Home to Ghosts and Memories

We spent two nights in northern Wales last summer, staying at Galedffrwd Mill B&B near Bethesda. Our host told us about a long-abandoned graveyard near the crumbling foundation of a stone church, and we went to find it toward dusk of a gloomy day. The next morning we returned to take a few pictures, which in no way capture the eerie aura of the previous night's visit.

Bethesda is part of a huge slate quarrying area of Wales. Whole sides of mountains remain ripped and shredded as a result of once-thriving, now lost, industry.

Most of the markers in this cemetery appeared to us to be made of slate. They surely mark the resting places of tough quarrymen and their equally tough families. They seemed to be in as good a shape as they day they were cut and inscribed...lasting monuments to the people whose labor blasted and cut them from earth's grip.




If you want to remember me, make me a grave marker of slate, not granite. In the meantime, if you want to wonderful place to stay in a fascinating corner of the British Isles, book a room at Galedffrwd Mill B&B.

Happy Halloween!