Day 12 – Criccieth Castle, Caernarfon Castle, Beaumaris Castle

Criccieth Castle stands on an impressive bluff overlooking the bay.  As with yesterday's castles, we were admitted with our 3-day pass that we had bought for all castles under the management of CDW, a sort of Wales historical/preservation society.  We broke even at admission to our third castle and would pull ahead from there on.  This castle, as with the others, was part of a series that Edward I had used to lock down control of Wales for the English. 

Some of these castles never saw any real battles; Jackie and I learned during our tour of Caernarfon Castle that the only real attack to this massive fortress (where current Prince Charles was coronated Prince of Wales) came when the main walls were still under construction.  The Welsh villagers were so upset over being over-taxed to death to pay for this castle that they simply walked in and took over the place.  That apparently was the only attack that ever took place there even though they later completed the walls and installed some ingenious, for the time, shooting galleries for the archers to fend off anyone outside the walls.  Bob and Pat didn’t want to take the tour of this castle so they just wandered about looking at things on their own.

Beaumaris Castle was our last site for the day and it was the only one we saw that was surrounded by a moat full of water.  Cited as a beautifully symmetrical castle it was small and its walls were pretty well preserved.  As castle number three for the day, however, we were running out of steam so we headed back to the village of Harlech, a quick dinner in a pub then back to the hotel.