North Wales: Harlech

The challenge of getting to Harlech was that I first had to get to a town called Pwllheli. In Welsh the w is a “oo” sound, and the double l is sort of like “hl” but not really. Needless to say, I was a bit worried about this, but Pwllheli was the bus’ final stop and the driver seemed to understand my pronunciation okay. From there I got a train down to Harlech. Now, you can see the castle from the train station easily enough, and there is a staircase/ramp deal up the hill, but it’s closed pending some safety-review nonsense. Instead, I had to walk up a street to the town. It was probably more dangerous to go that way than to go the way that had been closed for safety reasons.

Harlech is the only of the castles I visited that’s on a substantial hill. It’s not the highest point in the town, though; there’s another hill a bit behind it, and while walking around I saw that on the second hill there was some kind of walkway that I needed to investigate. At the bottom there was a sign saying that it was a wood and that the owners welcomed people to walk in it. After a few minutes I realized that I was walking in the woods in the UK. That was a happy moment.

Harlech is most famous for the song about it that supposedly dates from a siege of the castle during the Wars of the Roses. “Men of Harlech” was featured to great effect in Zulu. I thought maybe they’d play the song somewhere in the castle, in an exhibit or something, but no dice. Luckily I was prepared with my iPod, and stood at the top of the tallest tower and listened to Charlotte Church’s version and thought about armies marching toward the castle and about how beautiful this place was.

In Harlech I finally counted how many steps were in one of the towers—131. I would estimate I went up at least three towers in each of the four castles, and if 130 is the average number of steps in each tower, that equals 1,560 stairs climbed. In Caernarfon on Monday I was fairly worried about falling to my death on some of the stairs, but by the time Thursday rolled around I was slightly less concerned. In all of the castles, at least some of the steps in the spiral staircases had been replaced, and that wasn't necessarily reassuring; it just made me wonder how sound the rest of the old, unreplaced steps were.

There was something at Harlech that I've never seen in any other castle that I can think of, movie castles not included, and that's a staircase on an interior outside wall. In one corner there was this set of stairs that curved with the corner. It was rather narrow, but at least I didn't have to worry about hitting my head on anything.

One thing that struck me about all of the Welsh castles was how many birds there were in and around them. There were pigeons and gulls at all of them, and even ravens in Harlech. Beaumaris even had this "Pozor seagull" sign posted with all the other warnings ("Watch your head," "Do not slip and fall to your death," and one that looks like "Ice cream headache" but is really "Let your eyes adjust to the dark"). I think one of the reasons it was so noticeable was because there aren't a lot of birds around Tisovec for some reason.
Part of me looks at every place I go to and asks, “Is this my home?” Right now I’m preparing to leave Slovakia and go…somewhere else, and at the moment my biggest criterion is that that somewhere else will be an Anglophone place, but I don’t know much other than that. I know that I have a positive visceral response to the UK that I don’t have to Italy, for example, but I’m not sure if that’s enough to try to make a life in a place. On the other hand, I did just move to Slovakia sight unseen, and that’s worked out pretty okay. Even if I don’t ever move to Britain outright (and I shouldn't, because I'd eat cheese and drink cider until it killed me), I’ll certainly go back to visit again. Berwick-on-Tweed, Forest of Dean, Canterbury, I’m coming for you.

Every morning on spring break I woke up to hear seagulls outside, and every day I got to stand and smell the sea nearby. I spent a whole week waking up happy and being happy for the rest of the day. That's what I call a holiday.