The Great Orme is the dramatic backdrop to Llandudno, as well as the starting point of the history of the place. Hardly anything can be more impressive than to walk in Mostyn St, the central thoroughfare of the town, and to have your eyes constantly find the awe-inspiring masses of stone. At night, when the part of the Great Orme just above the Grand Hotel is lit up, you catch yourself on a thought that you’re watching the Moon’s surface. The whole of Llandudno is impressive in such way: be that the Great Orme, the Little Orme (left) or mountains that rise in the distance (right), this is the place that seems to be forever sheltered and dominated by those giants.
The Great Orme is also known as the place where you can meet the real Kashmiri goats. On my first walk around the town I stopped at Waterstones, where I flicked through the pages of a book with unknown facts about Wales. The chapter on Llandudno informed me that on the slopes of the Great Orme one is likely to see the Kashmiri goats who may be the direct descendants of the pair presented to the Queen Victoria by the Persian Shah. As I later read, the so-called Windsor herd had come into being long before the Queen’s reign. It was in fact at the beginning of the 19th c. that Squire Christopher Tower from Essex purchased two Kashmiri goats from the number that had just been imported from India to France. His idea for a business turned out to be rather profitable, as he was eventually able to manufacture a cashmere shawl which was presented to George IV. The monarch, evidently impressed, accepted two goats from Squire Tower, and thus the Windsor herd was started. It is possible that the goats presented by the Shah were added to the existing herd, and later in the 19th c. two goats were brought to Wales.
However, the book I was flicking through made it appear as if one actually needed to go to the top of the Great Orme to see the goats. I did venture up the road until the first turn, but then I realised I wouldn’t be able to walk all the way up the mountain (granted I didn’t have suitable footwear). I decided to go back to the town, but little did I know that it would be on my way down the hill that I would virtually stumble upon the Kashmiri goats. 
The ones you see above were the very first on my way, and although I’ve seen and photographed a plenty of sheep, horses and cows, never before did I get the opportunity to take a picture of the goats. Admittedly, the models of the image above look regal enough to believe that they may indeed have the blue blood running in them. But before I turned my back on the Great Orme I was able to catch a glimpse of a larger herd (left). Both times I was quite startled, so much so that the second time I even paraphrased a stanza from a Russian poem about a lone pine tree that stands on the top of a certain Northern mountain, covered in snow. In my paraphrase, the goat stood on the top of the Great Orme, eating grass and covered in coat, as if it was a fir coat (I believe the unusually sharp December wind made me think of the really warm clothes).
Read more about the Great Orme Kashmiri Goats.
To be continued…
