Thirty minutes only…

The parking sign says ‘thirty minutes only’. Okay, thirty minutes, enough time to make a couple of stops in Beaumaris.

Stop one. Pick up some milk from the post-office. What a queue! But I’ve still got almost twenty minutes; I’ll just have a quick look around and see what I can find.

Stop two. To photograph this beautiful iron and glass coal hole cover, made at 187-189, ‘Something’ Street in the borough of London, and then imported to Wales. I’d kneel down and clean off that dirt to find out the name of the street, but people are already staring at me taking pictures of the pavement – I don’t want them calling the services. That glass must be very thick, even with all the crazed cracks it’s holding together pretty well. The house it stands outside of is tall and thin and looks out towards the sea – a merchant’s house maybe – I wonder what he traded in?

Stop three. The main street, on the way back to the car, to photograph this old door, set low and deep in one of the oldest houses in Wales. This house, number thirty-two, dates from the 1400’s and used to be an inn – I doubt it was called number thirty-two back then though, more likely the Bloody Bull or The Saracen’s Head. The door looks to be more recent – only a couple of hundred years old I’d guess (only!). It has an interesting knocker; I think that could be Neptune. It’s a hammer type, pity it’s lost its hammer. I wonder what the hammer was… my money’s on a trident!

Twenty-eight minutes, two minutes left, time to get back to the car. Amazing what you can find when you look – even if you do only have ‘thirty minutes only’.