I always like going to Ruthin – a small, medieval, hilltop town, with a perfectly formed set of relationships between the Castle, church and town square.

It has a grand Victorian town hall of 1863:-

A good monument in the church which looks Jacobean, but turns out to be early eighteenth century:-

Good Tudor detailing on a house alongside Trevor House in Castle Street:-

And good detailing on houses elsewhere:-

We went across to the Ruthin Craft Centre in preparation for Romilly’s exhibition due to be held there at the end of April next year.   I hadn’t appreciated previously that the building is by Sergison Bates, the result of a competition, with galleries and workspaces clustered round a courtyard, feeling a bit like Tangiers on a boiling hot day (it was apparently designed to feel like Barcelona):-

I walked down by the river twice today, once at noon en route to the sea when the tide was low and I walked along the mudflats;  and then again as the sun came down, looking west towards the mountains of the Lleyn Peninsula and south towards Snowdon and the moon:-

Since summer has come, at last, I thought I would indulge my new found enthusiasm for sea-bathing by walking out to the beach in the midday sun.   The only thing I had forgotten is that the reason the beach is so wide and the distance of the tide from high to low so long is that it is shallow far out to sea, so that far from being able to plunge in, I was only able to paddle up to my knees and then flob about on some rocks, so that my ardour has somewhat cooled:-

It was a strange day:  no wind, no movement in the sky.   We went down to the river and watched the geese fly by:-

I had forgotten how extremely exhilirating it is to go sea-bathing in the evening:  the minutes of extreme cold when one wonders why one has been so mad as to go in and then the way one’s body adapts.   I notice not many people do it, but we did in the harbour where the yachts dock with only cormorants and terns, walking over the beach and then across the island in the brief moment of sun before the heatwave with the water still and no seals:-

Then we walked back towards the forest:-

I wouldn’t mention the fact that we had been to Tlhe Marram Grass again, but for the fact that we were able to walk there down a track with quantities of orchids in the hedgerows, and that the food was of such remarkable quality, beginning with Galloway beef tartare, followed by falafel and crème brulée, and back along the track.   And I can post a photograph of it which I took when I went to investigate their shop:-

Our final stop was Amwlch, a town which was immensely wealthy in the eighteenth century owing to its copper mines, with over 1,000 ale houses, but now a bit of a one horse town.   However, it has two fine churches, St. Eleth, designed by Wyatt, which was in the process of redecoration, but has fine slate tombs all lined up in a row in the churchyard:-

There is also an astonishing, barrel-vaulted Roman Catholic church, Our Lady Star of the Sea and St. Winefride, which was designed by a Piedmontese engineer based in Conway, with stars in the ceiling long before Le Corbusier:-

We called in at the church of St. Patrick, Llanbadrig, which is said on the dignposts to date back to 400 AD, but was much restored following a fire in 1884 by Lord Stanley of Alderney, Bertrand Russell’s uncle and the first Muslim MP.   The church occupies a wonderful site on headland with weatherbeaten slate tombstones, but annoyingly wasn’t open even though a notice on the door said it would be:-

After a few grey days, we decided to go on a giro to the north of the island, to Cemaes Bay, a small harbour town, now dominated by a view of Wylfa power station.   We ate fresh crab in the High Street:-

The Village Hall, which once had a concert hall and smoking room, has good terracotta detailing:-