A view of Bodnant Garden. Images courtesy of the author
«For its ranks of anonymous workers, the Industrial Revolution brought its share of dismal labor conditions and horrific accidents. Nonetheless, the wealth it generated breathed new life into Wales, resulting in some ambitious new homes, from the neo-Romanesque pile of Penrhyn Castle, which we visited, to the elegant Bodnant Garden.»
The garden was initially financed by industrial chemist Henry Davis Pochin in 1874, and his heirs continued the development of the garden—now a National Trust property—with enchanting Italianate terraces, which spill down in five tiers from the hall. At the lowest terrace, our group enjoyed the lawns and lilies, the last of the roses, the canal, and the Pin Mill building, an eighteenth-century structure rescued and rebuilt here in 1938.
The group exploring Portmeirion and enjoying its views
Love it or loath it, Portmeirion can only be truly understood by a visit to its stage set–like shores. The sun shone warmly and the skies were mostly blue as our group gamely explored the twisting streets, steps, and terraces of this Mediterraneanesque architectural fantasy and artists' retreat begun by Clough Williams Ellis in 1925—arguably a postmodern masterpiece before its time.
A stream in Snowdonia National Park
After the man-made gentility of Bodnant and Portmeirion, the bordering natural terrain of Snowdonia National Park came as rather a surprise. We enjoyed the full sublimity of untamed nature in its rocky crags, mountain streams, and perpetually changing, dramatic light, and our group experienced it in the best possible way, from a private carriage aboard the steam-driven Welsh Highland Railway.
The platform of the Welsh Highland Railway at Porthmadog station, the site of William Madock's early nineteenth-century Cob, or causeway, which reclaimed hundreds of acres of land from Saint George's Channel.