Saturday 27th July 2024
We made a relatively early start to the day to drive into Caerphilly to ensure we could get a parking space, thankfully when we arrived at the long stay car park there were plenty of spaces. We were parked near Caerphilly Castle which after Windsor Castle was the second largest castle in the UK to be built.
The castle was built with massive walls, towers and gatehouses which combined with water defences covered 30 acres. An attack with gunpowder in the Civil War left one tower leaning alarmingly which can be seen in the photos below.
Like many towns Caerphilly had its traditional shopping street and a more modern shopping area which today had a street market.
Sadly we couldn’t find a shop selling Caerphilly cheese.We did however find a statue of Tommy Cooper, comedian and magician who was born here.
Having exhausted our parking time we drove on to St Fagans National Museum of History.
The museum stands in the grounds of St Fagans Castle and gardens, a late 16th Century manor house donated to the people of Wales by the Earl of Plymouth in 1948. Over 50 historical buildings from all over Wales have been re- built at the museum including a Victorian school, a medieval church and a workman’s institute.
It is free to enter but parking is £7, a bargain, there are places around the museum where you can donate money for specific developments, it was quite busy but not packed and there were many families having picnics in the grounds.
We started by visiting the castle grounds and very much enjoyed the gardens.
We then moved onto the historic buildings which range in date from hundreds of years ago up to a prefab of the 50’s.
To be fair we didn’t feel we had enough time to do justice to view all the buildings adequately as we knew we had another 90 minute drive to tonight’s stop, so we will return.
We are stopping tonight and tomorrow night at Gower Heritage Centre.
taraabit 