Remembering Beaumaris

Beaumaris Castle, 1991.

It hasn't changed much.

Even before I went onto Google Maps street view in The Conqueror app, I knew what the road would look like. Though it was a major thoroughfare, I imagined that they hadn't widened Beaumaris Road, that it was still a two-lane roadway with stone walls on either side.

I finished my spin bike ride and entered the results into my Garmin watch app, which automatically sent the relevant data to the virtual travel app. Though I wanted to reach the town of Beaumaris by the end of my day, the stationary bike ride didn't do it.

I'd have to rely on my daily steps to get me the rest of the way.

But I did look at where I was on the route before adding up my steps, and Beaumaris Road hadn't changed a bit. I was still about five kilometres away from my ultimate destination, and I had completed more than four through the day, already.

The last time that I was in Wales, in real life, was in 1991, with DW. We had started in London, made our way to Stratford-upon-Avon, and entered Wales between Shrewsbury and Chester, making our first stop at Valle Crucis Abbey before continuing on to Conwy, in the north.

So far, during my virtual trek, I've revisited a couple of places from our real adventure: Conwy and Bangor. Crossing over to the Isle of Anglesey, I was approaching my next destination, Beaumaris.

As I readied for bed, I saw that I was just a couple of hundred metres away from the app's milestone marker, so I marched on the spot to cover that distance. Once I reached that marker, I entered my steps and got ready to see the town.

However, the milestone only put me at the western outskirts of the town, and I had nearly another kilometre before I would reach the actual town and the spot where I really wanted to be: outside the castle.

DW and I had originally made our way to Beaumaris Castle late one afternoon, only to discover that we were too late to get in, and that the gates had closed a short time earlier. We made our way to Bangor, where there was a campground for us to spend the night.

We ended up returning to the castle the next morning.

It took me a couple of attempts on the app to make it to the castle, which is on the eastern end of the town, before the roadway bends northward. I walked around the room, watching my watch count up distances, entered them into the app, and then checked the map. And repeated four times.

Finally, I reached the familiar spot.

There's now a large car park to the northeast of the castle, where I had once only seen sheep in a field. The rest of the town hadn't seemed to change, otherwise.

Sheep surrounding the castle remains, 1991.

The Conqueror Virtual Challenge now has me following the eastern shores of the Isle of Anglesey, circumnavigating the coastline in a counter-clockwise direction before I cross back onto the mainland and continue west, toward Caernarfon, another spot that brings back fond memories.

Happy Thursday!