2017 Wales Trip

The initial reason to go here was a connection Karen has to Caroline Soule, who was the first woman to be ordained as a minister in the United Kingdom.

My sister and neice mentioned that we just had to stay in a castle here. Later I found that I had ancestors very near the castle we selected. The Dalhousie Castle.

Edinburgh Castle

Our two main activities in Edinburgh were the Edinburg Castle and the Royal Mile. We took a bus from our hotel to Edinburgh. It was about 15-20 minutes and was nice because we got to observe the streets, businesses and people as we went into the city. We got off the bus on the West side of the castle which I decided was a mistake. The entrance is more on the East side. It was okay because it was a nice walk to the entrance. I was a little surprised that the castle was sitting way up on top of the hill. In hindsight that makes sense. They want it up high to give it a good view of the surrounding area and making it more difficult to be conquered.

Royal Mile

The Royal Mile is a street that heads to the East from the entrance of the Edinburgh Castle. There are many famous buildings along the street and many tourist attractions.

Dalhousie Castle

After we had decided to stay at the Dalhousie Castle I began researching where my family in Scotland were from. To my surprise, I found that many of them were born in the area right around the Dalhousie Castle.

The castle itself is very grand and beautiful. We picked this because of the recommendation of my sister Jan and my neice Maria. We were very pleased with it because it still had the feel of a castle. You can still see much of the original castle walls and structure even within the building, although most modern convieniences have been added.

The castle is surrounded by some beautiful grounds. The tree is an example of the old, well maintained landscape.

The chair we a bit beyond what I could take. It was just not made to fit my bottom. We had a very interesting (cough! cough!) dinner in the dungeon and then wonderful nights sleep in the bed.

Cockpen and Carrington Parish Church

This is the Cockpen and Carrington Parish Church near Cockpen, Scotland. It's located mid way between Cockpen and Bonnyrigg which is also just North of the Dalhousie Castle.

We didn't have much time so we just quickly went through the church cemetery looking for any headstones that we thought might relate to our family.

Names of Interest: Stoddart, Millar, Kerr.

Tantallon Castle

At the North-east corner of the southern land mass protecting the inlet to Edinburgh is the Tantallon Castle ruins. It is described as the "Mighty cliff-top fortress of the Red Douglases and guarian of the Firth of Forth." At the time we were there it sits beyond a large onion field. Karen was experiencing some vertigo so she stayed at ground level, but I was able to climb up the tunnel stairs and get some wonderful pictures from on top. It is surprising that with all the decay that has occurred, there are parts that are still strong enough to allow me to do this.

There is an island that sits in the ocean to the East of the castle. Yes, all those white dots are birds.

As far as castles go, it has some of the features in all of them. Holes in the walls for people to throw spears, shoot arrows, or fire guns at invaders. One somewhat unique thing about this castle is that parts of the defenses were build with the notion to absorb cannon balls ect. that were fired at it and become part of the wall , rather than being strong enough to withstand the force of the balls hitting it.

Jane Austen Home

Jane Austen lived in Chawton, England from 1809 - 1817. There is a museum of her home in Chawton and we toured it to satisfy the desires of my wife Karen and also in honor of her friend Jeniffer. The town is very small and I suspect the Museum is the center of town activity.

As with many places in the U.K., many things are not built with a person as tall as I am in mind. I constantly had to watch my head.

Pictures include:
    1) Their kitchen.
    2) The desk where Jane did most of her writing.
    3) A piano (which Karen got to play).
    4) A view out the window.
    5) Just a few of the flowers around the house.

Stonehenge

Our plan was to travel from Jane Austen's home to Wales which would allow us to stop at Stonehenge since it was right on the way. Traffic came to a real slow down about a quarter mile before the roundaabout exit for the town of Amesbury. I figured it was just heavy traffic by the roundabout, but it didn't get any better on the other side of it. We were traveling about 5 - 10 miles per hour. It continued on for miles after. Eventually the 4 lane road turned into a 2 lane road. I though that might be the cause. It wasn't. Perhaps an accident??? No. Eventually we discovered it was because of Stonehenge.

I had heard it was just off the road, but I had no idea just how close. I mentioned to Karen that I thought I was seeing Stonehenge, but she didn't believe me at first. A minute later she agreed and began taking pictures. Were were already late on our schedule so we decided we had just seen it and just continued on. The traffic congestion it created was beyond belief.

England Country Life

This was the first time on the trip where I got a good look at the beautiful green England country, but certainly not the last. There are miles and miles of this beautiful landscape.

Notice the green hedges? This is also just part of the landsape. It shows the division between property lines.

Bridges

When you cross into Southern Wales from England there are two very impressive toll bridges you can take unless you want to take a rather lengthy hour trip to the North. The bridges are named the Severn Bridge, for the river it crosses, or an even longer, newer, bridge a little further South on the Severn river called the Prince of Wales bridge. We chose to cross on the Prince of Wales bridge.

