18May2009: Day 357: Castell Coch & Caerphilly Castle, Wales

Last Day in Wales and our last trip in England before we return home. It’s hard to believe on some level. We headed off to the two other castles that were part of our package from Saturday that were also owned at some point by the very wealthy Bute family.

First was Castell Coch. It’s believed that there was a castle built here in the 13th century and then destroyed in the 14th century during the Welsh rebellions. Then in 1871 the 3rd Marquess of Bute came in and had the land cleared and brought in William Burgess the architect again to create another masterpiece for him. By this time, Burgess had been working for three years on Cardiff Castle.

Again, you can see some wonderful art done within the castle. This is quite a bit smaller than Cardiff but still had some pretty ornate things to it. There was also a working winch and portcullis. I thought it was kind of neat to see Lady Bute’s room, big and spacious and ornately done and then Lord Bute’s room was a shoe box by comparison and not too exciting. I think the guide Saturday at Cardiff said that Lord Bute spent most of his time in lady Bute’s bedrooms. No wonder, as they were bigger.

Makenna was pretty well behaved but anxious to go outside as it was raining and she was again dressed in a raincoat and wellies to allow her to stomp around like crazy in all the puddles she wants. When we finally let her outside she was as happy as could be as it was raining and windy so there were plenty of puddles to be splashed in. In fact, to get her to go to the next castle, we had to tell her that there were more puddles to be stomped in.

Caerphilly castle was pretty ruinous when the first Marquess of Bute took it over in 1776. The third marquess reroofed the great hall and again brought William Burgess yet again to fix this castle up. I think the only thing besides the roof that was fixed by the Bute family was a gatehouse. The rest was left as the ruins it is. The castle itself is the largest in Wales covering over 30 acres, and the second largest in England after Windsor Castle.

I think the story board outside the castle said it had something like three drawbridges and six portcullises at one time. It gives you an idea how massive this thing used to be. It’s also known because of the one leaning tower, the South-East Tower of the inner ward, which still has medieval features. They think the tower split because of “ground subsidence.”

We weren’t able to go in to the Great Hall as they were filming some BBC show there. We went to the various ruinous parts and looked around but the rain and wind kept us from really doing a thorough walk around. Plus, how much of ruins can you really see? Makenna of course enjoyed it due to all the puddles.

We left and walked to the downtown area and found a place to eat lunch. After, walked back to the car and headed back to our home in Kent. We got back a little bit after 5pm and started the usual laundry. Especially considering we only have a couple of days to do it all in.

I have to say I found the Welsh language extremely interesting. A lot of the words hardly have vowels in them. The signs in Wales have both the Welsh spelling and the English spelling. You can see some of the similarity but a lot of them you have no idea how they come up with what they do. In fact, here’s a link to a town in Wales, one we didn’t see because it’s up north, but it’s known as the second longest name known. http://www.llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.com/
And I have no idea how you say it, but one of the guys that Chris worked with here, comes from Wales and he can say it like it’s nothing at all.