2012

I ended up in Wales for my New Year's break again in 2011-2012, and one of the trips I took there was to Caerphilly Castle, which I surprisingly had not visited yet. It was easy to get there by train, although strangely I don't have photos. Lately, I've been lazy about taking train photos. The original Caerphilly Castle was completed in 1290 by Gilbert de Clare, whose French name was typical of the era, which was Norman-dominated. More notoriously, de Clare is implicated in the Canterbury Pogrom of 1264, which some historians, like Richard Huscroft, claim he led. He also had poor relations with the Roman Catholic church, being excommunicated within months of the pogrom. Biographies of de Clare are available online, both with and without paywalls. One of the free ones is here: www.ffish.com/family_tree/Pedigrees/5361.htm The castle, as it currently stands, is a restoration from the 1930's. However, some parts of the castle have been left unrestored. For example, one tower has been left cracked open. I have additional photos of it which will be posted next.

I can't tell if that cloudy streak on the left was in the sky, or if it was a film defect, but it's kind of interesting in any case. Here you can see the unrestored, burst castle turret, in roughly the same place.

Here's a closeup of the turret.

I have a few different photos like this in my photostream. I don't know why I like window photos like this, but I have quite a few displayed.

This dining hall is actually relatively small. I had to use the flash to get this shot, though. I presume that most of the furniture is reproduction, perhaps dating to the 1930's reconstruction.

This portal also appears relatively unrestored.

I also had my Zeiss-Ikon Contina with me on the Caerphilly trip also, and I had it loaded with Fomapan 100. I only selected three of the photos from that day for my Internet photostreams, though. This might be my personal favorite. I'm not sure why.

This is one of the other portals of the castle, not yet shown. As you can see, from this photo and the previous one, that the moat has also been preserved.

Here's another shot of the broken turret.

This is an Alstom (BR) Class 175 Coradia DMU. They were intended as a new generation of DMU that could operate at 125 m.p.h., although this was quickly downgraded to 110 and then to 100. 125 m.p.h. DMU's were eventually produced (in the form of the Virgin Voyager and BR Class 180), but the 175 Coradia never ended up filling such a role. Originally introduced in 2000 on First North Western, they have since been transferred to Arriva Trains Wales. Given the absurdity of the BR privatisation scheme, they have never been owned by a railway or Train Operating Company (TOC), but are instead owned by Angel Trains and leased to the TOC's, at much greater expense to the taxpayer. On this trip, I was on my way to Abergavenny for some hiking.

This was the first pub on the hiking route, but we continued in order to save daylight. We returned later.

I think that the oddness of this photo may have to do with a camera error or bad film. I can't tell. One way or another, I think it's a more interesting shot than what I was expecting.

Here's another shot of the landscape near Abergavenny.

This is later, at the Carpenter's Arms. I tried this shot with and without a flash, and this is the one without.

Once again, it appears that either I had defective film or strange camera behavior. The scanner may have calibrated itself wrong as well. One way or another, I got another photo that I think looks somewhat weird, but in a good way.

Again, this is another weird shot from Abergavenny that may be the result of bad film or strange camera behavior, but which again is "artistic" enough so that I felt like posting it.

This was another one of my shots from the Abergavenny hiking trip. This one's a little bit dark and I'm not entirely thrilled how the edit came out, but it is still good enough, I think, to continue the series.

This wasn't from the summit of Black Mountain, where we were climbing, but it was as high as we got. We at least were slightly above the clouds, as you can see.