Wales, Relics, and a Birthday

We have been so busy the past few days with Linda, Ray, and Claire that we have barely had time to blog. We will try to catch up on a few quick items. On Saturday we took a tour bus to Wales—the same tour guide that we used to go to Cambridge two weeks ago. Wales is the one part of the United Kingdom that we had not visited before and we had very little prior knowledge of it. If you look on a map, it is on the westernmost side of the island of Britain and has been part of Great Britain since the time of Henry IV (or maybe the Henry V—anyway, a long time.) Long enough that the oldest son of the king or queen is known as the Prince of Wales—but you knew that from Charles and Diana. It is separated from England by the River Severn, one of widest rivers in Great Britain. (It is our impression that many rivers in England would be called “creeks” in some parts of Pennsylvania but that just goes to show what good public relations and a few hundred years of additional history will do for you. The Severn is in fact a river.)

Our first stop in Wales was at Tintern Abbey, ruins of an old abbey from the early part of the 12th century. The buildings and cathedral are remarkably well-preserved and make an impressive array of towering stone walls and open courtyards. This was one of the most important abbeys in Wales, dominating the Wye River valley for hundreds of years. In the 1530s, when Henry VIII separated the Church of England from the Catholic Church, he disbanded all of the abbeys and monasteries and seized their property. So the abbey was abandoned in 1536 and fell into ruins.

Tintern Abbey

The ruins were “rediscovered” in the 19th century as a rural and romantic get-away, and have been a popular destination ever since. Wordsworth wrote a poem about them even. We spent a very pleasant hour wandering through the ruins, and took many pictures.

Then we were back on the bus for a trip to Cardiff, the capital of Wales. In the 19th and early 20th century, Wales was the mining capital of Great Britain and the coal capital of Europe. (They would say the world but Pennsylvania would dispute that.) Cardiff was the busiest coal port in the world until the end of World War I, and shows many signs of its heritage. It is considered one of the most ethnically diverse cities in Europe since so many different nationalities came to Wales for mining, and had some extremely wealthy people living there—as well as many who were extremely poor miners. It is still an important shopping destination, and even with our American eyes, we were amazing at the sizes of some of the stores and shopping area. We had lunch in a pub and wandered around town in the rain before ending up the National Museum. They have a small but interesting collection of French impressionists painters, and a very nice collection of Welsh landscape artists. We had never heard of most of these painters but we did like their paintings.

One highlight of the bus trip was the birthday balloons. Linda brought along a pack of balloons and would occasionally blow one up and toss it over the seat on top of the Birthday Girl. (The Birthday Girl will not be named but it was not Linda or Claire and it was someone in our party.) The luggage rack above our seats was filled with balloons. When we returned to Oxford, we celebrated the big event with fish and chips at the Eagle and Child, right next door to our bus stop. Not everyone can say that they got Wales for their birthday.
-Philip