Llandybie (Llandebie)

Our first full day in Wales was focused on Llandybie. We first drove out through the country to Llandyfan and then back to Llandybie. The rest of this day was one of the family history highlights of our trip. Most of my family research has been focused on Llandybie. Some of my ancestors have their christinging, marriage, and death records in the Llandybie parish church.

I had contacted the Church of Wales in Llandybie before our trip and made plans to attend a church meeting there. Anita Hayes, Karen, and I attending the meeting and had a wonderful experience. The other church members were aware that we were coming and were very friendly to us. The service was very different than what we were used to, but I had expected that. It was very nice and the message was very uplifting.

My contact with the church had been by email with Brian Hopkins. He met us soon after we arrived at the church, introduced us to some of the members, provided us with some material about the church, and made sure we were comfortable and taken care of. After the meeting we met with him in his office and discussed the town, the church, and the records kept by the church.

After this we then went outside to look more at the church exterior and to begin examining the headstones. As Anita had mentioned before our trip, most of the oldest headstones are very difficult to read because of the decay over time. I recognized that there might not be a great deal of information for us, but even seeing them and realizing how old they were touched me.

My most exhilarating moment was when we found the headstone for a young brother and sister who had died within a short time of each other. I'm still not ever sure they are directly related to me, but it was exciting to actually see the headstone of someone I had researched.

Brynmarlais (B&B)

One of the questions that came up regarding our trip is where to stay. With this being my first trip to the UK, I decided to be a more conservative with my choices.

1. Castles

One of the easier choices was when we stayed at a castle. Our first castle stay was at Dalhousie Castle in Scotland. This had been recommended to us and it was perfect for what we desired. Some castles appear to have been completely gutted and look like a castle on the outside, but the interior looks like any modern hotel room. We wanted one that also kept that castle feel to it on the interior. Keep in mind that it's not like we slept on a straw matress or anything. The room had been modernized, but there were still elements of it that were castle. See the pictures of Dalhousie above.

2. Hotels

The next decision was how much time to spend in a Hotel vs. B&B. Once again, this being my first international trip I decided to mostly choose hotels. I had developed a friendship with someone in Wales because of my family history research and hearing that we didn't want low end or high end, she indicated Premier Inn or Best Western would probably fit our needs. I eventually decided to focus on Premier Inn. I would consider it a good mid-range hotel somewhat similar to a Fairfield Inn or Holiday Inn Express here in the US. I turned out to be perfect for our what we had wanted. They are very common in the UK so most of our hotel stays were with Premier Inn.

3. B&B

We decided on a B&B for part of our stay in the Llandybie area. We found a delightful place called Brynmarlais. Just about every farm or abode in Wales has a name. Most of these describe the type of land it is so there are many duplicates. I was under the impression that the B&B would much cheaper than a hotel, but the more I researched ones that fit our desires I found they were only a little bit cheaper than the hotel equivalent. I'm sure there are some that are much less expensive, but the ones that fit our needs were pretty close price wise.

In hindsight I could have gone with a few more B&B's, but for our first trip this was just right. The B&B hosts were actually in France when we arrived so they had arranged for one of their fathers to greet us. This was a real treat for us because he was much more traditional Welsh. We were in Wales to learn about it and it's people, so talking to an older Welsh person gave us a different perspective.

Llanelli (Llanelly)

Llanelli is the town where the Walters' family was located as they immigrated to the USA.

The first part of the day we traveled to the downtown area. My research indicates they may have lived East of the downtown area. I did locate a Walter's Road, but the placement of the apostrophe suggests this may have been for someone with a first name of Walter, not a last name. It looked like a very middle class area.

Next we went to a shopping area in the downtown area. A friend I had found in Wales is doing historical documentation and had pointed out to me that there was a special marker that had been placed in the parking lot of the shopping area commemorating the original Mormon church building that was torn down some years ago. We were able to locate this and take a picture of it.

We then traveled a short distance to an old cemetery which I think used to be associated with an old church in the area named St. Pauls. The cemetery appeared to have not been taken care of in a long time. Nearly all of the headstones had been tipped over and most of them had a lot of growth on top of them. It appears to to inactive now. There were no new headstones.

We then drove to the Llanelli District Cemetery. It is a very large cemetery and I suspect this is where most people in the area are now buried. We did wander around for quite a while and took many pictures, but no of anyone I recognized. We only covered a small part of it.

There is an LDS church in Llanelli. Since my Walters family was living here before they left for America I was really looking forward to going to church here and meeting the members. We attended on a Fast Sunday so I was able to bear my testimony. Once again, it was very emotional to think this something like this may have taken place 160 years ago with my ancestors.

