We had a short drive across the river to Conwy. In fact we could see the castle from our hotel. Conwy Castle is again another of Edward I’s Ring of Iron. It is now a unesco site and considered one of the finest examples of 13th century military architecture. It has 8 large towers and two barbicans. We climbed 4 of the towers and they were way up there. It was super windy but lovely day so the views were worth it.

The best photo to show how high two of the towers are. We climbed both of them.

The town of Conwy has a medieval town wall that connected to the castle and enclosed the original town.

From the castle we headed to Plas Mawr, which means great hall in Welsh. It was built in stages by Robert Wynn, member of the local gentry. He started it in 1576 and added onto as the surrounding plats became available. He was part of the 16th century McMansion problem. The building is still pretty much in the form Wynn left it in. Seems his will was so complicated it was tied up in court for years. It does become tenant dwellings in the 18th and 19th centuries before being handed over to the Welsh Heritage Society in 1993.

Plas Mawr is considered to be on of the best Elizabethan town homes left in England. The plaster work is quite crazy in some of the rooms and in others it is typical coats of arms. It seems Wynn wanted to claim lineage to Welsh royalty and had the coats of arms of all the major families on his walls. The historians said that native women were all the rage and were in other Elizabethan houses but I haven’t seen it before. Looks kind of cartoonish to me.

We had tour guides from the house but good thing Nathan was around because they had a hard time answering questions about the crests and why they had them. The one with the three severed head belongs to the Ednyfed Fychan who Wynn’s wife Dorothy had a connection. Seems he was fighting under Llywelyn the great and brought him 3 English severed heads after a battle Llyweyn changed his coat of arms for the deed. The colors are a little brash but the historians all claim that the Elizabethans loved color and would have had everything brightly painted.

We finished the house and went in to town for lunch and to shop around. We considered sitting down for lunch but decided to just grab something and walk around. I took a recommendation from the welsh man in front of me in line for the traditional pork pie. It looked delicious a small pastry filled cup. Sadly it was not. It might have been really good if it had been warm and at least edible if it had been room temperature but ice cold it was completely unappetizing. It was cold ground pork not really sausage flavor just tasted like congealed fat. The pastry might have been okay but again cold it was just cold. We did shop for a bit but didn’t find much which is good since my suitcase is already full.

There was a church in town that had been built around the time of Henry VII and had a lot of carvings to honor the marriage of his son Arthur and Catherine of Aragon. Mike was very excited to find all the different heraldic symbols.

This hand crocheted/tatted lace was made by ladies of the church in 1787.

After a bit we met up with Julian to do the wall walk. It no longer completely encloses the town but it does go down along the back. It surprisingly was not one height. I don’t know why I thought it would be. I guess I thought instead of the wall being taller at lower ground places it pretty much stayed the same height and just went down and up depending on the rolling hills of the ground. So basically there were some stairs between portions and it had some steep inclines. Julian pointed out the features and how they would have been used and the problem with having so much wall. Edward put up so many castles he didn’t have enough men to cover them all so at times there were just 40 soldiers at Conwy and they could not man all the walls all the time.

One feature Julian pointed out were the 12 garderobes along the wall just past the castle. The medieval equivalent to a Buc-ee’s bathroom stop. The protrusions are each a garderobe.

After the walk we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner. It was at a Welsh farm to table place and probably the best meal I have had on the trip so far. I had the lamb and it was delicious. Sarah Gristwood joined the tour and we sat at her table and she did the after dinner talk.

It was a great day. We packed a lot into the day Conwy.