Wales Gives Prince Warm Welcome

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32031, 4 July 1969, Page 11

Wales Gives Prince Warm Welcome

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright)

BALA (Wales), July 3.

The newly-crowned Prince of Wales began his four-day meet-the-people tour of his principality yesterday to an enthusiastic reception and a few minor bomb scares.

Cheering crowds greeted the heir to the Throne when he stepped ashore from the Royal yacht Britannia at the seaside resort of Llandudno; and the cheers followed him as he drove through the winding mountain roads of North Wales.

Frogmen checked the pier at Llandudno and the police searched nearby flower gardens for hidden bombs. Along the route, helicopters watched over the thicklywooded country through which the Prince was driven. Near Bettws-y-Coed, bomb disposal experts went into action after policemen had spotted wires from a telegraph pole leading to a device hidden beneath a road manhole cover.

The police sealed the road and the Army men cut the wire. A spokesman commented: “There is a device there, but I’m 100 per cent certain it is not a bomb.”

Tourists at a nearby hotel had earlier spotted two youths “messing about with cable wires.” Nearby, a second bomb disposal dealt with a biscuit tin thought to contain a bomb but was found to have only stones in it.

Prince Charles drove by a few minutes later, unaware of the incident.

In South Wales, police and bomb disposal men were called to a railway line near Port Talbot where a bomb had been spotted. It proved to be an old mortar bomb casing with an alarm clock attached; but there was no explosive and the clock was not working. In Cardiff, the police investigated a wired box found at a local government office, but found it was a dummy; and at Shrewsbury, on the England-Wales border, policemen searched a mental hospital and a supermarket for bombs after anonymous telephone calls. Towns En Fete Despite the arduous investiture ceremony. Prince Charles plunged energetically into the first day of his tour, shaking hundreds of hands and smiling and waving to the large crowds in the flagbedecked towns through which his car travelled.

The Prince took by storm the Snowdonia slate-quarry-ing village of Blaenau Festiniog, where the children had been given a day of from school to pack the mistshrouded town centre with their parents for his 30-min-ute visit.

“Don’t fall—l hope you’re

pretty safe up there,” he called to some workmen who had a grandstand view from a building scaffolding. The crowd roared its approval. Laughing, joking and obviously enjoying himself, the Prince continued across northern and western Wales. Bala Reception Five thousand cheering people surrounded the Prince when he arrived at Bala, where, after formal greetings from officials, the Prince broke away to shake hands and speak to members of the crowd who had been waiting for many hours to welcome him. Later, as he drove away for lunch, the Prince’s car was only able to travel at a walking pace because of the crowds pressing into the road to see him.

Last night, Prince Charles rested aboard the Britannia, apparently tired after the first gruelling day of his tour. The vessel was moored off Fishguard Harbour, watched by a cliff-top security guard while police speedboats patrolled round her.