Motor Tours in Wales & the Border Counties

by Mrs. Rodolph Stawell

These slopes of Plynlimmon are not particularly inspiring, except when regarded as the cradle of the Wye, and of that greater river whose tributary she is, the Severn. It is true that the standard of Wales, with its red dragon, once floated victoriously on the side of this hill, and the short grass has been dyed with the blood of the Flemings, who mustered here to chastise that stout rebel, Owen Glyndwr, and were thoroughly chastised by him instead. But in themselves the heights of Plynlimmon are a little uninteresting. Short grass and rushes are all that grow upon them, and though their rounded outlines have a dignity of their own, the lack of colour makes them rather desolate. It is not till the Wye has passed Llangurig that it begins to earn its fame.

Curiously enough, the Wye’s fame seems to depend mainly on its lower reaches. Nine people out of ten regard it as rising, so to speak, in Hereford; the Upper Wye is unknown to them and considered of no account. Yet to those who know it the Upper Wye, with its rugged hills and its wealth of colours, has a stronger charm even than the wooded loveliness of Symond’s Yat or of Tintern.

At Llangurig—which is a wind-swept village with a nice little inn and a reputation for good fishing—the river and the road that follows it turn sharply to the right, and begin to descend by a very gentle gradient towards Rhayader. The landscape changes gradually. The hills lose their bleak desolation only to become cultivated and commonplace: then the fields yield to moorlands and the rounded curves to bold and jagged rocks; and at last, near the spot where the river Marteg adds its waters to the Wye and the railway joins the road, the great hills rise on each side so precipitously that the way lies almost through a defile. The hilltops are bare and grey, but by the banks of the river is a belt of trees; and as the valley widens the slopes are no longer bare but are glorious in purple and gold, in heather and gorse. And where the flaming sides of the Elan Valley converge with the valley of the Wye stands the tiny town of Rhayader.

This is, I think, the gem of the Wye. It is well, therefore, if possible, to stay here for a day or two; and fortunately there is a nice little hotel to stay in. There are hills near and far, and on every hill are all the colours of the rainbow, and with the passing of every cloud the colours move and change. Close at hand are slopes of bracken topped by rugged crags; far away the hills of the Elan Valley are blue and amethyst. The river rushes through the town, giving to it its name of Rhayader Gwy, the Falls of the Wye, though the falls are not what they once were, I believe, before the bridge was built. Of course there is a castle-mound, for no Welsh town of a respectable age is complete without one. The castle itself has disappeared. The days of its life, indeed, appear to have been few and evil. It was built by “the Lord Rhys,” the mightiest of all the princes of the south, but so strenuous was the life of his day that he was obliged to rebuild it a few years later. Afterwards he was for a short time imprisoned by his own sons, and it was while he was in this undignified position that his castle of Rhayader was seized by his enemies. But these dim memories have lately been eclipsed. Those who visit Rhayader to-day think little of the valorous and potent prince of ancient Wales; they think almost exclusively of the Birmingham Waterworks. We may forgive them for this, for the Birmingham Waterworks are more romantic than one would expect—romantic not merely as all great engineering works must be, with the romance of enterprise and achievement, but also romantically beautiful. One may drive for miles beside the lakes that wind into the heart of the mountains, and would have so natural an air if it were not for their mighty dams of Caban, and Pen-y-Garreg, and Craig Goch. It is a drive worth taking, for the road is good, the mountains tower above it with real grandeur, and the waters have pathos as well as beauty. The legend of buried houses and churches is common to many lakes; but in the case of the lakes of Cwm Elan it is no legend, but a fact, that their waters flow over the ground where generations of men have lived and worked, have ploughed their fields and said their prayers. The affairs of most of them are forgotten as completely as their houses are buried, but there is one memory here that no waters can hide—whether of Cwm Elan or of the chilly Serpentine or of the blue Mediterranean—the memory of Percy and Harriet Shelley. They lived here once, young and happy, and would have thought it a wild prophecy indeed if it had been foretold to them that not only they themselves, but even their quiet homestead among the green fields, would be destroyed by water.

From Rhayader to Newbridge the road still closely follows the river, which, as we watch it mile by mile, gradually becomes wider and calmer. For the first few miles the banks are wild enough, and very beautiful; then suddenly the river is hidden from us by the deep shades and countless stems of Doldowlod Woods, where James Watt once lived; and by the time we dart out into the sunlight again we are nearing Newbridge. On this road there is nothing to limit our speed except the law, for from end to end of the Wye the surface is good, and there are no hills that deserve the name. At Newbridge we leave the river for a few miles, but join it again near Builth, and cross it to enter that town.

Builth is unattractive. It professes to be a Spa, but I never heard of any one who drank the waters; and it is hardly likely to become popular, since all the charms of Llanwrtyd Wells are but thirteen miles away on the one side, and all the fashion of Llandrindod only seven miles away on the other. Llanwrtyd is a delightful little place, with a good hotel and lovely surroundings, unspoilt as yet by popularity; while Llandrindod, as every one knows, is beloved by so many that it is no longer very lovable. Builth has little to offer in rivalry of these, and indeed makes small show of hospitality, maintaining in this matter the character it earned long ago, when it refused to admit its fugitive prince, the last Llewelyn. It is only a little way from here to the dell whither he struggled through the snow from this his treacherous town, only to find fresh treachery, and to die through its means. His dust lies, they say, at the spot called Cefn-y-Bedd, or the Bank of the Grave; and here in quite recent times a monument of stone has been set up. It stands close to the wayside on the road from Builth to Llanwrtyd.

This, however, is not our road, which follows the Wye very closely for a time; through Erwood, where from the top of a slight rise we have a wide and beautiful view; past Llyswen and the “Three Cocks,” one of the most famous of fishing inns, and through Glasbury to Hay. We are now in a broad and fertile valley; the hills are wooded; the river is growing slow and stately in its demeanour. The whole aspect of the country has changed, for at Hay we shall leave all the wildness of Wales behind us, and shall enter the quiet, homely county of Hereford.

“I cam in crepusculo to the Hay,” says Leland, and he chose his time wisely.

Hay, or La Haie, as it was originally called, was once the meeting-ground of all those turbulent mediæval passions that flourished so exceedingly on the border. For this reason it is full of ghosts. From this, the Welsh side, it has rather an undistinguished air, but when first seen by twilight from the English side, with the Black Mountains lowering behind it, and the remains of its grim castle dominating it, little Hay seizes the imagination. For those who approach it thus in crepusculo, like Leland, the past for ever lives in its commonplace streets more insistently than the present; lives above all in its castle—“the which sumetime hath bene right stately”—the castle with the long, picturesque flight of steps, and the longer and still more picturesque history. Through that great doorway many feet have passed that never came out, for those that entered the castle of Hay did it at their peril. The greater part of the building as it now stands is of Tudor date, but the entrance has by some means survived since King John’s time, and this in spite of difficulties: for the place was plundered during the Border Wars, destroyed by the Welsh themselves in self-defence, rebuilt by Henry III., captured by Llewelyn, retaken by Prince Edward, captured once more by Llewelyn’s grandson, and finally suffered the general fate of Welsh castles. “Now being almost totally decay’d,” says Camden, “it complains of the outrages of that profligate Rebel, Owen Glyn Dowrdwy, who in his March through these Countries consumed it with fire.”