There is little difficulty in losing one’s way on this old road, for when maps fail there is not a soul here who can understand the English tongue. One might talk Hindustani with equal chance of being understood. Welsh is the only language spoken, for the bi-lingual Welshman is left behind when crossing the Menai. Anglesey is the great stronghold of the Welsh language, and in many of its villages it is impossible to find a single person who understands a word of English. Dim saesoneg is the sole reply the traveller is likely to meet with on the road, or if by chance, in some more civilised townlet, he makes himself understood, the broken and grotesque English of the replies he obtains is likely to be quite unintelligible. Even those who can command a little “Saxon” are chary of using it, and not a few of those who gruffly grunt Dim saesoneg do so because they are shy of their attempts at an unfamiliar tongue being laughed at.
The scenery on the high ground near Gwyndû may be commended to the attention of those who describe Anglesey as flat, dull, and featureless. Here the road, to the backward glance, looks down towards Bodffordd, in a deep hollow, and away across the island into a charmingly wooded valley, with great bosses of granite cropping out here and there, and in the distance the inevitable background to Anglesey scenery, the Snowdonian mountains. The hamlet of Llynfaes, with whitewashed granite cottages, very quaint and homely, and very like Cornwall, is pleasing, and at Trefor there is a stretch of tree-shaded road whose like is not often found. Bodedern only is somewhat commonplace, and even that is transfigured by glimpses of the dark Holyhead Mountain and shining sea unfolded as the road goes downhill to Llanyngenedl, and thence to Valley. When it has crossed Telford’s road at this last place, the old way enters upon quite another kind of scenery; very beautiful in its sort. Hills, it is true, are not wholly left behind, but the prevailing landscape is flat, with wide, wild stretches of gorsy and heathery moor, threaded with salt-water creeks and pools. Holy Island is entered at Four-Mile Bridge, a causeway spanning the tidal channel. Windmills, seen in long perspective across the flats, shrilly piping gulls, salt pools, lichened granite rocks, and the ruins of Druidical cromlechs, make up the sum total of foreground and middle distance; with the sea at Penrhos and Trearddur Bay on the left, and a long line of roofs and chimneys in the background under Holyhead Mountain, standing for Holyhead town.
LIX
If a grand and awe-inspiring finish to the Holyhead Road be sought, let the pilgrim, instead of making for the town, ascend the misty steeps of Holyhead Mountain, and make his rugged and circuitous way to the South Stack. The road runs past some peculiarly depressing outskirts, and by a long row of empty and forlorn cottages offered to be let at fourpence a week, and not finding tenants even at that modest sum. These desolate dwellings were built for the use of the men employed on the Holyhead Harbour Works, and have not been occupied since the Harbour was completed.
The South Stack, at the rocky edge of Holy Island, cannot be gained under four miles of wandering by winding roads across the heathery uplands: the way traced by whitewashed stones placed at intervals to mark the track in foggy weather. Long before the traveller gains the cliff’s edge, he will perhaps be suddenly overtaken by one of the sea fogs, and at last come to the place unawares. Then he may be grateful indeed for the strong breast-wall of masonry that saves the strayed visitor from walking over the precipices into the sea some five hundred feet below.
A sea-fog is a ghastly and chilling phenomenon, but in no other circumstances does the South Stack rock appear so impressive, or the fog-horn of its lighthouse seem so uncanny. As a light wind springs up and gradually clears away the fog, like clouds of white smoke, the first object looming in ghostly fashion out of the absolute void is the lighthouse lantern, apparently detached and swimming in air; while the strange bellowing, like that of a dyspeptic cow, that has been coming at half-minute intervals from some unknown quarter, is located from it. The distant wail, throbbing in a higher key across the invisible water, is the fog-horn on the Skerries.
THE SOUTH STACK. After T. Creswick, R.A.
As the fog gradually dies away, the lighthouse becomes revealed with the island rock it stands upon. This is the South Stack: a great mass of seamed and crannied rock torn off from the cliffs and standing as an island, itself rising to a height of 212 feet above high water, and looked down upon by sheer granite cliffs three hundred feet taller. In the narrow chasm below the sea dashes savagely in and out of the gloomy caverns, with a sound like muffled thunder. The grandeur and scale of this terrific scene—a fitting climax to all the varied scenery of the Holyhead Road—are not fully realised when looking down upon it. There, on the island rock, stands the white lighthouse, with whitewashed stone walls zigzagging along the verge of its cliffs, and forming a little compound where the store-houses and the cottages of the staff are situated; and the whole looks so neat and toy-like that its dimensions are not at first grasped. But when the slow and winding descent to it down the face of the cliff by 381 rude rocky steps has been cautiously accomplished, the awful savagery of the spot is realised. There may possibly be a few places on these coasts to approach the grimly bristling rocks of the South Stack in their wild beauty, but none can surpass them.
At the foot of the long descent, but still perched high above the fearful waves that even in calm weather run and recede, hissing and foaming, for a distance of thirty or forty feet up and down the face of the cliffs, is the entrance to a suspension-bridge hung from side to side of the channel. Before this was built, the only means of access was by a line and basket, followed at a little later period by a rope bridge; but the risk was so great that the present one, a miniature reproduction of the Menai Bridge was constructed.