Wednesday September 13, 2006

A week in Ceredigion ( Part One )

We have just returned from a wonderful week in the Ceredigion region of Wales. We stayed at the pretty harbour town of Aberaron said to be one of the prettiest villages in Wales. Most of the houses are painted in pastel colours which brighten up the place even on the wetest days. Half the counties seventy thousand inhabitants speak Welsh which is an excellent thing. Our cottage flat was next door to the excellent Harbour Master hotel/pub.

We used a walk book for the area and our first walk took us direct from the village to a Llanerchaeron which was built for the landed gentry. The good news is that the property has many of it original furniture including a collection of old artifacts like snuff boxes etc - as there are so many these are rotated over time. Back to the walk we followed the Afon Aeron as it ran through pleasant woodland. We passed an old quarry used for some of the buildings in the town below and past one of the many derelict buildings we were to see in this area over the next week. We past St Non's church where many seafaring people are buried and then onto the entrance of Llanerchaeron itself.

Our return path had us follow a straightforward track - which used to be and old railway line. It did survive the cuts in the railway system in the 1960's but eventually part of it collapsed and was never restored.

On our first night at Aberaron we had strong winds and the boats in the harbour that had masts made a lot of noise as their rigging was smashed against the mast by the wind. Being right on the harbour edge we could see the tide as it rose and fell - when it was low tide no water was left in the harbour except a small trickle of freshwater from the river to the open sea. On our first night we could hear the noisy celebrations of the Mackerel Festival where once a year a paper maiche mackerel is paraded through town and then taken out to sea to be burnt in an offering to hope for good catches of the locally caught fish the following year.

Our second walk had us travel out from the town and see the area once under the Cistercian monks control at Strato Florida. This place was founded by Robert Fitzstephen and is said to have become the most influential centre of Welsh culture a Westminster of Wales if you like. The monks here kept a lot of sheep having cleared the land of forests to do so. The abbey below was destroyed by King Edward I in 1284.

We first went through a village Pontrhydfendigaid where both pubs were closed but a local shop had pies which were excellent. The walk then took us across those fields where the monks kept their sheep. We also went through a static Caravan site - something this area seems to have a lot of - static means the caravan is never moved and left there all the time. We passed though the middle of two forests, both quiet and dark - quite spooky in fact. After emerging from the second we were back at our starting point. More tomorrow.