The title may sound like some kind of Arthurian legend, but actually, this post will be about the rest of our third day in Wales.
I became so carried away on mini rants last times that I realized the prior post needed to be wrapped up. Plus, we had a lot of photos of the Pembrokeshire Coast Path National Trail, and plenty of St. Davids Palace too.
After walking back to the town of St. Davids where Jay had parked, we joined a long list of pilgrims who have visited the site where St. David was buried and the Cathedral was built in his honor.
St. David himself could have easily been considered the Patron Saint of Veganism and Sobriety. He ate "only plants" and drank only water.
He lived from the year 500 to 589 C.E., so 89 years in an era before penicillin and other modern medical treatments.
I'd like to propose a toast to him for being such a good role model.
Keep in mind that David lived in barely literate times, and his birth has been placed between 462 and 512, and his death anywhere from 569 to 601. As such, 89 years could be off quite a bit, but probably is about right.
In any case, David is not the patron saint of veganism and sobriety. He IS the Patron Saint of Wales, the country where he was born.
David founded a monastic community at the site we visited that day. A true ascetic, he preached the virtues of living a simple life by example as well as words.
The rules for his Monks included the requirement for them to pull their own ploughs rather than using draught animals.
Monks could not own any personal possessions and were expected to spend all of their evenings either praying, reading or writing, after presumably working all day long at physical labor, except on Sunday, the day of worship and rest. There was always water and bread with herbs to look forward to breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yum!
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| "Do the Little Things" art by Bedwyr Williams |
David is connected to the legend of Jesus consecrating Glastonbury. with a legend of David seeing a vision of Jesus who told him that the church should not re-dedicated by man when Glastonbury had already been dedicated by Jesus Himself. That might have been the genesis of the legend, or perhaps simply confirmation. Or maybe someone made it up later to attract pilgrims.
David purportedly performed several miracles over the course of his life. When he died, he was buried on the grounds of the church and palace we visited this day. On that day, a legend says that the Cathedral was filled with angels, which as I understand it would have been impossible because there wasn't a Cathedral there until 1181.
Anyway, whatever small chapel suitable for an ascetic that was there must have had some really amazing vibes at the time of David's death. The spiritual feeling apparently remained palpable for generations.
In 1123, Pope Calixtus II initiated a pilgrimage to visit the grave of St. David. He proclaimed two pilgrimages to St. Davids was the equivalent of a pilgrimage to Rome.
That made St. Davids so popular that they expanded the church in 1131 and consecrated a new Cathedral there in 1181.
Learning that the tower collapsed in 1220 brought to mind Ken Follett's Pillars of the Earth series of novels, an interesting fictionalization of building a Cathedral and the town that grew around it.
Like any great tourist site, St. Davids was becoming wealthy on tourist (pilgrim) dollars. According to the St. Davids web site, "There was only one top job for an ambitious cleric in medieval Wales: Bishop of St Davids in Pembrokeshire."
And with business being extremely good, Bishops took advantage of this new money to live in luxury. After all, these Bishops were basically royalty, usually the second son of a wealthy lord (the eldest son becoming lord of the manor upon their father's death), so they undoubtedly reasoned who better to live in a palace than a leader in the church?
St. Davids Bishop's Palace expanded to total grandeur under 14th Century Bishop Henry de Gower.
Let's just say Henry was not exactly the second coming of St. David, but even in ruins, it is a sight to behold.
Is it any wonder the Reformation sought to change the way things were done in the Catholic Church?
When Henry VIII decreed that he was head of a new Church of England that would supplant the Catholic Church in lands under his rule, St. Davids Cathedral and its grand Bishop's Palace were destined to be plundered.
Still, the ruins remain impressive to this day.
As mentioned in the first post about day three, our new home in Haverford Township echos the architecture and names of Wales, and that includes having a street in our neighborhood called St. Davids Lane (no apostrophe).
Zane Lamprey is not a saint.
He was the host of the TV show Three Sheets on the long-defunct Mojo Channel. I'm not sure how many viewers knew about that cable channel, much less watched his show, but it was always entertaining for us.
Episode three of the first season took place in Wales.
If you watch it, you will hear about the Mumbles Mile, a stretch of bars in the seaside town of Mumbles where Zane tries to have drinks in ten bars while at the same time interviewing people to make an entertaining show.
The patron saint of productive boozers? Nah. Zane's just a guy who came up with a plan to make a living by having fun going around the world for as long as the ride lasts.
Jay knew how much his mom and I liked the show, so he made this a stop on our itinerary.
First, we had to drive from St. Davids, which took us on country roads lined with hedge rows taller than our standing height.
The roads were barely wide enough for Jay's Range Rover to traverse without clipping hedge rows, but these are two-way roads where fairly frequently we played chicken with approaching cars. Fortunately, both would stop and one would back up to a slightly wider area to let the other pass.
Just to compound the stress, the speed limit is the standard in Wales: 60 kilometers per hour, which feels too fast in a narrow, winding tunnel.
Somehow, we made it through safely, stopping once to take in a coastal view. There was talk about another four-mile hike along the coast, but fortunately we opted to head straight to Mumbles.
Jay found a good parking lot by the ocean, where Julie snapped a photo that includes the distant "mumbles," small islands from which the town got its name.
England would face the Netherlands that evening in the European Championship semi-final game.
Watching one of these soccer matches in a pub in Mumbles was also on Jay's list. It sure sounded like a great idea to me, too.
The White Rose would be our first stop on the Mumbles Mile, just as it had been for Zane Lamprey.
Multiple TV screens around the pub displayed the game, so it seemed like the right place to be.
Standing room only, but the bartenders had no problem with baby Owen coming in, as long as he ordered a beer...I mean as long as he didn't drink alcohol. So, we ordered our half-pints, this time "real ale" pumped with great effort by the bartender. We stood where we didn't block others whose eyes were glued to the screens and joined in the watching experience.
When a table opened up, we snagged it. In my exuberance at having a table, I went to the bar and added pints of the local "real ale" that Jay and I were drinking, not considering visiting additional pubs for half pints.
I wish I had re-watched Three Sheets:Wales before going to Mumbles, refreshing my memory about the Mumbles Mile challenge so I hadn't made this blunder. Also I would have liked to have the names for specific pubs Zane visited, like Antelope, the "favorite watering hole of poet Dylan Thomas."
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| Baby Owen actually has an adorable face, but not for social media. |
After viewing a good segment of the game, some were getting hungry, as was logical because it was later than our usual dinnertime.
We headed out to find a suitable restaurant, choosing Mumtaz, an Indian restaurant located up the street from The White Rose.
We each chose a dish, and they were all served family style. While some stuck with dishes suitable for Saint David, a few of us ordered entrees with meat.
Every dish tasted great, though somewhat different than the same items served in the USA.
Let's call that number two on the Mumbles Mile.
This being summer, it was still light outside when we finished our late evening meal, so we headed out to finish walking the Mumbles Mile. As a side note, England won, advancing to the finals against Spain.
The revelers in costumes Zane found were nowhere to be seen. A lot of the pubs apparently closed after the soccer game ended. While it was not midnight, it was getting dark, and late for our crew with an hour, ten minutes' drive ahead of us. And we had already reached our quota of drinks for the day, so we didn't have any more ale as we sauntered along.
A few pubs seemed permanently closed. Jay surmised this was probably off-season for the Mumbles Mile, because students from the two nearby colleges would have returned home for summer. In any case, Mumbles was a nice town to visit.
Maybe we'll return one day during Spring Break and see the wilder side of the Mumbles Mile, a side that Saint David would likely not approve. Our family is definitely in the middle grounds between those extremes.
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