Holy Island, Anglesey, North Wales

Holy Island is a poxy name for the small island that I'm on, and I've decided to call the place Mona, because that's what the Romans called the larger island, the one that's now called Anglesey. It's a shire of Britain, and former home of the Decangli Iron Age tribe. I know I explained that badly. You need to look the place up. 

Archaeology is very different here. It's smaller than down south, and rockier, and less stable, and I have stumbled around in several hill-forts without realising. There is a Roman signal station up on the top of the Holy Mountain, which was later turned into a Decangli hill-fort when the Romans left, and the whole place seriously resembles a scree slope. I had to check on the net later on, to make sure I had actually found the right place. Yep, that jumble of stones was it. 

I walked about 12 miles yesterday up the jountain and around the whole north of the island, but only about 8 today, on my trip out to Llyn Cerig Bach, where the last of the druids sacrificed so much treasure to the gods, in the hope of preventing the Roman slaughter. It didn't work, obviously. Pictures of Llyn Cerig Bach were taken on my phone, and I won't upload them now, but it hardly matters. It's just a tiny lake in the middle of nowhere, and no one knew how much treasure lay at the bottom of it until the British built an airbase next to it in 1942, and had it investigated. The National Museum of Wales is now stuffed with Iron Age treasures that came out of it. I've never seem them, but now, I've seen the lake. It's right near a bird sanctuary. I got a new spot. The airbase still functions and supersonic jets kept flying overhead while I was birding. A weird morning. 

Up the top of the island is an excellent lighthouse called South Stack, and a puffin sanctuary, but they have all gone, only a week ago. There's so much archaeology around here it's hard to know where to start talking about it, it's all so very fragmentary and hard to fit onto a narrative. Overall it seems like a lot of different peoples have come here, built some stuff, and then left again, realising it's all a bit too hard, and rocky, and there's not a lot of good soil. The only people who have stuck around were the druids, and later, the Celtic saints, who landed here from Ireland, using it as a base to proselytise the rest of Wales. 

Holyhead itself is not a nice town - nowadays the main reason people come through is to go to Ireland, not arrive from it, and there don't seem to be many god jobs around unless you are on the tourist board. Talk overheard in the pubs is either about people wanting to leave, or, dying of cancer. I am glad I climbed the holy mountain and saw the same view that the druids saw, and shared it with St Cybi, St Seiriol, and the rest. There really is something magical up there, but the massive international port just below it might have killed the magical vibe, just a bit. I'll be in Dublin tomorrow night.