UK Trip Day 5, Betws-y-Coed

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The crag, the jets, and the burial chamber.

2009, Oct 21st

Well, this will be my final full day in Betws-y-Coed. I booked a room in Conwy for Thursday night. I had hoped to book a place for two nights but apparently Conwy is having some kind of food festival so all I could get was the one night. Rather then relocate within Conwy I will likely move on to someplace further south so as to position myself more continentally for the final part of this trip which currently is in Greenwich. I did a single short walk for this day so I could rest up a bit and wander through the shops in town.

But first an aside. So here is something I don’t like about irregular type rechargeable batters such as those commonly found in point-and-shoot digital cameras. I recently bought (specifically for this trip) a Panasonic Lumix DMC-251. The camera has a 12x optical zoom and at its widest angle is equivalent to a 25 mm focal length lens. To be fair you can see the lens distortion in your image if you know what to look for but as many such things most people would really notice. There are however three things I don’t particularly care for.

The first, In some high intensity situations (such as getting the sun in your shot) you can see some vertical blooming. I don’t know if it really is vertical blooming but the result is pretty much the same. Long vertical saturated columns of pixels. To be fair this is a common flaw of most consumer grade digital cameras.

The second, and most annoying is the mod dial. It is so easy to turn that I found myself often changing the mode when I would pull the camera out of the case or put it back in. A number of shots of I took were ruined. Fortunately I often check to see how the shot came out and so I was able to noticed and retake the shot but you could easily miss this and take a lot of bad shots if you don’t catch your mistake. How hard is it to create a dial that requires just a little more torque and hence wouldn’t be prone to accidental changes?

Last thing shouldn’t cause me problems in the future because I now know to look out for this. When I left for my walk this morning I was careful to check to see how full the battery was. It had 2 of 3 bars which I assumed to mean that it had a 2/3 charge. As I had used the camera for the previous 3 days I figure I was comfortably safe for at least today even if I severely increased my usage. I couldn’t have been more wrong. I took 10 maybe 12 shots before the 2 bars turned into an emergency red blinking warning that power was almost entirely depleted.

OK, so the walk. It was called “Mynydd Garthmyn and Capel Garmon Burail Chamber”. The walk was billed as 6.5 miles and 4 hours which seems about right. I left Betws-y-Coed walking along the road past the old Cotswald shop (Not the new one towards the center of town, the older one that now is an overstock store) and towards the Waterloo bridge. The Waterloo bridge is interesting and is an important factor in the city history. If I understand it that construction of that bridge was integral in the town becoming a mail stop on the way to Holyhead or some such destination in the north.

I cross the bridge and turn left on the A5 road and walk just over ¼ of a mile before making hard right up a steep hill. There was a sign for Capel Garmon and that is the direction I want to go. This is a small paved road and I found myself needing to step to the side to allow cards to pass easier. Trust me, this is in your best interest as many of these roads (and this one is no exception) can be narrow and I figure some diligence on my part to avoid getting side swiped is in order. Most drivers seem to give you a thank you wave which is always nice.

I continued up the steep road passing some kennels on my right before I got to a house on my left undergoing some construction. According to my map this is where make my turn towards the crag summit Mynydd Garthmun. Getting to the crag peak and back was less then a mile and considering the views is well worth it. You can see the Conwy valley as well as the town and in my case to dogfight jets which I looked a bit like A4’s but as I am in Britain this seems unlikely. At this point I can’t tell if I think this is cool or not as it draws a stark contrast with the otherwise rural environment. In the end I decide it is cool. I mean the jets are dog fighting and what isn’t cool about that? On a side note I had seen a solo delta wing jet the day before which I was thinking was maybe a Mirage type jet so I am thinking that maybe this sort of military maneuvering is not that uncommon but I really have no idea.

After a sip of water I return to the road and proceed to Capel Garmon. Capel Garmin is a small town with a church, Inn, and a school. The inn wasn’t open for lunch during the time I was there but I came prepared with a sandwich and some milk so I sit down in the deserted outdoor area of the Inn and have lunch.

The nice thing of eating in town is I can often immediately dispose of my trash rather then packing it with me. Not that packing it is any great burden but somehow being able to place it immediately in a trash bin seems somehow more efficient. I lave on the road out of town towards the Burial Chamber. It doesn’t take long to get there and as far as things go it isn’t any type of spiritual revelation but it is still quite impressive. This is the sort of thing which is seems quite common and is still cool. It is a fenced off area with a small information plack in the middle of a field with grazing sheep. You have to step around a lot of sheep shit on the way in and out to see this monument so be careful.

The thing that is cool is of course the age of it. Originally covered by a mound of stone it was created sometime between 2500 and 1900 BC as a communal barrier chamber. That makes it between 3900 and 4500 years old. So, I am 41 years old, the US has been around for say a bit under 250 years and the UK … You know I don’t really know the commonly accepted birth day is for the UK. What do they choose? A date around the establishment of the constitutional monarchy? Signing of the Magna Carta? Battle of Hastings? Alfred the Great? Ok, let’s leave that one for later. So at 4000 years old it is 100 times older then me at my current age and 16 times older then the US. Actually now that I hear it in those terms it doesn’t really sound all that old so let’s just stick with the number 4000 years. Wow that’s old.

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Photos

waterloo_Bridge
The Waterloo bridge at Betws-y-Coed

me_on_the_crag
A picture of myself on the crag.

burial_Chamber
A 4000 year old burial chamber near Betws-y-Coed

burial_Chamber_Info
An information sign at the burial chamber.

random_tree
A nice tree with a lot of red on the way back to Bets-y-Coed from the burial chamber.

train_Depot_Betws-y-Coed
The train depot at Betws-y-Coed.