today, and to get ready for the birthday night out tonight. So it was Happy Birthday to
Grannie but also thanks to Nicholas and Elizabeth whose company we have very
much enjoyed and who have been very hospitable. We have had a great visit to
Cardiff.
Chepstow is a very quaint old market town with lots of historical signage (we liked the one below!) and another very intact, Norman castle, this time overlooking the River Severn. Formidable structure. Like the NZ Labour party, the Welsh have their own ABC, not Anyone But Cunliffe, theirs is Another Bloody Castle! Chepstow was one of the major trading centres for wine from Bordeaux, so that's closing off a little bit of the information we picked up in SW France last time we were there.
Chepstow is a very quaint old market town with lots of historical signage (we liked the one below!) and another very intact, Norman castle, this time overlooking the River Severn. Formidable structure. Like the NZ Labour party, the Welsh have their own ABC, not Anyone But Cunliffe, theirs is Another Bloody Castle! Chepstow was one of the major trading centres for wine from Bordeaux, so that's closing off a little bit of the information we picked up in SW France last time we were there.
So we set TomTom for Sidbury, to go South into England to track down the Venn family connection. This is Ann's maternal great grandmother on the Ace side of the family.
