(K) Today was all about King Arthur. First, I must insist you read Mary Stewart's 4 book Merlin series that begins with "The Crystal Cave". These are my favorite version of the Arthur saga and the reason I wanted to stay in Wales.
Today I dragged everyone on a car trip through Cornwall and Somerset to visit where King Arthur was born and buried. The best thing about these two sites is that there is actual archeological evidence that both were inhabited by post-Roman, Iron Age groups that built massive buildings in 500-600 AD, the time of King Arthur.
First, Castle Tintagel where Arthur was conceived and born. His father, Uther Pendragon fell in love with the Duke of Cornwell's wife, Igraine, so he convinced Merlin to make him look like the Duke so he could deceive her. When she figured it out, she was pregnant and the Duke was not happy. Thus the reason Arthur was hidden and believed dead until he pulled the sword from the stone.
This is the rugged southwest Cornwall coast that I love in Poldark, and you can imagine the Duke of Cornwall's island fortress was hard to defeat.
Next, the Glastonbury Abbey and Tor where Arthur and Geneviere are buried.
The Abbey is also supposed to be where a young Jesus visited Britain with Joseph of Arimathea, who later built the earliest church on this site in the first century AD.
After more than a 1000 years of Benedictine monastic life in Glastonbury, Henry the VIII outlawed monks in 1536. When the Abbot (Richard Whiting) refused to turn over the grounds to the king, he and two other monks were tried and executed for treason.
St. Patrick’s Chapel is there too.