The ruined majesty of Cerreg Cennen...

On the way home from our week in North Pembrokeshire we just had to visit Cerreg Cennen teetering high and still defiant on its windblown crag!

This has to be the most dramatic castle in Wales, growing up out of the bedrock of a sheer cliff face 300 feet obove the River Cennen in the valley below at the edge of the Black Mountains . I took so many pictures of this place it was hard to whittle them down, but I'd be uploading them all night otherwise! It's just magnificent!





We used to visit a lot of castles both the Welsh and the Edward I strongholds before the children arrived and have always loved them and their vivid, sometimes livid histories. Visiting castles with the children is quite a different experience in some ways. Its thrilling to be able to show them these exciting sites, but I am less absorbed in the castle and more heart in mouth at the sheer bone shattering drops and teetering stairways into ragged open-topped towers as I cling tight to little hands and yell 'Don't run towards the edge!' slightly neurotically...

Extremely vertical!

The real mindblowing glory of this castle is when you first cross the inner ward and look out of the cliff-side windows... the view is stunning, huge and unexpected as the land drops away and away in green swathes... Photos just can't do it justice...

Look closely, you can see the Ravens flying far below us

The children had so much to explore, even climbing inside a small vaulted oven like a cave which set me thinking of dark old fairy tales with crafty, ravenous hags... Its believed the site was an Iron Age Hillfort before the Welsh Princes built the first castle here in 1197 ish, though it was eventually taken by King Edward I. Here's one little cave Elora found in the cliff...

Best of all this castle even has a secret tunnel! You can hire torches to explore the secret tunnel that runs from a steep passageway on through a natural cave, very dark, very slippery and even with game, brave little children we've never yet managed to get to the end... maybe next time though...
Down below, the access to the castle is a working farm with ancient old barns and a lovely renovated cafe with tables made out of old milk churns and slabs of oak. There's a collection on always display in one of the old stable blocks of various old Victorian farm implements... I have no idea what many of these are for but it is fascinating.
They're all hoarded in a rusted jumble of dusty sunbeams with swallows flying in and out nesting in the beams, click on the picture to see some of it in more detail...

While we were in the gloom of the barn, there came a low rumbling noise that gathered and grew. At first I thought a tractor must be going past but it grew and grew and continued on and on again, I wondered what on earth it was... Emerging back out into the bright sunlight it turned out to be part of a chapter of Bikers out on a road trip, quite a sight... (and sound!)
They told me there were 500 of them altogether but around 100 of them had come to the castle that day, so much chrome and leather! I always enjoy chatting to Bikers, they're always really friendly chaps in my experience and one obligingly posed for me!

All in all a good way to round off our week away, and a week full of lovely memories to ease the way back into work and school. I have one more Welsh post in mind to share soon, I hope you all enjoyed this one and I'd highly recommend seeing Cerreg Cenen for yourselves if you can!

Castell Henllys and a journey into the Iron Age...

I would love to share with you a place I love so much, and try to visit whenever I'm in Wales... It is a place where you can really feel the weave of past and present as a continuous thread, and where the people of the past seem only a veil of shadow away. It is so easy here to imagine their voices, dim laughter through the woodsmoke, the daily rhythms of shared toil and community...


Castell Henllys near Cardigan in Wales is an Iron Age Hillfort, where some of the roundhouses have been rebuilt on their original foundations and ongoing living archaeological work brings back the past. They keep native sheep and boar and have built a medicinal herb garden... The people who tend this place for visitors always seem such gentle folk with a genuine love for the place, dressed in iron-age garb and showing the crafts and skills that were used in daily life here...
Every time I am here I wish I could stay!

I will show you some things along the wooded paths that wind around the hillfort. Don't be alarmed if my children change size in some of the pictures! I have taken the best pictures from the last three visits!
The first thing you see as you arrive is this magnificent totem pole...


Some hidden carvings emerge from the green...

This year someone had begun making a coracle by the riverside...


And last year a Wicker Man awaited fire on the hilltop...


And if you know the hidden path, you will find a Shrine where a natural spring emerges from the hillside beneath the fort. There are all sorts of offerings and trophys of war... It feels very real!


Here is the Blacksmith's house...

The utterly impressive Chieftain's house with its high roof where swallows nest and flit in and out of the low doorway... If the Chieftain's house was designed to impress and convey status, then it certainly held me in awe when I first saw it!





The Granary on its curious legs...

A smaller homely roundhouse where the children ground corn into flour and made flat breads to cook on the griddles ( and of course like little Goldilocks twins they tried every bed in every house!)

Elswyth making bread

It is so nice for the children to experience all this... next time they shall have to try their hand at wattle and daub - they were too shy this time to have their faces and arms decorated with blue woad, but after all they are a bit small yet for war!



And lastly my favourite place of all. I could sit and dream all day in the big communal roundhouse. I feel so at home watching the sun slant throught the woodsmoke that blackens the thatch overhead, imagining the evenings they would have had here sharing songs and stories out of the wind and weather. The walls are painted with beasts and spirals, the benches well worn. It is dark yet your eyes soon grow accustomed. It is a warm, peaceful place and I am never ready to leave.
My pictures really don't do it justice and just can't convey the atmosphere I feel here. It is a place you need to feel with all your senses, to hear the embers in the fire, smell the soot in the timbers of the houses, touch the wood, grind the flour, immerse yourself in the past...
I love it (can you tell?)
If you are near or passing by, do visit and discover for yourselves!
www.castellhenllys.com

Wild Wales and treasures from the sea...

We've just been to Wales, North Pembrokeshire for a long weekend break, probebly the closest thing we'll be getting to a holiday for some time! Wales is our favourite place to go, full of wild green ferny places and wild rocky sky-torn places...

I won't bore you all with endless holiday pics, but I will share with you some of our treasure we found on Newport Sands...

The children had a fantastic time exploring all the beaches we could fit into three days... Newport Sands, Ceibwr Bay, Poppet Sands, White Sands... There were some great rockpools to explore and paddle in! Both girls ended up in the sea up to their waists with all their clothes on one day!These are from Poppet Sands with lovely quartz marbled rocks...

We also visited the Iron Age Hillfort of Castell Henllys again - I like to try and go there whenever I'm in that part of Wales and travel back in time, it is such a lovely place and it deserves a post all to itself which I will do very soon! Ceibwr Bay was also so beautiful that I will do another post for that too...

On our way home we popped by to visit children's author and illustrator Jackie Morris whom I'm sure many of you already know of through her blogs here and here... As ever she was very generous and welcoming and let us nose around her wonderful studio and peep into sketchbooks! The children had brought some treats for the Ginger Clan and were in dog and cat heaven! Elora had also brought her latest book to show Jackie that just happens to have ginger cats in! Here's a couple of pages, they made me smile...

There you go, I haven't got any of my own illustrations to show right now so Elora's fill in nicely!

I'll be back soon with some pictures from the iron age!