Wales

The two main sites I visited in Wales were the Welsh Folk Museum at St. Fagan's near Cardiff, and a slate mine I toured at Blaenau Ffestiniog (the Llechwedd Slate Caverns). This first picture is part of the Welsh Folk Museum, with sheep in the foreground and some of Scotland's oldest buildings (moved to the museum) in the background. Although the buildings may not look very unusual from the outside, they are quite primitive inside, with dirt floors, an open fireplace in the center of the room (no chimney), and room for people at one end of the building and animals at the other end. Wales (and also Scotland) grows lots of sheep, mainly for meat (wool is secondary).

[Berriew] This is the town of Berriew, a nice town in the center of Wales. This is the Lion Hotel where I ate dinner (I didn't stay here, however, I stayed on a sheep farm in the nearby countryside). Thanks to Trevor, a regular visitor to Berriew, for correcting me that this is Hotel is the Lion, not the Eagle. There are small Bed & Breakfast establishments all over England, Scotland, and Wales (but not much around London), I almost always stayed in these, sometimes in people's houses. Wales still uses it's Welsh language quite widely, a language with fewer letters than English, and with a lot of words (such as these place names) that are hard for the rest of us to pronounce. Gaelic language is occasionally heard in Scotland, but not as much as Welsh is in Wales.

Created June 9, 1996
Updated December 14, 2003
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