Europe 2013: Welsh History

August 21, 2013

Today's outing was to St. Fagan's, which is another National Heritage Museum (like Big Pit), and is thus also free. It's a museum of buildings, spread over a large site. There are buildings from all different eras, and all different social classes. There's a castle (so-called because it's a manor house which was built on the site of a former Norman castle). There's a woolens mill, a blacksmith, a clog maker, a flour mill. All of those buildings are still working buildings, with their output still available for sale. The flour was widely advertised for three pounds per pound in the gift shop, which is pretty awesome.

We toured around, with probably the most interesting buildings being the Tudor trader's house, and the woolens mill. The Tudor house was very small (maybe 200-300 square feet in the main room), with an odd tall and narrow fireplace, but it actually had (apparently poorly constructed) replica furniture, which made it unique among the buildings on site. The other buildings sometimes had furniture, but I think it was all original, historical artifacts. I really liked seeing the tools of the trade, although they were not nearly as comprehensible to me as the mining equiment from yesterday.

The biggest disappointment (and as disappointments go, it was pretty minor) was that none of the working buildings were actually working. Apparently they have a weaver, and a blacksmith, and a clog-maker, and a miller. Those buildings are all normally producing, Monday to Friday, but I guess we arrived on everyone's day off. I would have loved to see the blacksmith at work, or the mill producing flour. Apparently some of the working exhibits were also closed off because they weren't being used, and I could have asked far more technical questions of the people who actually understand what they're doing, instead of the docents who largely shrugged their shoulders when I asked about things like the weaving shuttle or the power for the millworks.

We also toured around the castle, which was pretty interesting. Lots of very rich-looking wood, carvings, and rich appointments. We also got to see the kitchen, and some of the servant's quarters, though, which I found pretty interesting. There was lots of amazed chatter as the gaggles of tourists read about the butler ironing the newspaper (which apparently fixes the ink to the paper more than anything else, so it doesn't rub off on the master's fingers).

One odd moment was when we were at the tannery, and some child-minders came along with three to five children each, every one on a leash with a bright neon construction worker's vest. They seemed quite harried, and started reading off the sign: "The Tannery was... Well, I don't know what a tannery is..." I ended up leaning over and explaining about how leather was made. They seemed appreciative and harried, and quickly herded the kids off to the next exhibit, apparently trying to get through as quickly as possible. I probably would be too, with five kids on leashes attached to my wrists. I think these kids were in the 3-5 year old range.

We also stopped into the tea room, and had a light lunch. It was interesting to me that they had a more or less historically accurate tea room (if you discount the clear plastic cups the water arrived in) operating inside this museum, but I guess it goes with the theme of all the other working buildings. To top off the lunch, I got some chocolate owls in the shop below. They were delicious.

To a large extent, my experiences at St. Fagans were things I want to describe by waving my hands around and saying things like, "It was so awesome! And there was this thing! And..." which is not too useful over email. So, instead I'll update you on some other stuff, and hope some photos will prove more illustrative. In case you haven't noticed, every photo is labelled with the date and at least a vague description in the filename, in case you're looking at a picture and feeling lost.

In any case, on to other matters. The first is that the Andrews FCU chip-and-PIN card I signed up for is working, sort of. I've used it successfully every time I've tried (mostly in petrol stations), but every time it comes back wanting a signature. There are two technologies available, chip-and-PIN and chip-and- signature. I just called Andrews back, and they assured me that I have a chip-and-PIN card (since that's the only chipped card they offer), but the real proof will be when I get to one of the automated gas stations, and can or cannot actually purchase gasoline. So, it gets a cautious thumbs-up from me. I'll let you know when I figure it out further. Andrews says that whether it's a signature or a PIN requested depends upon the merchant, and Amy and Ant assure me that there's no merchant in the UK who would prefer a signature.

The next matter is this Lebara prepaid SIM card I signed up for. I believe I mentioned earlier, when I got to Ireland, that it simply wouldn't place calls. Every time I tried to call anyone or send a text message, it said Call Barred, or the SMS would come back with an error. So I got a card from Lycamobile (the first one I came across), which behaved flawlessly, and cost about the same, but wasn't the German number I've passed along to all my contacts (and hadn't just been loaded with EUR30 worth of credit). So I used the Lycamobile card while I was in Ireland and Scotland, but mid-Scotland switched over to the Lebara card.

Unfortunately, the next discovery was that Lebara will not accept outgoing SMS messages from my phone "im Ausland" (ie, outside of Germany). I can receive them, but not send. It's unclear whether this prohibition is only in the UK, or whether it extends to every country that's not Germany. The Lebara website lists prices for sending SMS messages from various countries to other various countries, so there's at least an implication that it should work. Thus far, no dice. So generally speaking, I wouldn't recommend Lebara unless you know you're going to stay in the country of origin, in which case it still seems like it'd be a good deal. I also made a brief call to my parents to say hi (ended up being just over 13 minutes). It cost just over EUR20 from Scotland. No EUR0.01 per minute here. This fact is not made particularly clear in Lebara's printed materials.

Anyway, enough about them. We made a trip to Tesco Extra today (biggest Tesco I've ever seen; larger than Costco) and I bought myself a new USB cable to test with the GPS. I had tried two different cables with the waterlogged power supply, and because it had been showing "Charging" on the tablet, assumed I'd performed a good test. Once I realized that the tablet was basically lying about charging, I realized that I also needed to test with a new USB cable. I'd tried old cable plus known good power supply with no luck, but not new cable plus good supply. Fortunately for my sanity, and the environmental damage of using up lots of AA batteries, new cable plus good supply worked perfectly, and I now have a bike-powered GPS again. This was another big load off my mind, equipment-wise. (It also means I can use the power-hungry features like maps and routing with a clear conscience again.)

One thing that I didn't describe about Amy and Ant's house is that they have a rabbit, Elwood. Not named after a Blues Brother like I'd originally guessed, Elwood is named after Jimmy Stewart's character in the movie Harvey. He's very fluffy, and *very* soft when he's calm enough to let a person pet him. He's a rescue, and apparently in his previous life was locked in a shed on an allotment (a community garden) with practically no human contact. This was after someone bought him with the intention of eating him, and then deciding he was too small. I say most of this so that I can reasonably include a picture of this ridiculously cute and fluffy (and disdainful, of course) bunny.

It's been really nice to catch up with Amy, and meet Ant finally (I've been seeing her Facebook posts about him for a while now). The funny thing is that between our half-day meet up in 2010 and this trip, I've now probably talked to Amy vastly more than I ever did in two years of high school. We were more aware of each other than actually friends at the time, but two years in the crucible of being 11 grade entrants into a K-12 private school forges some odd and oddly strong bonds.

I leave for France tomorrow morning, so my next update will likely be written with a very sore bum, and from a campsite somewhere in the vicinity of Calais. This should be interesting, as my French, never good to start with, is pretty well rusted shut at this point.

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Created by Ian Johnston. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.