North Wales (cont...)

 We checked out house prices while we were bimbling around. I thought they'd be sky high and they're not. We could exchange our terrace house in Oldham for something similar in Holywell and not be out of pocket. Holywell is lovely and rural and highly desireable from that point of view but it's not within reasonable commuting distance of any hub of business or industry so the movers and shakers don't want to live there.  The nearest big city is Liverpool and that's across water and in a different country.

Monday we set off along the coast for Conwy.  As we were driving over the Great Orme the sun came out- ever so briefly.



The hotel on top of the Great Orme (see below) once belonged to the middleweight boxing champion Randolph Turpin and the bar is now a boozy shrine to his memory. His glory is that he once beat Sugar Ray Robinson and Robinson was the best there's ever been. Professional boxing is a filthy business and Turpin- like most great champs- was fifty percent fucked-up little shit and fifty percent victim. He beat his wife, stood trial for rape (he got off), was shystered out of his considerable fortune and committed suicide at the age of 37. It took two bullets- one to the head and one to the heart. There are- of course- those who say he was murdered. 



Conwy is a medieval walled town. And the walls are complete. It's the Carcassone of the north. I'm in two minds about Conwy: one it's magnificent, two it's a symbol of Empire and oppression and the Welsh would be justified in bulldozing it to the ground. 



While we were there two army transports flew in low over the bay.