Marcher Land Adventures 4

Thursday's itinerary wasn't that involved as I was heading to the Valleys in the evening to see Cylene and Deri. It was no surprise to begin with a castle, though, on this occasion White Castle, completing my circuit of the Three Castles. There's nothing all that remarkable about White Castle, nor is it noticeably white. It does have a waterfilled moat, though.

Raglan Castle is a different matter. The seat of the Earl of Worcester, this is one of Wales's grandest ruined castles, occupied until the Civil War, knocked about by Oliver Cromwell, and finally abandoned by the Countess of Worcester who inherited it after the Restoration as it would have been far too expensive to make habitable. Its status as a Tudor palace as well as medieval fortress means that it has, first, something of the air of the kind of castles you see in fantasy manuscripts such as the Tres Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, and also the remains of a formal courtyard with a fountain in it.

Abergavenny was the next stop, an agreeable town with lots of small shops and, as far as I could see in the centre, no vacant sites at all. The Priory contains a mass of medieval sculpture, and one incomparable treasure - a mighty 15th-century Jesse, once the base of an entire Jesse Tree and carved from one trunk of oak. There is nothing else like it in Europe. It was completed with a modern Jesse Tree window as late as 2017.

The Museum was - I saw with some sense of inevitability - in the Castle. At first I thought from the scaffolding enclosing the little keep-like building that houses it that the Museum was shut like all the rest I'd tried to visit, but no! There is a mocked-up grocer's shop based on the one round the corner run by Basil Jones until the 1980s, and all the advertising material he left behind. Here he is. It's clear he doesn't actually want you to buy anything. That may explain why the shop isn't there anymore. There's an Anderson shelter retrieved from an Abergavenny back garden and accompanying sound effects - the entire air raid right through to the all-clear, which is a bit of an ordeal.

The road along the head of the valleys between Merthyr and Aberdare is being rebuilt, and will be until 2025. It seems to consist of multiple roundabouts that don't lead anywhere but exist only to make you go on purposeless detours. I got lost going to Aberdare, got lost taking Cylene out for a meal, and lost again twice on the way back.