From this point it is a seven-mile descent to Bettws-y-Coed and the Vale of Conway: a descent beginning gradually and gently, with pleasant scenery on either side, and culminating in a two-mile length of steep and winding road, with towering rocks overhanging on the one hand, and a deep wood-enshrouded valley on the other. Beside the road stands an inscribed stone that tells how Llewelyn ap Seicyllt, an obscure Prince of Wales, was slain in 1021.
Passing Henresea toll-house at five and a half miles from Bettws, the rocky chasm is skirted where the Conway boils and frets and splashes over obstructing boulders, or flows swiftly and with an unwonted calmness over some reach of smooth-slabbed rock. At the bridge of Glan Conway, where the road is taken across, is one of these quiet interludes. The water glides with a silent swiftness, infinitely impressive, over rocks clothed in moss, as it were in green velvet: the “Lincoln green” of Robin Hood and his merry men. Deep pools, a little aside from the main current, have the hue of dilute stout and porter; as though a raft freighted with Barclay and Perkins’ best had made grievous shipwreck here; shallower pools resemble brown sherry, and the sliding main stream, threaded with gold by the glancing sunlight, resembles some god-like brew of nectar or ambrosia, tipped into the kennel and run to waste by the fanaticism of some celestial Wilfrid Lawson.
The Conway presently plunges quite out of sight below the mountain road that winds on a cornice at Dinas Hill, lodged midway between the depths and the heights, and buttressed by sturdy masonry against sliding down into the woods whose tree-tops are seen far below. Away ahead, blocking a long valley, the great peaked mountain of Moel Siabod rises up and pretends to be Snowdon; imposing on many a confiding stranger with its 2,800 feet and bold outline, and discounting the real view of Snowdon, 700 feet higher, but not so effectively seen, at Capel Curig.
THE WATERLOO BRIDGE.
This profound valley, or rather, meeting-place of valleys, is a kind of rendezvous of many waters—the Machno, the Llugwy, the Lledr—pouring into the Conway. Fairy glens and waterfalls abound down below in those dense woods, and on still summer days, when the winds are hushed, one may hear the voices of those confluent streams and falls, mingled in a hoarse whisper. The pilgrim, strange to this road, adventuring afoot or awheel from these commanding heights onward and downwards to Bettws, is presently possessed with a curiosity to know how much further the descent goes. Downward and still down, meeting cyclists, carriages, and waggonettes crawling up, he goes and, passing another toll-house, comes at last to the valley, beside the Conway again. Here, where the road turns with a singular abruptness to the left, Telford has spanned that stream with the Waterloo Bridge, a single cast-iron arch, beautiful in itself, and, decorated with emblematic and symbolic representations of the Rose, Thistle, Shamrock, and Leek—the floral and vegetable badges of our composite kingdoms and principalities—proving that Telford had something of the artistic sense, as well as engineering genius. Cast-iron lettering, pierced and easily to be read, follows the course of the arch and explains why “Waterloo” Bridge was so named. “This arch,” it says, “was constructed in the same year the battle of Waterloo was fought.” The names of Telford, of the iron-founder, and of the foreman of works, are all recorded in cast iron.
XLII
Across the bridge and we are in Bettws-y-Coed: “Bettws in the Wood.” Exactly how that name fits the situation of the place is instantly seen. It occupies the floor of a tiny valley hemmed in by great hills covered with trees, chiefly dwarf oaks. Through this valley runs the Conway, joined in its midst by the Llugwy. Close by this confluence still remains the old church, the “Bettws” that preceded the village itself, and whence the village obtains its name. Bettws is the Cymric corruption of the Anglo-Saxon bêd-hûs, or “house of prayer”; signifying a minor chapelry; and the ancient and quite humble building fully bears out that character. When a branch railway was made to Bettws from Llandudno some twenty years ago, the station was built beside the old church, robbing it of not a little of that quiet seclusion which belongs to the spot chosen by David Cox as the scene of his “Welsh Funeral.” Since then the primitive little place that served the simple needs of many generations of Welsh folk has been found neither good enough nor large enough for the fine flower of civilisation that now makes holiday at Bettws. Just as the long, long row of hotels and lodging-houses has replaced the original whitewashed granite cottages of the village, so a quite new, quite magnificent, and absolutely cathedral-like church in the Transitional-Norman style has been erected to serve the needs of the modern resort. It is an altogether admirable building, too, and could contain, perhaps, ten or twelve churches of the size of the old one; but——!
THE OLD CHURCH, BETTWS-Y-COED.