Starting to feel pretty darn tired come Sunday morning. Quiet drive to Porthmadog, a harbour and lengthy seawall (called the Cob), built to reclaim a large proportion of the Traeth Mawr for agricultural use. Ships used to load with slate carried on the many local narrow gauge railways that terminated there. We came for a train ride, but the trains were closed once again! This tour company doesn’t do its research…
Nevermind, this just gave us more time at the next stop – Portmeirion – home of The Prisoner! An Italianate resort village built by local weirdo Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975, it incorporates fragments of demolished buildings, including works by a number of other distinguished architects. “Portmeirion's architectural bricolage and deliberately fanciful nostalgia have been noted as an influence on the development of postmodernism in architecture in the late twentieth century.” It’s also a great place to shoot a surreal television series.
I have to say, it’s pretty wild visiting Portmeirion if you’re a Prisoner fan. The scripts were clearly written around the location, and used the layout of the buildings to drive the narrative. For this reason, it’s a very immersive experience - much more so than at other film locations I have visited. It actually feels like being in “The Village”.
Of course, I bought a bunch more tourist crap (book, t-shirt, mug and magnet) and posed for lots of photos. (Watch out for that fountain - Rover emerges from it in the first episode.)
The place also has its own merits, and we enjoyed wandering through the eclectic woodlands nearby, and visiting the canine graveyard there.
On a similar note, we also visited Gelert's Grave at the village of Beddgelert (oddly enough, “Gelert's Grave” in Welsh). He was a hunting dog, allegedly owned by Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd. As the story goes, Llywelyn returned from a hunt to find his baby's cradle overturned, the baby missing and the dog with blood on its muzzle. Imagining that it has savaged the child, he drew his sword and killed the dog. Its dying yelp wakes the missing child, revealed to be hidden under the cradle, alongside a dead wolf. Sad! Llywelyn buried the dog with great ceremony, yet never spoke again…
Brief photo op at Snowdonia National Park.
And another at the 70ft high Chirk aqueduct and viaduct, built between 1796 and 1801.
Nevermind, this just gave us more time at the next stop – Portmeirion – home of The Prisoner! An Italianate resort village built by local weirdo Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975, it incorporates fragments of demolished buildings, including works by a number of other distinguished architects. “Portmeirion's architectural bricolage and deliberately fanciful nostalgia have been noted as an influence on the development of postmodernism in architecture in the late twentieth century.” It’s also a great place to shoot a surreal television series.
I have to say, it’s pretty wild visiting Portmeirion if you’re a Prisoner fan. The scripts were clearly written around the location, and used the layout of the buildings to drive the narrative. For this reason, it’s a very immersive experience - much more so than at other film locations I have visited. It actually feels like being in “The Village”.
Of course, I bought a bunch more tourist crap (book, t-shirt, mug and magnet) and posed for lots of photos. (Watch out for that fountain - Rover emerges from it in the first episode.)
The place also has its own merits, and we enjoyed wandering through the eclectic woodlands nearby, and visiting the canine graveyard there.
On a similar note, we also visited Gelert's Grave at the village of Beddgelert (oddly enough, “Gelert's Grave” in Welsh). He was a hunting dog, allegedly owned by Llywelyn the Great, Prince of Gwynedd. As the story goes, Llywelyn returned from a hunt to find his baby's cradle overturned, the baby missing and the dog with blood on its muzzle. Imagining that it has savaged the child, he drew his sword and killed the dog. Its dying yelp wakes the missing child, revealed to be hidden under the cradle, alongside a dead wolf. Sad! Llywelyn buried the dog with great ceremony, yet never spoke again…
Brief photo op at Snowdonia National Park.
And another at the 70ft high Chirk aqueduct and viaduct, built between 1796 and 1801.
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