Llanberis

Yesterday involved stooging around Llanberis, wandering the main street; reading; and watching the team time trial of Le Tour (for one of us). There are no photos of these events.

Today involved something for everyone.

First, we caught a bus to Caernarfon, being treated to a tour of Small Rural Welsh Towns. There's a lot of slate. From Caernarfon, we boarded the Welsh Highland Railway - steam engine, of course - and took off for Beddgellert.


The train itself

To begin with, we had a lovely little booth in a heated carriage. However, then James discovered the open-air carriage.


Action shot

It was a good way of seeing the landscape - clouds on hills, ferns, more clouds, cows - but golly, it was cold.

When we got back to Caernarfon, we visited the eponymous castle.


Half of the castle

This is where the Princes of Wales have been invested in the past; there's a mini-museum devoted to just that subject, with a recording of Charles taking his oath of loyalty. There's also a substantially larger museum devoted to the Royal Welch (sic) Fusiliers, which was really quite fascinating; they were initially raised to fight James II, on the side of William of Orange. Given we went to the site of the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland (where William kicked James' butt for the last time), it seemed appropriate.

It was a mighty fine day, topped off with our second visit to the Spice of LLanberis... which, um, might be the main reason we came back to the UK.