Caerphilly Castle In Wales

A major pile of rocks. Caerphilly is the biggest castle in Wales and second only to Windsor Castle in the UK. Construction started in 1268 and the castle is noteworthy for its extensive series of moats.

Front entrance, over the first ring of moats.

The grand hall, earning its description. A giant fireplace, a bit of a warning of cold days, nights to be had.

Royal quarters, improbably dressed to look like a 1960s cartoon show.

The ruined sections do have a majestic, abstract beauty.

Old castles also need restoration love. The east gatehouse, under wraps.

Big Pit National Coal Museum

Blaenavon, Wales is full of hardcore industrial revolution-era attractions. Pig iron and coal, what more could a worker masochist want? Grab a shovel and get digging.

Work at the Big Pit site started in the early 19th century as an ironworks mining operation. The site switched over to coal around the 1850s and the mine didn't close until 1970.

The landmark piece on the property, the imposing winding tower. Going down.

You can get a tour of some of the shafts. Hardhat and warnings and then, ready to go. In the lamp room, one of the old style lights is ready for checkout.

The blacksmith shop, a place of which Dickens would have been proud.

By the 1900s, improvements were made for the workers. They could now clean their boots and clean themselves in a support area.

Fair warning on a coal car.

People and places you do not want to see. A rescue worker and the medical unit.

The locker room is cool, stark silver lockers. The museum has done a nice job bringing history to life, peppering open lockers with specific worker's stories and props.

Worker Housing At Blaenavon Ironworks

The company provides. Humble housing, at least. Some of the workers at Blaenavon got to live right on the property. Good for the commute, bad for separating work and home life. Was there a home life?

Fancy. Well, kind of, at least for a manager or skilled worker. A roof over your head, a fireplace, a home.

You get a dining table and decent food, including a giant cut of meat. Yum.

Later on, as the fortunes of the ironworks slid, so did the housing. Still the same space, now worn, sparse.

A bare minimum bedroom, just a place to sleep and makeshift nursery. Wallpaper, yesterday's papers. A doll, pure rag.

The company store, there to help with supplies, there to take back most of your paycheck.

The Bleak Blaenavon Ironworks In Wales

If you ever want to shatter some sort of industrial revolution, production ideal foisted on the world through photographs by Margaret Bourke-White, Leni Riefenstahl, go visit the Blaenavon Ironworks. Even though it's presently a quiet location of partially ruined rocks in a hillside, you can easily imagine the hard, impossible, death accelerating work for no money that existed for decades.

Part of the complex. Furnaces of hell to the left, the water balance tower to the right. Blaenavon produced pig iron ingots. The water balance tower was an elevator, carrying finished iron to the top of the hill to then be loaded on canal barges for transport.

One of the furnaces at the top of the hill. Molten iron would drop down to waiting workers for forming. Are we in hell yet?

The warehouses, used for forming, storing the iron ingots.

Some workers did live at the site, some of the managers and skilled labor snagging decent housing. Score, actual bathrooms.

An ode to the past. A sculpture of pit ponies, depicting the rare days that these beasts of burden were let out of the coal mines for some fresh air and a green pasture.

 

The Atmospheric Ruins Of Tintern Abbey

If you go to Tintern Abbey in Wales on a grey day, the place feels like hounds and rippers could be released at any moment. The place compares to great Greek and Roman ruins, skeletons of rocks, hinting at another time, another civilization.

The quick history is an abbey built in 1131, ruined in the 1500s, celebrated by poets by the 1800s. Background to carparks and ice cream stands in the 2000s. Enjoy!

The abbey, proudly still standing.

Architectural features of crumbling rock and silhouetted arches.

The interior nave area, lush.

Column caps and abstracted ruins around the grounds.

The empty stained glass window at the end of the church, stone mullion still intact.

 

Wandering Cardiff Castle

They love their old piles of rocks in the UK. Cardiff, Wales has a nice castle complex with a variety of things to see. Time to conquer.

The original castle, the Norman Keep, early 12th century. Rocks on a hill, no mod-cons. Read the Air BNB listing carefully.

Time to improve one's accommodations. The House, built by the third Marquess of Bute in the 1800s, the Victorian era. The exotic Arab room and a portrait of someone really important at some time to some people.

Book it. The library, the snazziest place to take a nap in a big chair.

The Banqueting Room is covered with murals, including gory battle scenes. Goes well with the blood red wine. How to keep the castle grounds solvent? Throw some modern day parties, rock concerts.

What else to do? Enjoy the rare Welsh sun on the castle green.

Animal Attraction In Cardiff, Wales

There's a kind of hall of fame animal procession along a wall near the old castle right in the center of Cardiff. It was conceived by William Burges in the late 1800s to be part of a fanciful garden at the front of the castle. Due to later road widening, the wall was moved to the west of the castle. The circus is forever in town.

The wall with the castle in the background. Every other rampart has an animal sculpture.

The procession begins. Anteater and hyena. Do not feed.

Cute, cuddling raccoons, false advertising.

Land and sea, a bear and a seal.

Looming mountain lion and looming clock tower at the castle.