I have been meaning to take a photograph of the well-preserved, surviving, octagonal toll house on the long straight stretch of road to Holyhead.   The road was built as a result of pressure from Irish MPs to have a quick route from Dublin to London by way of Holyhead and the toll house was one of five on Anglesey designed by Thomas Telford in 1818.   It cost 1d. for a Horse, Mule or Ass, 4d. if it had a carriage attached, and continued to collect tolls till 1895:-

My other minor obsession this holiday, other than oysters, has been the range of different types of tomato available at the local vegetable stall, which is now advertised on the main road with the most discreet sign imaginable.   The fat ones are in a bag labelled Octavo and I now realise, on inspecting the label, are slightly cheaper, most like the standard tomatoes available in a supermarket, although even supermarkets now stock multiple different varieties:-

Then come Bloody Butchers.   The smaller (and tastier) ones are either Mosaico or Sweet Aperitif.   Then a new one appeared called Tastyno.   I began to wonder:  are these old varieties being resurrected or new ?  The answer seems to be the latter:  that, alongside the interest in so-called heritage tomatoes, old, fat tomatoes, much eaten in America (I have been reading a book on tomatoes called Edible Memory:  the lure of heirloom tomatoes and other forgotten foods), there has been a diversification of types of seed and tomato plant amongst tomato growers, with neologisms to describe them:-

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:-