My Travel and History Blog, Focussing mostly on Roman and Mediaeval Times
We've been doing some more hiking tours south of Göttingen. One of the areas - situated near Eschwege - is called the Hessian Switzerland (Hessische Schweiz) due to its mountains and pretty vistas. Here are some photos of a walk we did back in May.
The dominating feature of the area is the Gobert, a musselkalk ridge which runs from the Hainich in Thuringia to the Werra valley in Hessia. It is one of the largest sturzstrom areas in Germany - errant rocks and boulders of the prehistoric slides can still be seen all over the place. A sturzstrom is basically an XXL landslide with a much larger horizontal impact and distribution of material. Read more »
In 1294, Madog ap Llywelyn rebelled and took Edward by surprise. The king's reaction was swift, but while his armies managed to recapture some castles Madog's allies had taken, like Criccieth and Harlech, the king himself and his entourage met with bad weather, lost their baggage train to an ambush, got cut off from the main army by a flood, and just managed to escape to Conwy castle where they stayed under siege from December 1294 to March 1295. They received some supplies from the seaside, but they might have had to do with scarce victuals. Winter storms didn't make the naval routes easier. There is an - unproven - mention in the chronicle of Walter of Guisborough that King Edward shared his private supply, the last remaining barrel of wine, with the garrison, "In hardship everything must be held in common, all of us must have exactly the same." This was likely an anecdote with no foundations in history (1). With the arrival of spring and receeding floods, the rebellion was soon crushed (battle of Maes Moydog, March 5th), though Madog ap Llywelyn escaped for a time, but was captured and imprisoned in August 1295.
Conwy Castle then saw one of its rare moments of splendour when the newly elected archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Winchelsey, was officially confirmed in his office by King Edward who still stayed at the castle (2). Read more »
