Portmerion

PORTMERION
Thursday we headed out of the foggy cold and down to the coast to visit a small village called Portmerion. An architect, Clough Williams-Ellis, was looking for a home for “old abandoned buildings.” He started with an old manor house, which he turned into a fancy hotel to support his endeavor. Then he started creating an Italianate village from old temples and buildings he collected from around the world. All painted in bright colors with hidey holes, luscious plants, and hiking trails throughout the area. It is very much a fantasy world…some buildings look marvelous in a perspective and then when you get next to them you realize they are half scale or something like a playhouse. Some have rooms to let behind them, even if the bed doesn’t quite fit! A rich eccentric’s dream!
Then we hopped into the car and trekked up into the mountains for a few miles and a view of the lake just south of our cottage. Throughout Great Britain and Wales, for hundreds of years, there are footpaths that connect every town and village. These are public right-of-ways even now and everyone has a thing about hiking daily, it appears. They pass through large otherwise private tracts of valuable land and million dollar homes may have strangers passing by their dining room window. There is no way to limit the use of these paths since they have been open to the public for centuries. They also pass through villages, over hills and mountains, and ford streams. Our intent has been to hike daily on this trip, and it seems we will succeed with it!