Llanedi (Llanedy)

Next we were off to Llanedi, and in particular to St. Ediths. Before we got there we headed down a wrong road, but it gives me the opportunity to show you how narrow many of the rural roads in Wales are. The hedges on the side mean that if you meet someone on the road, one of you will need to back up to a wide location so that the other can go by.

Before we came to Wales it was one of the areas that I felt we needed to visit. I wasn't sure why. Before we left on the trip I had a goal to visit many of the smaller cemeteries and take pictures of all the headstones. I quickly realized the futility in this. Not only are many of the headstones unreadable, have a lot of growth on them, and it is very time consuming. But St. Edith's was the one that we did get pictures of all the headstones. Or at least pretty close. It also became one of the family history highlights of the trip. Karen had a very strong emotional experience near a headstone that remembered a Morgan & Mary Walters, and their daughter Mary. There were also some Leigh or Rees headstones nearby. I haven't found a connection to these people yet.
We did however eventually identify that this is where the Reverend Edmund Leigh served at this church and he and his wife are buried here. We didn't recognize this while we were here this day. More on this later. There was a very special spirit here.

There is a small Church and cemetery just up the road from Llanedi called Ebenezer. I'm not aware of any connection we have with this place, but we did stop for a few minutes and took a few pictures.

Llandeilo

Llandeilo or Llandilo Fawr is possibly the first location we know about for our earliest Walters ancestors. There is some disagreement about whether Thomas Walters came from here or if he was from somewhere else. This town / Parish was very prominent in the 18th and 19th century.

Entering the town from the south gives you a view of one of the landmarks of the town. The bridge over the river Towy. Beyond the bridge is also a very popular row of houses in different colors. Later this day we learned that there is a tragic story of a family that were all killed when their horse and wagon plunged over the edge of bridge over this river as they went home from church.
Many, many roads are very narrow in the towns of Wales. There are many one way streets because of this and they try to squeeze in parking where ever they can.

One of Karen's favorite stores on our trip was found in Llandeilo. It is call Heavenly Chocolates. She loves dark chocolate and fell in love with those made at this store.

We met up with two wonderful ladies at St. Teilo's Church here. They told us much about the church and the area and were very kind to take time from their day to meet with us. They showed us a special room at the back of the chapel where a presentation had been put together about St. Teilo and possibly some of the earliest church records found here. After our visit with them we visited the cemetery around the church and also across the street.

Carreg Cennen Castle

Carreg Cennen Castle is a castle ruin that sits up on the east side of the valley that runs from Llandeilo to Llandybie and to Ammanford. It was in ruins at the time our family lived in this area, but surely they would have been aware of it. I like to think that they may have even visited it at some time in their life.

It sits atop the edge of the Brecon Beacons National Park and its position is quite spectacular because of its position above a limestone precipice. It also has a long tunnel that runs down to a location where there is supposed to be a fresh spring. I went to the end of the tunnel but was not able to find any spring water.
The day that we were here is was a little stormy. Some of the time it was overcast and we could only see a few miles because of the rain and fog. Another time it cleared and we were able to see for many miles in all directions.

Southeast Wales

Part of our itinerary included a day to travel into Southeast Wales. It turned out to be a lot of traveling and several nice attractions. Most of my family research has focused in Carmarthenshire in South central Wales, but there is some information that links some of our cousins to the area around Merthyr Tydfil.

The first part of the day had us traveling along the southern edge of the Brecon Beacons Nation Park. There are many canyons coming out of this mountainous area and as a result, many waterfalls. We chose to stop at the Henrhyd Waterfall. It was a short walk to get from the parking lot to that falls themselves. The main thing of interest I noticed was the color of the water. I describe it as bronze chocolate. The pictures don't do it justice.

We then drove to Aberdare and Merthyr Tydfil. I could see that the day was quickly getting away from us so we didn't spend much time in the areas. Just a quick pass through and then on to Cardiff.

St. Fagans Museum
Probably the most important stop of the day was St. Fagans Nation Museum of History. It is a collection of buildings on 100 acres that documents many aspects of Welsh history. The trails wander through many trees that give it a foresty feeling.

St. Teilo's Church
One of the main reasons we wanted to come to the museum was to visit St. Teilo's Church. One of my ancestors, the Reverend Edmund Leigh, served in this church when it was located near Pontarddulais. The church was located near the River Loughor, was prone to flooding and eventually mostly abandoned. It went out of use in 1970 and it was decided to demolish it and move it to St. Fagan's in 1984. During it's removal, wall paintings were discovered beneath the white washed walls. These have been restored in the church as it was rebuilt at St. Fagans.

Another interesting exhibit is a street the progresses through time. One end of the street has a house that represents Welsh life probably in the early 1200's or 1300's. Each house along the street progresses through time until the last house represents a time of about the 1900's. It's a quick way to get a glimpse into a time lapse of what life in Wales was like over the last 800 years or so.

