From Eric -- July 14 Seven Wonders of Wales

Yesterday (Sunday, July 13) we finished a little sightseeing project that had become a minor obsession with me. There is a lovely anonymous poem written in the late 18th or early 19th century by an English visitor to North Wales. In it the poet describes the "Seven Wonders of Wales." Well, I happened to notice a couple weeks ago that we had seen at least half of those wonders between this trip and previous visits and that the remaining ones were all near by, so on we went to see the rest. Here is the poem for those that are curious:


Pistyll Rhaeadr and Wrexham steeple,
Snowdon's mountain without its people,
Overton yew trees, St Winefride wells,
Llangollen bridge and Gresford bells.


Pistyll Rhaeadr is a lovely waterfall (a bit hard to get to) that is the highest waterfall in England and Wales.





Gresford parish is a beautiful church with renowned bells.

You can listen to the bells tolling 5:00 p.m.




St. Giles, Wrexham has a famous steeple that was copied at Yale University (Elihu Yale is buried at the church as well).





Snowdon Mountain is the highest mountain in Wales. Kathie, Margaret and Emily may be taking a narrow gauge railroad to the top this next week.





St. Mary's Overton-on-Dee is another lovely church which is renowned for its 21 ancient yew trees, one of which is reputed to be over 1500 years old.


St. Winifride's Well will be a stop for Susan and me this next week during our course at St. Deiniol's. We've seen it before.

Llangollen Bridge is the first stone bridge over the River Dee and a popular spot to look at the river below.





You can see more of the seven wonders on our photo site:

http://picasaweb.google.com/revemw/SabbaticalPix





Search on that site for "sevenwonders" and you should get photos of some of these places.