20 June 2008: A second Anglesey visit

Friday June 20thWe decided to have a day on Anglesey as the weather was pretty nice this morning, and had a traffic free journey there, crossing the Brittannia Bridge and parking in the layby with a view of the Menai Bridge for a mid morning cuppa and the inevitable photographs. i used both the Nikon and the Fuji Bridge camera as I wanted both wide angle and big Zoom pictures of the bridge and the little island in front of it.
Once again I was surprised by the high quality from the Fuji 300mm equivalent Zoom.
We drove through Beaumaris, but decided to leave the wonderful castle to another day when we could spend a lot of time there and cover it thoroughly, aand it was getting close to lunch time too, so we drove up to Amwllch expecting to find Chip and fish Cafe, but were unsuccessful, so continued to Cemaes Bay where we knew we could be sure to find one, and in this we were correct. But since we were a little early we had a stroll around the tiny harbour, and took this one from the waterside, and this from the upper car park.
The fish and chips by the way were excellent, and they gave us so many chips that we shared mine and saved Pat's bag of chips to re-heat and have with other food at tea time in the van!
The next place we wanted to visit was Parys Mountain, the site of the "Great Pit" which was a copper mine that was hollowed out using picks and shovels an gunpowder over a couple of hundred years, and was once the biggest source of copper in the world.
The pit is huge: several hundreds of feet deep and wide, and is no longer as steep sided as it once was, where people descended the vertical cliff sides hanging from ropes, to attack the cliff face itself. It has since had the tops of the cliffs blasted away with dynamite to make them more gently sloping and less dangerous.
This is a place that is often used in Science fiction films as an "alien planet" background aas the rocks are a weird range of colours due to the many different chemicals and metals they contain.
There is a free car park and walk, so if you are in the area don't miss it!
Leaving here we dropped down into Benlech for a welcome ice cream as the afternoon had become very warm (19c) and I spotted this father and son walking together down the beach.
They were so well synchronised in their movements that it almost resembled line dancing, and of course watching them takes your mind back rather wistfully to the days when you walked along a beach with your own children. It comes as something of a shock when you start counting how many years have passed since then!
We had really enjoyed his second visit to the island.