The Red Lion Inn

After spending most of the day in Southeastern Wales we returned back for an evening meal at the Red Lion Inn. This is a building that has been around since the time of my ancestors and has changed function over time. I have an ancestor that lived in The Red Lion Inn just before he got married. During our time here I mentioned that an ancestor of mine had lived here and the owner indicated that he would take us on a small tour after we ate.

He took us upstair to a large open area. It is not usually open except when there are large groups that come for special occasions. As we looked around the room I noticed several fire places. He indicated that in earlier times the area had been sectioned off into rooms and people lived here. I tried to envision my ancestor may have lived in one of these rooms for a time.

The West Coast of Wales - Aberaeron

Our time in Carmarthenshire had finally come to an end. We had originally planned on driving west through Pembrokeshire, but after considering how it takes longer to travel in Wales, and our desire to have a little extra time at the National Library of Wales in Aberystwyth, we decided to head a little more Northwest directly to the coast to save a few hours.

The drive from Carmarthenshire to the coast took us through a lot of country roads that have trees overhanging the road, and through many small villages. These first two picture of typical of so much of the Wales countryside. Eventually we emerged from the interior of Wales and could smell the moist ocean air as we were able to finally view the west coast Wales coast. Much of this part of our trip reminded me of the travel between Eugene, Oregon and the coast at Florence.

Karen and I became fascinated with the coastal town of Aberaeron. We first drove to the coast to soak in that experience. We then walked a few blocks to the downtown area. I don't think the colored homes are unique to Wales, but there are many of them around. We then walked along a few streets in the downtown area and we enjoyed looking at the small little shops along the way. We stopped at a few of them and went inside to look at what they were selling.

We had been watching for a place to have lunch as we walked and we eventually walked back to the place that had been of most interest. Karen had ordered fish and chips a few times on the trip already, but I finally decided it was time for me since we were at the coast. Karen though it was fantastic, I thought it was okay.

Aberystwyth

We continue wandering up the western coast of wales to our final destination of the day, Aberystwyth. This is the home of the National Library of Wales which I really wanted to visit. One of the question I have had about my research is how much is online and how much do I need to visit Wales to see. I had hoped we would have many hours to explore in the library, but we ended up with only 2 or 3 hours. From the library parking lot we were able to see a very nice view of the city and ocean beyond. It was a very beautiful setting.

In the library we had a good visit with one of the librarians. We explained that we had been doing a lot of family history research. She reviewed the various research options available and I had been doing all of them except the last one, which was to review books and other material only available at the library. We spent quite a bit of our time doing this, but there was just not enough time to do it justice. I left the library feeling confident that most of the common information used in family history research was available to me online. A few months after returning home I found that this was not true. There are quite a few parishes that have opted to not participate in the digitization project. Fortunately, virtually all of those of most interest to me are online.

Aberystwith is a little unique in that they have a long row of hotels that line the coast. My research identified that if I booked early enough, explained that we wanted a ocean facing room, and identified that we were here because of a special occasion (our 30th anniversary) that we should be able to get the room we wanted. We did and it was beautiful. We walked up and down the coastal area of hotel row and had a nice evening here.

North Wales

We left Aberystwyth and drove along the southeast edge of Snowdonia National Park for a while, but eventually we had to cross through Snowdonia to get to Caernarfon and the northwest edge of Wales. The big site we wanted to to see in Caernarfon was the Caernarfon Castle. It is one of the best maintained and impressive castles in Wales. It was the sight of the investiture of the current Prince of Wales, Prince Charles. I was able to walk along most of its walls and it has a very large grassy inner court area.

Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch

Another important stop for us was at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Yes, you're looking at one very long name of a city. It is sometimes shortened to Llanfairpwllgwyngyll and even shorter at Llanfair. Look at the first picture to see the translation of what this stands for. There is a James Pringe Weavers store in the town and I don't think there is a better place in Wales to get souvenirs. A friend had let us know that they do passport stamps in the store so we were able to do that. We saved up our souvenir money and loaded up here. There was also a woman wandering around in traditional Welsh dress.

Ruthin Castle

Our last stop of the day was also the place we were spending the night. My sister and neice had highly recommended the Dalhousie Castle in Scotland and we were very pleased with that experience. With my family history focus being on Wales, and not knowing whether we would ever return to Wales, we decided to splurge and stay at a second castle hotel. The Ruthin Castle seemed to fit the bill and with it not being quite a popular as Dalhousie, we decided to spend a little extra money and stay in The Prince of Wales Suite.

The castle and grounds were very nice although it is being refurbished so there were some areas of the grounds that were a bit messy. We had reserved the evening dinner at the castle and in similar fashion to Dalhousie, it was very extravagant and not much to my liking. Karen had a restless and uneasy night. She kept hearing odd noises and she felt like it was haunted.