Gwynfryn House, Llanbedr, Wales

Our trip to Wales.    Last week.   And a dream now.    

A week was not long enough, as it took a few days to find our bearings and to come to grips with the Welsh language, and place names.   A language that was not European.  A jumble of letters really, well to us anyway.   A very wet climate too, influenced by the mountains, and west coast.   We were also in southern Snowdonia.    

Although we experienced the usual problems with heavy traffic on very narrow roads, we managed to travel around the local area reasonably well.   The countryside was spectacular, as was the coastline. 

The house was in a very small village, called Pentre Gwynfryn, just a few miles from Llanbedr, which was a slightly larger village, on the road between Barmouth and Harlech. 

Our cottage!   And some cottage.   Gwynfryn House, which until recently was a bed and breakfast house.   It certainly was huge, spread over three floors.    There were six large bedrooms, three bathrooms, a large laundry/shower room, spare room, sitting room, dining room, large pantry, and an extra large kitchen/breakfast room.    

The bottom floor, built straight onto the solid rock, was on different levels, with steps up to the kitchen and bathroom, and down into the sitting room and dining room.   And two internal doors to each room.    

The house swallowed us up, six adults and five children.  

There was the usual narrow, but quite busy road, in front of the house.   All the windows overlooked the river, and forested hills.   It was all very picturesque, and very damp.

The main industry in the area was slate mining, plus the usual farms.   There was a huge mansion not far away, which housed a hospital for injured soldiers and airmen during both World Wars.   There was an airforce base beside Shell Island, now closed down.

Gwynfryn House, with our three cars parked closely together at the front.   The house was built about 135 years ago.    When it was a B and B, the front area was gravelled, and there was a wall beside the roadway, so I am not sure where the guests parked their cars.  We had difficulty fitting our three cars into the very small space, and parking on the road was not an option.

The stairs leading up to the first level.   The top two floors were very light and airy.

 It was quite dark and gloomy downstairs however.   The room in the photograph below, now used as a sitting room, had very dark wood panelling on the walls and ceiling.   The woman who lived here, from about 1900 to 1947, with her eight children, converted this room into a grocery store, during the 1920s, and apparently it was very successful.   At first the woman and her husband rented the house, but when the husband died in 1916, the wife paid the rent by taking in boarders, then established a grocery store, and finally bought the freehold.   A very enterprising lady.  The family owned the house until 1999.

The grownups in the dining room.   The children ate in the breakfast room, as there was not enough room here.   They said that they liked the arrangement better.  They could have their own conversations.  We ate extremely well, with plenty of delicious food.  

A barbeque in the grotto, probably once an outhouse, but now a very pleasant sitting area, and home to a bat, which flew out to greet us.   

The ladies of the house, lined up along the wall, and watching Steve very competently cook our dinner.   

A perfect house for a family holiday.   Heaps of room for everyone.    And it was lovely spending time with our family, those that live in the northern hemisphere.

However we spent a lot of time trying to find people.  Except at mealtimes, when everyone appeared, magically.