Shortly after leaving the lake, the most striking view of Snowdon presents itself; you look across the valley on a huge precipice, over the edge of which, through a wide sweeping dip in the hill, a very picturesque waterfall, Rhaiadr cum Dyli, is projected. Plain indications of its source,
Llyn Llydan,
a highly elevated mountain lake, are apparent; above this rises a dark perpendicular wall of rock, towards the summit of which craggy and sharp ridges run up, and at the junction the towering peak of Snowdon rises: shortly after, you join the road from Capel Curig to Llanberis. Let no inconvenience induce the tourist to relinquish this route.
In the vale of Colwyn, and nearly two miles from Beddgelert, is a small pool, about the size of a good horse-pond, called
Llyn-y-Dywarchen
(Or the Pool of the Sod), first celebrated by Giraldus Cambrensis, in the account of his journey through Wales in the twelfth century, as containing a floating island. This is still in existence, but not more than eight or nine yards in length, and evidently appears to be a detached piece of the turbery of which the bank is composed. There is a small willow-tree growing upon it, and it is carried to and fro by the action of the wind and water. Sometimes it remains near the side of the pool for a considerable while, and it is so large and firm as to bear cattle on it. When it has been dislodged by the wind, a few sheep have often been borne by it to the other parts of the bank.—Within two miles of Beddgelert is situated
Pont Aber-glaslyn
(Or the Bridge of the Conflux of the Blue Pool); it is also called by the inhabitants the Devil’s Bridge; on which account it has sometimes been confounded with the bridge of that name near Havod, in Cardiganshire. In approaching this spot from Beddgelert, the rocks on each side become incomparably grand. The road winds along a narrow stony vale, where the huge cliffs so nearly approach as only just to leave width sufficient at the bottom for the road, and the bed of the impetuous torrent that rolls along the side of it. Here these lofty rocks, which oppose nothing to the eye but a series of the rudest precipices, “raised tier on tier, high piled from earth to heaven,” seem to forbid all further access, and to frown defiance on the traveller.
The bridge crosses the Glaslyn, and unites the counties of Merioneth and Caernarvon. In the span it is thirty feet, and from the water to the parapet forty feet high. There is excellent fishing in this river; it abounds with salmon and trout. Some years ago, there was a noted salmon leap a few yards above the bridge, and in the course of an hour, twenty or thirty fish have been seen attempting to spring over the barrier, but it is now broken down and fallen into decay. The salmon come up the river in the latter end of the year, sometimes as early as the beginning of October, in order to deposit their spawn on the sandy shallows, and are here very plentiful. The fishery belongs to the Wynn family. When the tourist has passed the bridge, and proceeded about one hundred yards on the Tre-Madoc road, he will then see the view to perfection. The elegant and venerable arch clothed with ivy—the foam of the little waterfall almost beneath—the majestic rocks to the right, combining to form one of the finest pictures in Wales.
It was probably from this place that Giraldus Cambrensis asserted of Merionethshire, that “it was the roughest and most dreary part of Wales, for its mountains were both high and perpendicular, and in many places so grouped together, that shepherds talking or quarreling on their tops, could scarcely, in a whole day’s journey, come together.”