Tintern Abbey

It was to be a big day, first the castle, then the abbey, a few miles away, then the walk, as Wordsworth said, "a few miles above Tintern Abbey" (actually only a couple hundred feet above the abbey but a couple miles down the river), then the sight of Offa's Dyke. Tintern Abbey is famous in part because of Wordsworth (he doesn't even mention the abbey, as I recall), but also because of Turner's early watercolors, also Tennyson, Jane Austen, and even Allen Ginsburg. Vicki had been there before, but I wanted to see it and especially wanted to see Offa's Dyke, which runs nearby. We had lunch at the abbey, toured it, and then set forth across the river and up the long ridge.

Most of the abbey is a wreck, but the great 13th century
Cistercian chuch still stands, sort of; here, a view from the
west/southwest; a "decorated" Gothic, perhaps less
austere than other, earlier Cistercian churches we have
see; two aisles, no galleries, big clerestory windows...
once

West facade, huge lancet windows now gone

A bit of the carving remains

Nave view; the south aisle still stands; the north is mostly
gone

At the crossing

Looking up; the lead roof was among the first things sold;
things fall apart pretty quickly after the roof goes; and the
ivy takes hold

Back down the nave

More interior

Century-old oak, planted on the occasion of George V's
coronation

The abbey's all-important reredorter

Our campsite at the abbey

A bit later that evening