It is the custom to return to Bettws from this point, for reasons that a glance at the Contour Book may perhaps explain. But the fashion has been set, I think, by bicyclists, whom one really cannot blame for shirking the hill that rises between Dolwyddelan and Maentwrog. Here let me assure motorists that there is little reason why they should miss the wild beauty of the moors above this point; the rolling expanse of brown and purple bogland, the endless succession of hills, the grand outline of Moel Siabod. For though the road is certainly steep the surface is excellent, except for a mile or so above Blaenau Festiniog, that strange town on the mountain ledge that entirely owes its existence to the neighbouring quarries, and yet is more than a mile long and has three railway stations. There is no need to brave the hill again to return to Bettws, for the road by Maentwrog, Penrhyndeudraeth, and the Pass of Aberglaslyn is one of the loveliest in Wales, and though we shall come down the Pass by and by there is no hardship in going over the ground twice. It is worth remembering, too, that at Maentwrog it is possible, if time allows, to cross the valley and approach the famous toy railway-line at its prettiest point, Tan-y-Bwlch, where a lake lies hidden among the woods, and where we may have tea on the grass close beside the water, facing a scene of rich colouring and deep, cool shadows.
All this, however, is a digression. It is highly probable that the great majority of motorists will look at the Contour Book and return to Bettws from Dolwyddelan. They will have the advantage of seeing the Lledr Valley from a new point of view.
Now in the Snowdon country there are three great passes through the mountains to the sea: the Passes of Nant Ffrancon, Llanberis, and Nant Gwynant combined with Aberglaslyn. It is hard to say which is the most beautiful of the three; and it is quite imperative, and also quite easy, to see them all by pursuing rather a zigzag course. Nant Ffrancon is the route of the Holyhead Road and the nearest to Bettws: so we will go down by Nant Ffrancon, and come up again by Llanberis on the same day; and on the next start off again by way of Nant Gwynant and Aberglaslyn, passing through Bedd Gelert.
The road climbs out of Bettws through a thick wood beside the rushing Llugwy, and soon draws near the Swallow Falls.[7] This triple fall is only a stone’s-throw from the road, and it is worth while to follow the slippery path across the pine-needles, and stand for a moment in the pricking spray watching the commotion. In the thick of the hubbub they say the spirit of Sir John Wynne, which left this mortal coil early in the seventeenth century, is being “purged, punished, and spouted upon”; though I have never heard anything definite against him except that he was “shrewd and successful.” He was a member of that Court of the Marches of which we heard so much at Ludlow, and he left a very valuable record of his family behind him.
This bit of country between Bettws and Capel Curig is one of the gems of North Wales. Moel Siabod towers above us; and beyond it soon appears that cloud-capped peak whose name quickens every Welsh heart—the rallying-point of heroes, the symbol and stronghold of the liberties of Wales. The finest view of Snowdon is from Capel Curig, where the double peak is reflected in the double lake.
Our road, still climbing, turns to the right in Capel Curig and takes us up into the heart of the hills, through a scene of splendid desolation—bare heights, huge boulders tossed and heaped upon the ground, jagged outlines, and dark sullen colours—a land that was vastly disconcerting to those travellers of an earlier day whose idea of beauty was “a smiling landscape.” As we reach the summit and see the waters of Llyn Ogwen below us, sapphire-blue or lead-grey according to circumstances, the great sides of Tryfaen and the Glydyrs tower on the left. Beyond the lake Alla Wen rises steeply. “A horrid spot of hills,” says a seventeenth-century writer. “The most dreadful horse-path in Wales,” says Pennant; and that indeed it may well have been before Telford came here to perform his miracles of engineering. “The district through which the surveys were carried is mountainous,” he says quietly; “and I found the existing roads very imperfect.” When we have passed Llyn Ogwen, and the cottage where food is to be had if necessary, and the sudden turning over the bridge, and are swinging down the gentle slope of Nant Ffrancon high up on the mountain-side, we must surely give nearly as much admiration to this road which descends for ten miles with no steeper gradient than 1 in 15 as we give to the wide Valley of the Beavers below us. Above us the mountain is a mass of grey boulders, of scars and landslips; below us it sweeps down precipitously to where the little Ogwen dances like a streak of quicksilver. Presently we pass under the hideous excrescence of the Penrhyn slate quarries, grey terraces of rubbish contrasting cruelly with the glowing gorse of the opposite slopes; and then through the equally hideous town of slate, Bethesda, the miners’ town, whose slate walls, slate steps, and slate porches are enough, as Dr. Johnson, would say, “to make a man hang himself.” Let us hurry on into the Cochwillan Woods.
Very soon after passing the modern towers of Penrhyn Castle we reach the town of Bangor, “which for the beauty of its situation, was called Ban-cor, the high or conspicuous choir.” It is not a very inviting place, nevertheless, and there is no need to pause here, for even the cathedral is not beautiful. It has had a great deal to bear; for it was burnt by Harold the Saxon, and again by King John, and again by Owen Glyndwr; and no doubt the castle built by Hugh, Earl of Chester, suffered on one or all of these occasions, for Camden says, “though he made diligent inquiry he could not discover the least footsteps” of it. The original cathedral was founded by St. Deiniol in the sixth century, and beneath it is buried the great Welsh prince Owen Gwynedd, hero of many battles, who fought here on the heights above the straits a fight so desperate that “the Menai could not ebb on account of the torrent of blood which flowed into it.” Before we go on to Carnarvon we must cross those straits, for the sake of the bridge, and of the view, and of Beaumaris.
It was in the year 1826 that the mail-coach, swaying under its burden of excited officials, rolled slowly for the first time over the Menai Bridge. It was a brave scene. Telford, in his modest way, had pleaded against a formal procession, but he could not check personal enthusiasm nor prevent the mustering of that long, long line of carriages and horsemen and thousands on foot, which followed the Royal London and Holyhead Mail, amid the fluttering of flags and the firing of guns, and the roaring of a gale. Nor yet could he control the shouts that rose above the wind when he himself passed by in an inconspicuous carriage.
As soon as we reach the sacred shore of Mona, the last home of the Druids, we turn sharply to the right; unless, indeed, we have a mind to pursue the Holyhead road for a couple of miles, for the pleasure of telling our friends that we have seen Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerchwryndrobwllantysiliogogogoch. I once heard a rumour that this place was to be connected by rail with Pontrhydfendigaedmynachlogfawr, but as the scheme may come to nothing perhaps it would be wiser not to mention it.
From the shore road to Beaumaris we see the whole grand panorama of the Gwynedd mountains, height beyond height and range beyond range, from the pale distant peak of Snowdon to the dark shadows of steep Penmaenmawr. It is a scene that has a quality of strangeness in it. One looks at it from the outside, as it were; for Anglesey, which once was green with the sacred groves of the Druids, is now, as it was in the days of Giraldus Cambrensis, “an arid and stony land, rough and unpleasant in its appearance.” One feels, on this flat shore, worlds away from that beautiful country beyond the strait. On a day of sunshine and cloud, when the mountains are glowing with every imaginable colour and seem every moment to be changing their shapes under the moving shadows, it is worth driving many a mile to sit on the beach of Beaumaris.