Castles Made of Stone...

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Pictured is the view of the mountains of Eryri from the top of The Eagle Tower of Caernarfon Castle, which we visited today to exercise our newly-minted CADW joint [oh, how I do despise the descriptor 'Senior', but I guess I need to get over it and ignore the epithet] membership. I'd not been inside the walls of the place for probably fifteen or twenty years, when I worked there as a telecoms engineer. Much work has been done on the place in the intervening years, with the Museum of The Royal Welch Fusiliers relocated to a larger site in The Queen's Tower, the addition of accessibility features such as ramps and lifts, the opening up to the public of much of the castle which has lain unseen to the public for centuries; and of course the usual tea, coffee and retail outlets obligatory in this late-stage-capitalist age.

The castle was one of the locations where we as a small AV company, back in the early 1990s, installed and maintained a visitor display that ran for some years: now long since gone. It was a nice project to work on and a pretty much unqualified success at the time; but things move on, as do we all, and I've no real desire to re-engage with that world of work, however rewarding and fun it was at the time. I can't remember how much the project cost, but the sum would pale into utter insignificance as far, far less than pocket change compared to the eye-watering budget for the castle's construction. By 1330, about £25,000 had been spent by King Edward on the castle and the town walls and quay, which equates to tens of billions sterling today.

Whatever its uncomfortable history, its cost or its impact on our indigenous population, it still remains an incredible feat of design and engineering that has survived the vicissitudes and travails of three-quarters of a millennium. And by the way, the heat of the day within those ancient walls was pretty punishing at around thirty Celsius in the shade. It was even hotter in our garden when we returned home late afternoon for the Wimbledon Women's Final on TV. Can't complain, though, it would seem that that's it for our summer this year...

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