“Go to Wales they said. It’ll be a nice, easy day trip they said.”
-Anna Kathryn Barnes
Well, going to Wales was plenty nice, but easy it was not. First, due to some oversight AK and I took a bus all the way to Newport from Cardiff, only to be told we had to return back to Newport to get to the little town we were aiming for. Then, we arrived a little too late to go to the second site we planned to visit. And on top of that we had been accosted on the train by an Englishwoman for being too loud in the quiet carriage (for once, we weren’t being loud, obnoxious Americans; an Englishman who saw the whole thing even told us to keep talking because the woman was “a dozy cow”).
However, all these troubles seemed petty once we entered Chepstow Castle. Chepstow seems like one of those towns in movies or The X-Files that preys on unsuspecting tourists because all of the townspeople worship an obscure god that requires human sacrifices. However, Chepstow Castle is haunting in an entirely different way. Although it has been commoditized a bit (weak stuff, like safety precautions and the like) the castle is simply a ruin. It is extremely creepy in some places—there were little pockets that looked like something out of my nightmares—and mostly sad in others. Not in a way that was pathetic, but in a way that seemed almost sublime. Moss was growing on the stones, and even though the castle is in the middle of town it felt completely tranquil. I remember being disturbed by the fact that people had lived and breathed here, in the grandest sense, and now all their hard work was slowly crumbling into dust.