Saturday, 18 May 2013

Castles, Britain's smallest house, and the world's longest town name


 
Clockwise from top left: Conwy Castle; Caernarfon Castle; Caernarfon Castle

Clockwise from top left: The world's longest town name; Monique imitating previous tourists; inside the UK's smallest house 


Our second day in Wales was quite diverse. We saw…

Castles…
Wales certainly had some impressive ruined castles. We have quite a thing for ruins…we love imagining what life would have been like for those that called the ruin home. The two castles that we saw (Caernarfon Castle and Conwy Castle) would have been incredibly imposing back in their day. Conwy Castle was particularly interesting, as the town that it was would have protected back in the day was still in the same location, and still surrounded by much of the original town wall. 

Britain’s smallest house…
A quaint little feature (pardon the pun) of the town attached to Conwy Castle was that it featured Britain’s smallest house. Condemned for human inhabitation in the early 1900s, the house’s former inhabitants were a married couple(!), and a 6 ft 3 inch fisherman. The fisherman was the last person to live in the house, and upon being evicted, set about travelling the UK measuring small houses to confirm that his was indeed the smallest in Britain. Monique and I have come to to think that living in studio flat can be testing at times…so the married couple must have been very patient!

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch …
Yes….we know it’s a super cheesy tourist attraction…but how could we be in the area and not drop in (along with all the other coaches full of tourists) to take a photo? Don’t ask us to try and pronounce it, but apparently it means ‘The church of Mary in the hollow of the white hazel near the fierce whirlpool and the church of tysilio by the red cave’. 

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