I suppose I did not quite do my duty by the ruins of the Norman castle,
and I feel that it is now too late to repair my neglect. The stronghold
was more than once attempted by the Welsh in those wars which make their
history a catalogue of battles, but it held out Norman till the Normans
turned English. Owen Glendover took it in 1402, when it was three
hundred years old, though not yet feeble with age, and in due time one
of Cromwell’s lieutenants destroyed it. Some very picturesque fragments
remain to attest the grace and strength of the ancient hold. It is
near the University College and the Amusement Pier, so that the mere
sight-seers can do all the ordinary objects of interest at Aberystwyth
in half a day or half an hour. But we were none of these. We had fallen
in love with the place, and we would fain have stayed on after the
week was up for which we had taken our lodging. It appeared from a
house-to-house canvass, that there was no other lodging to be had in all
that long crescent of the Terrace; or, if this is incredible, there was
none we would have. Our successors were impending; and though I think
our English landlady might have invented something for us at the last
moment, the Welsh Power was inexorable. Her ideal was lodgers who would
go out and buy their own provisions, and we had set our faces against
that. Some one must yield, and the Welsh Power could not; it was not in
her nature. We were therefore in a manner expelled from Aberystwyth, but
our banishment was not from all Wales, and this was how we went next to
Llandudno.
* * * * *