On leaving Gwydir Castle I was heading back towards Llanrwst when I spotted some stone steps leading up the side of a hill opposite. Intrigued I decided to investigate. It lead me up a steep winding path through dense trees with birds that I heard but couldn’t see singing all around me.
I came across Gwydir Castle while browsing Conwy’s tourist page and immediately decided that it was somewhere I wanted to see. As already mentioned in the post about Llanrwst, the town is easy to get to by train and the castle is a pleasant roughly 20 minute walk from the station. It isn’t open every day so you really must check dates and times before you travel. Admission is currently £10 for adults.
After visiting the Sophie Ryder exhibition I decided to walk up through the University of Nottingham campus and enter Wollaton Park by the Derby Road gate of Beeston Lodge which I’ve never actually entered through before, despite having visited Wollaton Park since childhood. The lodge is Grade II listed and dates from 1832 – it was built by the then owner of Wollaton Hall, Henry Willoughby, 6th Baron Middleton and, along with other gatehouses around the park, was built after the Nottingham Reform Riots in October 1831.
Marking the boundary of the City of London these dragons are from the London Coal Exchange which was demolished in the 1960s. The Corporation of London’s street committee selected the statues as the model for the boundary markers in 1964 and replicas were erected at main entrances to the City.
Llanrwst is a small market town less than a mile from the edge of Snowdonia. My main purpose for visiting was to go to Gwydir Castle (which will feature in a later post) but I also had time to wander around the town. It was easy to get to from Llandudno Junction Railway Station (just across the bridge from Conwy) though there were at the time of writing only about four trains a day and only a couple that were actually helpful for my needs. Note there is a North Llanrwst Station and a Llanrwst – for the town and castle you’ll want Llanrwst (North Llanrwst is a request stop so if you do want to get off here make yourself known to the train staff). As you can see the railway station is one of the smallest I’ve been to.
I have to admit I’d never heard of Sophie Ryder before but I am on the mailing list for Lakeside Arts which covers Djanogly Gallery (based on the University of Nottingham campus) and I was intrigued by the photos of her work so I made a mental note to go visit and as is often the case with these things didn’t actually get around to it until it was in its last week (it closed on 12 March).
St Mary’s Church is a lovely building right in the centre of Conwy, steps away from the castle and the B&B where I was staying. Before the castle existed the site of the church was the Cistercian Aberconwy Abbey dating from 1172 (Llywelyn the Great mentioned earlier was buried there in 1240). Henry III’s army would go on to ransack the abbey in 1245 and in 1283 Edward I would conquer the town and build his castle. The abbey site would become St Mary’s Church in 1284.
Nottingham has a great deal of green spaces many of which I’ve never actually visited, so this year I’ve decided to try and visit more of them. Arnot Hill Park was the first of these, which I picked solely because I happened to be roughly in the area on the day. It was easy to get to by bus – there’s a stop right outside the entrance on Nottingham Road.
Bodlondeb (which means contentment) is 19 acres of woodland just to the west of Conwy Quayside; there are many footpaths through and around the woods and the one I took came off the Wales Coast Path. It was getting on in the afternoon and I hadn’t planned to visit the woods but as is often the case I saw a trail and decided to follow it!
St Mary’s is an Anglo-Catholic church that dates from the 12th century though its impressive looking tower and spire were added later in the 13th and 14th centuries. The tower is covered in blind arcading – those bits that look like windows – which means they are decorative and have no actual opening. We didn’t have chance to go inside on this visit, but were impressed by the beautiful exterior.
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