Our bed was too short and we had a not-so-great night’s sleep. We could pull the doona under our chins and count our toes. Breakfast almost, but not quite, made up for the bed.
Anne spent today searching for where her great grandmother lived in the 19th century. We started with the public library in Amlwch. The lady there recommended the Anglesey Archives, in Llangefni, near the centre of Anglesey. Theresa got us there OK, and in the Archive office, Ivan was very helpful and spent over an hour with us. Two main candidates in the records to be the Mary Jones who is Anne’s great grandmother, born somewhere here.
The 25 inch to one mile survey maps had numbers on the paddocks which looked like acres. Yvan wasn’t sure, but it works out to one acre per square inch almost exactly.
Then, to Llanfechell because Anne’s GGmother’s sister was born there. No matches in the churchyard. On the way, an oncoming vehicle was labelled “Jones the Coal”, and there were sacks of coal on the tray. How very Welsh.
The village was tiny, and had the usual WW1 memorial
And this wonderful cafe run by volunteers, with real home made cakes.
There, everyone was local, except us and two cyclists. We spent well over an hour there talking with them, and learned of some standing stones only a few hundred yards away.
To get to the stones we had to follow signed walking paths following ancient rights of way over farmer’s land, climb stiles, open and close gates.
After that, to the Llanbadrig Church of Wales, where Anne’s GG grandparents were possibly married in about 1848.
Theresa seemed to be confused at times, so I started Google maps. This time the accent was clearly Australian, so she’s Kylie. We let Theresa and Kylie argue it out together. Theresa tended to take shortcuts on minor roads, and to count bends in the road as turns. Kylie would have none of that. Together they found the church for us, with quite a few disagreements along the way
At the end of the afternoon we went to the port of Amlwch, once a major copper exporting port, when the largest copper mine in the world operated near Amlwch.
Then, dinner at the same restaurant. Anne had the ersatz fish and chips again.
