Tintern Abbey
Nov 15th, 2010 by Ashley
William Wordsworth is never my cup of tea. In fact, I, more often than not, doze off in the words of the romantics. However, when I went to south Wales, how could I resist the calling of the ruin that had mesmerized the great poet hunderds and hundreds years ago.
It was a sunny day. We took the train to Chepstow, a small town bordered England; then took a bus to the abbey. The bus driver had seen all too many Asian tourists who set foot on the stone of Chepstow to get to the famed Tintern. He took his time asking us if we wanna marry him before he told us that yes, his bus would take us to the abbey. I didn’t blame him. One has to do something to fight the tired routine of life, but it’s his fault that we didn’t have time to visit Chepstow Castle.
Tintern Abbey is no longer what it looked like when Wordsworth visited. There were walls all around and a visitor center, and everything is bright and cheerful and by no mean eerie. I bought a huge card with paintings of Tintern along with Wordsworth’s poem. I aspired to read it again on some shattered stone of the abbey but I eventually didn’t. The abbey, even at its ruin, was still grandeur and every intricate detail worth admiring. I exhausted my digital camera’s battery before I was half done, but I’m sort of glad that I did because I was then able to appreciate the abbey and its surrounding – man made or God created – with all of my senses without being confined to the rectangle lens.