I have finally managed to upload the photos from 2 weeks ago to Flickr. The weather wasn't good, so the pictures needed a bit of tweaking to bring out the detail.

The trip to Llangollen to visit Castell Dinas Bran (Dinas Bran Castle, sometimes translated as "Crow Castle" or "Crow City") was partly for research for the short story I'm writing for the next assignment on the creative writing course and partly because it's one of those places I've driven past for years saying, "I must go and look at that one day." As you approach Llangollen, you can see it perched up on the hill overlooking the town. But it's a fair walk from the centre of Llangollen to the castle and mostly I'm not going to Llangollen anyway, just passing through en route to somewhere else.

For those interested in Arthurian legends, Castell Dinas Bran seems to be the main contender for the site of the Grail castle, the Castle of Corbenic.

Here's a view showing the castle in the distance...



And here's the entrance through a ruined archway.



( More photos here... )
There really isn't much of the castle left standing, unlike the major Welsh castles like Beaumaris, Caernarfon, Harlech etc. but the location is superb, giving excellent views over the surrounding countryside. Or at least it would have, if the weather had been better!

P.S. If you click through to my Flickr page, there are a few more similar ones.

Tags: castle, castles, photography
Current Mood: accomplished

sartorias had the nice idea of requesting pictures of castles. If anyone out there is writing a story with a castle in it, there are lots of pictures and links to more pictures here...

Completely by chance, this morning G announced unexpectedly that he needed to go to Caernarfon this afternoon. I volunteered to drive him there because a) his Daihatsu is actually waiting for a part and though driveable, is perhaps better left at home and b) it meant I could take lots of pictures.

His meeting was probably going to last for an hour or so, but I have an annual membership to CADW (Heritage in Wales) who look after lots of ancient monuments, so it wasn't going to cost anything to go in and therefore I didn't need to spend hours there in order to justify the entrance fee.

By some miracle, I got an hour without rain. I did then get totally drenched walking back to the car park, but at least I got to play with the camera a bit more.

NB: These are virtually un-tweaked, so they're illustrative rather than artistic. :)



( More pictures behind here... )

I will have more at the weekend. No time to process more pictures now and I'm back in work tomorrow.

Tags: castle, photography
Current Mood: accomplished