Friday May 2

Holyhead, Wales

Today we arrived in Holyhead, Wales this morning around 7:00am.  The ship anchors offshore so you go ashore by a smaller boat or tender. We went in about 10:00am to walk around the town for a little while before joining our excursion bus at 1:00pm. Besides looking around the town we took in a free concert by a men's choir from Holyhead. They sang half their songs in Welsh and the other half in English. The concept was held in the town hall and it was quite good.

We took an afternoon tour from Holyhead to the island of Anglesey which took about 4 hours with several stops along the way for photographs. There are some below of a double decker bridge there along with a suspension bridge and a fish farm no less. There is also one photo where you can see some windmills here too. The guide said they are quite proud of their wind farms here - both on shore and in the ocean.

Holyhead reminds us of Newfoundland as the weather is quite similar and the landscape too. The big difference is that there are lots of sheep raised as well as diary cattle and some horses.

We had a lovely dinner of prime rib, beet salad and deserts. We had one dessert each and shared a different one. We then met up with Terry & Valerie Barron after supper for a couple of drinks and a chat. We finished the evening listening to a lady sing some songs from divas including Dolly Parton, Celine Dion and Tina Turner. She was quite good.

Here is a couple of photos of Holyhead. I'll post a few more tomorrow.

Next few photos were taken in the centre of the town of Holyhead.

These next few photos were mostly taken from the bus as we drove through the countryside. There are some small villages scattered throughout the area. With so much land used for farming there aren't many people. 

Catholic Church built like an upturned viking ship.

This is a little area in a village where all the tour buses top so you can but some souvenirs. Notice it's name written across the top in English and Welsh.

The first train station in Wales. Again the name of the stop is written across the top and is 58 letters long. They thought it was the world's longest town name until they discovered there was a Maori town in New Zealand that was 60 letters long.

In the distance the double decker bridge - one for road traffic and one for train traffic. The train runs from London to Holyhead.

Menai Suspension Bridge - connects the island of Anglesey and mainland of Wales. Originally built to bring trains but apparently trains and suspension bridges aren't a good fit.

Little island in the Menai Strait that was used by bootleggers many years ago before the bridges. They would hide their booze on those small islands. Nowadays there is a cottage or two on them.

Fish farm on the Menai Strait.