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Hotels in North Wales



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Brynford Hill,
Brynford,
Holywell,
Clwyd
CH8 8AD

Tel: 01352 710500

IT must be the melancholy Celt in me, but I just can't resist the lure of final resting places. They evoke that certain feeling of calm and tranquillity while keeping in touch with history. I've gawped at Eva Peron's black marble tomb in Buenos Aires' impressive Recoleta necropolis. I've dawdled by former prime minister David Lloyd George's woodland grave in Llanystumdwy.

And I've rather vulgarly joined the queue of tourists to stare at Lenin's chemically preserved corpse lying in its glass sarcophagus in Moscow's Red Square, before shivering in disgust just yards away at Stalin's grave.

I remember seeing the Irish tricolour draped over revolutionary hero Michael Collins' grave in Dublin's Glasnevin cemetery.

Ghoulish, did you say? Perhaps.

But there's none of that familiar tingle down the spine, as if Peter Cushing had just swished his cape on the misty horizon, at the Pet Cemetery in Brynford, an altogether more serene place of final repose.

People often think more of their pets than their human companions, and not always without just cause either. Pets, after all, are not judgemental and are faithful until they take their last breath.

Little wonder so many splash out on lavish memorials for their four-legged pals at this award-winning cemetery near Holywell. And I say four-legged with reason, not having come across any memorials for snakes, birds or kangaroos! Perhaps I didn't look hard enough.

Getting on for 500 furry friends have been buried or cremated at this facility since it first swung open its gates in 1989.

It has traditional burial plots, a section for horses, and a special garden of honour for "brave animals" who showed valour beyond the call of duty in caring for their human masters.

The deceased are treated very much like humans in making their final journey, laid out in an appropriate casket in the chapel of rest, before burial or cremation. Their human family can say their last farewells if they so wish, while a service of farewell closes the proceedings. Bereavement counselling is offered.

A strange place for a restful day out, you might think. Not at all. Standing in a peaceful hollow within sight of the manic A55, careering on its breakneck way past on the hillside above, there are few better places to wind down and ease off the throttle of modern life.

Enjoy a stroll around its seven acres of immaculately manicured gardens, view the columbarium, where caskets of ashes are deposited and marked with memorial plaques, or just marvel at the beautiful statues and headstones.

Visit the chapel and the impressive visitor centre, opened in 1999, where you can enjoy refreshments in the tea room while taking in the panoramic view over the landscaped gardens.

Here you can tuck into home-made soups and cakes, bara brith, baked potatoes, toasties and perhaps cottage pie or a warming stew.

Last year - for the third year running - the Pet Cemetery won the award for the UK's best facility of its kind from the Memorial Awareness Board, run by the National Association of Memorial Masons. Visitors are actively encouraged, and the cemetery is open seven days a week.

If you're an animal lover you'll understand what it's all about; if not, stand back and contemplate on how much love - not to mention money - people invest in their pets.