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Wales: the Tour | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Caerleon and Tintern | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| When in Wales, do as the Romans do.. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| The first stop on our tour was Caerleon, an old Roman town complete with baths, amphitheatre, and those painted wooden boards with the heads cut out that always end up looking stupid in photographs. You know, there is something terribly captivating about 5,000 regimentally shorn Latin speaking gents that makes me remember why I�m a history major. I�ve always been fascinated with the Romans. And to see where they bathed and had every individual hair hand plucked from their arms, legs and nether-regions, how they lived and how very, very similar their society is to our own is a treat beyond words. We could have gone home right then and I would have been happy. The baths are absolutely amazing. Like giant swimming pools with a complete | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| The ruins of the Roman amphitheatre at Caerleon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| plumbing/heating/cooling system that boggles my faucet-centred brain. How clean these guys were! We tend to think of past cultures as being dirty and smelly and unkempt, but these guys just defy that! And they were on the fringe of the empire, the terrible, unwanted Britannia post. Even there, on the edge of the known world, they washed behind their ears. Bet their mums were proud. From the baths we headed over to the amphitheatre, thought by some to be King Arthur�s round table (must have been a terrible chore to pass the salt!). Standing in the middle one suddenly has the urge to yodel. Or at least I did, thankfully I repressed it. It�s so impressive! And of course you had me, running about reciting what little I remember from Oedipus Rex and lying on the ground trying to make myself believe that I was, in fact, lying on the ground of a once operating Roman amphitheatre. Then I wondered how many poor people were mangled, eaten by tigers, speared, decapitated, and eviscerated in that very spot. I immediately got up off the ground and decided the stands might be a bit less blood soaked (of course, after watching the crowd at football games, you never know). So I climbed every nook and cranny I could find, posed for the picture and continued on to enjoy a hearty meal at the base of a castle (something you don't do every day) and off to another fantastic site... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| One good "tern" deserves another... | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| I was only vaguely familiar with a number of the sites on this tour. I�ve read about them in my travel guide or in the reading material that was presented to us prior to embarking on this journey. So I kind of had some expectations, and on the way to Tintern Abbey I had a number of images floating through my head. I had never visited an abbey before, so I kind of had to go off what I knew, like chanting monks marching single file, stopping every now with a large �thwack!� as they bang their head on a board Monty Python style. Then a picture of robed woodland creatures eating redcurrant trifle as they often did in the Brian Jacques books mixed in with mental images of Bill Bryson hitting Wordsworth over the head with a collection of sonnets� don�t ask. When we got there I found that I was very much off target. And as much fun as I�m sure it would have been watching a giant badger shooting vermin with a bow and arrow, I�m glad I was wrong in the most wrong of ways. Sitting alone in the dark and in dead silence, minus one or two happy sparrows, inside a twelfth-century Cistercian pantry, you must ask yourself 1.) why you are sitting alone inside a twelfth-century pantry, and moreover 2.) why you have neglected to sit alone inside a twelfth-century pantry before when it is a most |
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| Ruins of Tintern Abbey | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| rewarding experience. And the whole place is like that! It�s just there, lost in time and space, very silly and redundant in today�s �modern� world. But all the while it just stands there as a mark of the ages in its splendid landscape asserting itself of its perfection and magnificence. You have to wonder if they said the same thing back when it was there, working, alive and functioning. Did they see it as I did, or was it just the abbey? I mean, I see Tintern, beautiful little town in the most perfect of atmospheres, and the people who live there are probably like I am at home, thinking it�s nothing special, just the same stuff they see everyday. Completely different lens. Not that they are incorrect or wrong in anyway, I just think it�s interesting. I was reading an article in a magazine I picked up at the Tourist Info Centre in Carmarthen- A View of Wales � an article by a Welshman discussing perspective and appreciation who basically says all Welsh should live outside Wales for at least 10 months so that they may appreciate it more upon their return. Kind of an interesting, in your face �Appreciate this, NOW!� sort of attitude, I guess � but hey, I guess that�s what I�m doing, eh? Well, point is, I rather appreciate Tintern � burns its way into your soul and memory, it does � and for that reason I love it that much more. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Left: Roman Amphiteatre at Caerleon, believed to be the Arthurian Round Table (pass the salt!) Right: Ruins of refectory at Tintern Abbey |
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