Saturday 31 August – Boats, burial mounds and big words.

Up at the crack of dawn this morning to make our way down to the Dublin Ferry Terminal, to board the large Stenna Line ferry for the four-hour voyage across the Irish Sea to Holyhead, Wales. European ferries are very well fitted out; restaurants, snack bars, small movie theatres, kids play areas (with live entertainment), comfortable lounge chairs and table/chair settings.  John even got to watch a rugby match on a big-screen TV.  We grabbed a couple of seats right at the front of the lounge area and watched the sky change from Irish grey to Welsh blue.

On arrival we collected our car for our UK leg, an even newer hybrid Toyota Corolla, and drove to the nearby Holyhead township for a look at St Cybi’s Church, which unfortunately is closed for restoration.  We had to be content with a look at the adjacent 14^th century church of Eglwys and Bedd.  The entire precinct is enclosed by the remaining walls of a small fort, believed to have been built by the Romans in the 4^th century as defence against sea-raiders.

After lunch in a nearby café we managed to find, after a circuitous drive and a long walk, the Bryn Celli Ddur burial chamber in Llanfair.  This is a Neolithic grave site represented by a large grassed mound, covering the stone burial chamber which is accessed through a low narrow entrance leading to a central chamber, which contains a somewhat phallic stone pillar and is thought to contain several graves. Similar to Newgrange, which we visited on our first day in Ireland (and like many other similar sites around the world), access to the chamber is aligned with the summer solstice. We noted that offerings of various types had been left by visitors in the recent past, so John magnanimously lodged a five pence coin in a crevice.

A few miles down the road we stopped to photograph the railway station with the world’s longest place name – Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch.  The English translation is “St Mary's church in the hollow of the white hazel near to the fierce whirlpool of St Tysilio of the red cave”.  So there.

We continued our drive along the beautiful Welsh coastline, noting the large number of wind turbines set out in the ocean, and finally reached our home for the next four nights, a delightful, isolated, perfectly rebuilt brick cottage, surrounded by green fields and silence.  We were greeted by the resident dogs, cats and chickens, with sheep grazing nearby, and settled in for a very pleasant break from continuous unpacking and repacking.