For the next and last castle of the day, Beaumaris Castle we have to cross onto Anglesey Island, the largest island in Wales and the seventh largest in Britain. There are only two bridges crossing from the mainland to Anglesey and we take the scenic one first. It is also closer to Beaumaris so it works great and soon we are reaching the outskirts of Beaumaris.
We are having a bit of trouble finding the entrance from the official parking lot. First we go through the park near the wall which seems like the reasonable choice. But that leads to a closed gate. We can see the path on the other side of the gate but we can’t get to it so we have to go back to the parking lot, go on the main street which has a barely there sidewalk which then disappears. So you have to cross the street go through the town and then return almost on the other side of the closed gate to enter the visitor center. Really weird it seems custom made to force you to walk through the downtown area but at least the entrance from the visitor center is spectacular.
We walk past the moat to the main entrance which is suitably impressive. It is also protected from multiple sides by walls and moats, it would have been quite difficult to storm it during a siege. However a siege never came and it never was finished even as the money run out and the king become more interested in conquering Scotland.
Inside the decorations are sparse but the walls and expected future keep are quite impressive. decide to explore first the ground level before taking some mysterious stairs up hopefully towards the top.
Probably the only statue inside the castle is one of the builder of the castle but it is quite a good one. And there are other interesting architectural flourishes that we enjoy to see like bridge like support structures that don’t support anything anymore or stairs that go nowhere.
Quite a few architectural ideas that were implemented were for defense. We assume that those came first before they would have started working on making it more royal looking and before creating places to sleep and eat for the guards and courtiers.
As we start climbing we look through the abandoned buildings and towers, they are quite scenic with views of the sky above as none of them really have roofs now. Did they ever have a roof even given that they never were finished?
There is one room that looks more finished than everything else and that is the castle chapel. However looking at the stained glass we can see that it is more modern than ancient so we are not sure if it was finished either at the time. We now continue for a while through the walls, these corridors are always impressive and fun to explore.
We arrive on top of the walls and here it seems more on top than at the previous castle as there are no significant parapets. This makes it more exhilarating as we walk around watching the gulls watching us, they likely have a nest nearby as they don’t look happy.
The views are quite interesting, it feels like we have been transported to a different era with fields as far as we can see with multiple cows eating peacefully. We almost expect to see a horde of invaders appear over the hills but luckily nothing like that materializes.
As we exit the castle we explore the small town a bit more but it is not that interesting except a small house that has a plaque describing it as the oldest house in town and looks quite interesting sandwiched between more modern buildings. And then it is time to leave, we have time for one more stop on the island before we have to return to the mainland to catch dinner.
