Our original plan for the summer was to hunt for genealogical records of various family members by visiting 
Holyhead town center
locations where they lived. Even though we rarely found new information, we certainly enjoyed the opportunity to visit some of the most fascinating cities in the British Isles. In September, we enjoyed seeing our cousins who took us to see a beautiful though ruined Welsh castle.
To reach them, we traveled to Holyhead, a small town at the western end of Wales. A series of calamities, most of them economic, have shut much of the industry in Holyhead, which is a particularly sad development because there are clear signs that the town was making improvements and enjoying mild prosperity prior to 2008.
The train from Holyhead to Llandudno, Wales, was the first of the Welsh railway journeys for us. As often happens, the train itself was only a few cars long and stopped many times but took us through beautiful 
Exploring Conwy Castle
pastoral countryside, sometimes pausing at an isolated station where a student or two would disembark.
Marjorie and Patrick live in the country, surrounded by green hills. After conferring about joint family details, and trying to identify photos of people in past generations, we spent a day touring Conwy Castle, a magnificent 13th century structure which after falling into ruin has been stabilized and is still being studied.
We had a wonderful time roaming from room to room and level to level. This castle with its remaining walls standing darkly above us makes it easy to understand what life must have been like in King Edward's time.