'Cymru!'

Any idea what 'Cymru' means? Or do you know if a road sign says 'arafwch nawr', what you are supposed to do? Well, we faced a similar conundrum as we drove towards 'Wales', a country in United Kingdom that is bordered by England to its east and the Irish sea to its north and west. Although Wales closely shares its political and social history with the rest of Great Britain, and the vast majority of the population speaks English, the country has retained a distinct cultural identity and is officially bilingual. Over 560,000 Welsh language speakers live in Wales, and the language is spoken by a majority of the population in parts of the north and west. In the recent Common-Wealth games, I realized that 'Wales' has its own National team and they did pretty well in events like swimming where they won several medals. In Olympics, though, both Wales and Scotland compete as a part of Great Britain team. In cricket, England play against Scotland. I am yet to understand the reasons for this.

So 'Cymru' is 'Wales' and the often encountered sign of 'arafwch nawr' on the roads is nothing but 'slow down' in Welsh. Coming from a multi-lingual country, this should not have surprised me but somehow the stark difference in dialect after driving for 2 hours from Chester was indeed a little surprising. Our first destination was a place called 'Llanberis' towards the North of Wales. It is a small village which is known for its beautiful lake 'Llyn Padarn' and is situated at the foothills of 'Snowdon', the tallest mountain in Wales. The journey from Chester to North Wales is worth mentioning, specially as we approach Conwy which is a small town on the North coast of Wales amidst the usual scenery of undulating valleys, meadows and small towns all of a sudden there is a blue expanse of sea on the right hand side of the motorway with huge windmills slowly moving with the wind. The change is so sudden that I am sure anyone who drives down the same route will find this sudden change exhilarating.

As we drove down towards Llanberis, we crossed the Snowdonia National Park in Wales which is a popular destination for hiking, climbing, walking, biking and other such outdoor activities. The forest mainly consists of oak trees and coniferous trees. Because of these tall trees we noticed several people were doing various activities like tree climbing and bungee jumping in the forest. Once we cross the National park, the scenery changes rapidly as we enter small towns adorned with beautiful houses and small inns. After crossing the towns, there is time for another surprise as we drive down to Llanberis. The valleys give way to small mountains on both sides and a huge lake appears on the right hand of the road. The lake with its surrounding of small hills and mountains have several trails and we found the locals trekking, hiking, rock climbing and walking, the activities which are common in this country. We decided to climb a small hill after crossing the lake and the view from top of the hill was indeed worth the effort.

Our second destination in Wales was 'Caernarfon Castle', one of the top tourist attractions in Wales. The Castle, which has its footprints from the Roman time, was built in its current form in the late 12th Century. Though the outer structure of the Castle still remains from the time it was built, the inside suffered neglect and majority of the original building plan no longer survives. The Castle was declared a 'World Heritage Site' and, of late, has gained its importance as the place used for crowning the 'Prince of Wales'. It was last used in 1969 for the investiture of Prince Charles as 'Price of Wales' by Queen Elizabeth.

There were two main entrances, one leading from the town (the King's Gate) and one allowing direct access to the castle without having to proceed through the town (the Queen's Gate). Their form was typical of the time – a passage between two flanking towers. The King's Gate which was not completed now serves as the entrance to the Castle for the tourists. If the King's Gate had been completed, a visitor would have crossed two drawbridges, passed through five doors, under six portcullises, and negotiated a right-angle turn before emerging into the lower enclosure.  A statue of Edward II was erected in a niche overlooking the town, above the entrance to the King's Gate. In the opinion of architectural historian Arnold Taylor, "No building in Britain demonstrates more strikingly the immense strength of medieval fortifications than the great twin-towered gateway to Caernarfon Castle.

The outer facade of the Castle now encloses a huge lawn and a clearing where the coronation of 'Prince of Wales' took place. In one of the castle towers there is a movie theatre which shows a 30 -minute clip of the history of 'Caernarfon' and how the town was slowly built around the castle. There is also a small museum in one of the towers where some of the artefacts of the Castle are preserved with various interesting photos from the time of Edward II. The Castle has 7 seven towers of which the 'Eagle Tower' on the western side is the grandest. Tourists can still go up on most of the towers through the narrow and dark winding staircases of stone. Thick ropes hang from the side of the staircase in case people lose their balance in dark. Once you come out of the staircase on top of the towers, the view is breathtaking. Since the Castle was strategically built at the waterfront you get to see river 'Seiont' on one side and 'Menai' on the other side which meets the sea seamlessly. We saw several small yachts parked in the river and the day was so pleasant that the various shades of blue of the river, sea and the sky was indeed mesmerising.

After visiting the castle we drove along the riverside the ,number of houses and motorboats dwindled and the place opened up with Irish sea on one side and a lovely green expanse on the other. There were wooden tables and benches for picnic lunches which is a common site to most of the scenic places in UK. We parked our car by the sea and sat on one of the benches to have our sandwiches, cakes and juice and just gazed around for sometime. As evening started to announce itself with the blue sky changing it's colour we decided it to call it a day and drove back to Chester. It was a 2 hour 40 minutes drive but we didn't mind as the entire drive back we discussed about Wales and our next visit there.