IF PARADISE IS HALF AS NICE.....

Sunday morning at 9:00 o'clock as the day begins, and sadly it's time to point our trusty steed Concord's nose towards home. The weather has turned very sour, but undaunted we head 25 minutes north and retrace our steps to the truly magnificent Caernarfon Castle (yep, WHS) and the walled town.

 

We have every intention of going in but there are restoration works going on and it's shut. Never mind, we brave the howling gale and sheets of rain to find a nice cafe and then walk past the rather inappropriately named Black Boy Inn circa 1522.

A clue to the origins of the name

It was a tad wet and WINDY!

Although visibility is zero, we decide to cut across the national park and past the foothills of Mt Snowdon. I've said it before, but the region is glorious. Out of nowhere we find ourselves in a snowstorm with battering winds and sheets of ice forming on the road. We are at the pass near the paths that lead up the mountain, although we are having difficulty seeing it. It's freezing and so we push on towards the A5, the yellow brick road to London.

Snowdon is up there somewhere!

Fate is about to deal us a good hand. As we near the border a road sign points to a village called TREVOR!

I'm detecting some anti-social behaviour in Trevor!

What else would you use a road for?

Well, clearly, we have to go and check it out. Lo and behold, we stumble across one of the region's jewels (and in retrospect, Don L clearly needs to lift his game when it comes to travel research), for Trevor is the location of another of Thomas 'The Colossus Of Roads' Telford's truly great achievements. Telford played a major part in the design of the canals that weave through this region, and in particular the Llangollen Canal. Where the canal crosses the River Dee, Telford constructed the  breathtaking Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in 1805. At 307 metres in length, 3.4 metres in width and 38 metres above the Dee, it is the longest and highest aqueduct in Britain, and still in use. The eighteen pillars were made of hollow masonry, unheard of prior to its construction and roundly condemned by other experts at the time - Telford was clearly an engineering genius, I wonder why he was never knighted (maybe he was a  secessionist Scot!). Unsurprisingly, UNESCO has bestowed World Heritage Site status upon the structure. Don L knows of someone in Australia who is coming to the UK in summer for a canal boat holiday - good luck crossing it Big Al!

Which one's yours Big Al?

You've gotta be insane to do this!

Not my foto, but how spectacular is it!

All that's left for the LegsyBoys to do is pop into a sleepy - make that comatose -  Shrewsbury for afternoon tea and then forge on through the driving rain for leafy Ealing. We've travelled 1,208 kilometres in 4 days in Concord and had a ball sharing some unforgettable moments and dazzling sights - 'outstanding natural beauty' simply doesn't do Snowdonia justice.

Our trusty steed Concord

Now to plan our assault on the south of Wales and the big ticket locations - Cardiff, Swansea, Abergavenny (I simply HAVE to take a trip there!), and, of course, Tonypandy - home of the original Tom Jones!