The Banqueting Hall of Castell Coch in Wales. Photo / Peter Cape
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A Traveller's Tale #17
A Welsh chorus
Castell Coch (Red Castle) is a 19th-century Gothic revival castle built above Tongwynlais, a village in South Wales.
The original castle was Norman, built after 1081 to protect Cardiff and Taff Gorge. Abandoned, it was rebuilt around 1270 to protect newly annexed Welsh lands, only to be destroyed in 1314 by rebellious Welsh natives.
It was rebuilt again by the 3rd Marquess of Bute, John Crichton-Stuart when he inherited the ruins in 1848 (according to Wikipedia).
With germ warfare and guns, Governments and gold, politics and posturing disagreement have always been part of human nature, along with the distribution of power and the claiming of status and territory.
That's all basic psychology really. Without it — the planting of status symbols — we probably wouldn't have a historical record, or at least a colourful narrative to map our history by. Republicans detest Democrats.
The Welsh hate the English and the Scots. The resentments are mutual. The Americans don't like the Chinese or the Russians.
New Zealand doesn't like Australia and on it goes. But sometimes, as Shakespeare noted: Romeo and Juliet can see another life and A Midsummer Night's Dream can be realised, albeit with a little spritely intervention.
The colours of life can be seen in the mind's eye of blind Captain Cat just as Dylan Thomas penned them in Under Milk Wood. Indeed, hope may spring eternal after all.
Back in 1962, the Cape family had arrived in Wales after leaving London on July 18. On a working holiday through the British Isles and Continent, visiting craftspeople and historic sites, my father had a brief from the Imperial Relations Trust to study the lifestyles of the local inhabitants.
My father was a television producer with the NZBC, training in London with the BBC. We were essentially freedom camping with nine white mice on a road trip of some 6000 miles in a 1948 Ford Anglia. My father's diary takes up the narrative.
August 8th 1962 Wednesday
By torchlight on the Welsh hilltops.
A chilly night last night, but slept well. Fine morning. B (Barbara) washes hair. Milk from farm. (English live on top of each other. Main door of farmhouse answered by woman who says "we have nothing to do with the farm" ).
Lovely drive through forest to Tintern. Wordsworthian ruin (sign on door of barn " Duck or Grouse": a very low door).
Photographed Abbey: must have been magnificent. Off down through forest to Clepstow — Newport — no laundromat, but hideous traffic jams.
On to Cardiff by fast motorway. Cop in cap tells where laundromat is. We go and get washing done. Then to photograph tower of Cardiff Castle.
Do bottle switch with cider flagon, and on to Llandaff Cathedral. Quite refreshing to find cathedral with so much magnificent modern stuff. Wrought iron, silver, modern glass, wood. Epsteins X's — majesty wonderful against plain wood and gilt figured organ case and plain unstained wood of ceiling.
Also lovely C5 (fifth-century) carved "Death of Virgin "and Rossetti triptych. Hard job finding place to camp, through valley after valley of mines until we get to tops. Orange lights below like badly hung Christmas tree bulbs. Cold.
(My father's reference to Epsteins X's refers to Sir Jacob Epstein's "Christ In Majesty", a sculpture cast in aluminium commissioned in 1954 and installed in Llandaff Cathedral, Cardiff.
The figure stands some six metres tall. The Rosetti triptych is a three-panel artwork titled Seed of David. It was painted by Dante Gabriel Rossetti between 1856 and 1864.)
August 9th 1962 Thursday
Up early. Strong smell in the air: passing Welshman says "tis the vern" — meant bracken. Down to Caerphilly Castle: huge. Trouble with travellers cheques again.
Into Cardiff, shopped, cashed cheques, and out to St Fagan Welsh Folk Museum. House furnished in C17 and C18 (17th- and 18th-century) styles, garden, entrance estate.
Kept as it was. Weaving, basketry, and woodturning shops (pole lathe). Kept going just as they were. Bought pastry paddle in sycamore.
Raining hard, left Cardiff for Castell Coch. C19 (19th-century) restoration of a C13 (13th-century) castle — and folly. Good Victorian painting on walls, ceilings etc.
A taste anyway of what castles must have been like. On in rain to Pontypridd — couldn't find Barbara's teacher colleague's parents — Welsh police, Welsh people helpful but difficult to understand.
On through the soaked valleys, slag heaps, rows of stone houses opening on to the road, coloured window frames and doorways the only difference. Contour housing. Sheep wandering on footpaths — painting on walls "Free Wales", all beautiful in a grim way. Up towards Brecon into moors, and more rain. Lovely reservoirs surrounded by larches but uncampable.
Drove across moors towards Neath, and camped by noisy lorry-ridden road in rain and wind.
Primus takes half an hour to start.
August 10th 1962 Friday
Morning fine, but a restless night. Dylan Thomas isn't particularly funny: Welsh farmer came and talked about Wales.
"Dirty old place, they call it, but it's not that bad." Man from Bronwyn now, he went to America: had to come back, he didn't like it.
Cap and thumbs stuck in trouser pockets. From the moors down to the Vale of Neath, and Neath itself.
Shopped, glanced at the grimy stones of the ruined Abbey, then on to Llanelly. Lodged at Eisteddfod Genedlaethol., heard items — no time or money to go in (4/- each). Into Llanelly itself, and through to Kidwelly.
Castle (we must be becoming blase) not terribly notable — C11-13-15 (11th — 13th — 15th century).
Anti-Welsh brigade. Then up into high country, Llandeilo, to see Carreg Cennan Castle, a ruin perched magnificently on a crag ph (photograph) overlooking a river.
Most interesting part a concealed walk (or stair) down mountainside and into cave and tunnel.
Real sea and passage.
Camped by Llwynyronen, Capel Y Wesleyaid under a willow, with castle towering at us through the mist as it begins to rain.
Merlin's prophecy on Priory Oak, Carmarthen : — " When Priory's Oak doth tumble down, then will fall Carmarthen town."
The rain was our constant companion, never leaving us for long.
We became used to its company. The Normans and the landed aristocracy survived inclement weather without pink Batts, Insulfluff or government subsidies.
They probably had really big open fires, and tapestries hung on their castle walls. They probably wore more than T-shirts and jeans and had close companionship with kith and kin.
The Welsh landscape would fade into night as the mists of ages reached around the mountain crags and shrouded the valleys.
There would be tales told by hearthside embers that would light the fires of imagination and folklore.
I can see why the Welsh sing and why dragons are creatures of legend, fable and heraldry. Who's to say that such stories are dead, fables don't matter or legends don't count?
Former members are 'more than welcome' to return, RSA Welfare Trust president says.