Map coordinates: Ordnance Survey Ranger Map 6 (Wales/Cymru & West Midlands); see also Elliott 1997 (p. 106); Google world map home page (with satellite option): enter search term "holywell + flintshire + wales".

Route: From Betws-y-Coed we turned north on the A470, driving along the River Conwy in order to pick up the A55, which follows the medieval coastal road from North Wales to England. Passing Conwy Castle, we took the A55 east to Holywell, the best of two candidates for the “Holy Head” referred to by the poet (700). From Holywell we continued on the A55, turning south on the A483 and exiting at Pulford, site of the Cistercian abbey of Poulton that is the other candidate for Sir Gawain’s “Holy Head.”

Log: Holywell is the site of a shrine to St. Winefride. It may have been Sir Gawain’s “Holy Head” because of the motif of decapitation in the legend of St.Winefride. Holywell is also a possible location for crossing over into the Wirral (700) because of its proximity to forelands (699) and to fords (699) over the River Dee that were used for that purpose.

According to hagiographic legend, Winefride (Gwenfrewi in Welsh) was beheaded by a local chieftain named Caradoc when she refused to have sex with him. Where her head touched the ground, a spring burst from the earth. Her uncle St. Beuno replaced her head and then prayed that she be restored to life. Winefride revived, with a white scar on her neck to indicate her martyrdom, and she lived a long life afterwards. Like Winefride, Gawain also refuses a noble person's sexual advances (when Bertilak’s wife attempts to seduce him in Fitt III), and at the end of SGGK he bears a scar on his neck--for the rest of his life, we can presume.

Since the seventh century, pilgrims have come to Winefride's spring seeking a cure for their illnesses and ailments. The present chapel over the well was constructed mostly from funds provided by Lady Margaret, Countess of Richmond (1441-1509), the mother of Henry VII (David 2002). Statuary in the shrine represents pilgrims making their way by any means possible (below). Many have carved their names on the walls of the shrine (below). The source of the well lies within the shrine (below). Modern pilgrims take water from a pump near the pool. The stone in the pool is said to be the one used by Carados as a chopping-block when he beheaded Winefride (below). Except for a piece of her finger and a shard of her coffin that remain in the Holywell treasury, the relics of St. Winefride were moved to Shrewsbury Abbey in 1138.

Pulford is on property owned by the Duke of Westminster which is accessible only by driving through a farm and across an abandoned RAF airfield to the bluffs overlooking the River Dee, a point on the border where medieval travelers crossed into England. Jean Jost had made prior arrangements with Mike Evans, director of the archeological dig there (below). When we arrived, the archeologists were uncovering a neolithic burial site that happened to be underneath the floor of the abbey chapel (below).