I said to my guide in Iceland one day, pointing to a glittering jökull, “Oh, Grimr! would you not like to stand on the top?” “I can see the top very well from down here”, was his reply.
A good many of us with old bones, and breath coming short, will be content to look on Cader Idris from below, or only to mount the glens to the lakes that lie around it, and leave the ultimate climb to the young bloods.
The Town Council of Dolgelley has done its best to make the place attractive to visitors who have not this climbing passion on them, by laying out walks such as those of the Torrent and the Precipice, to facilitate the easy reach of striking points of view.
CADER IDRIS
Of the town itself not much can be said. “You see this decanter?” said an old gentleman after dinner. “That is the church”; and, taking a handful of nutshells and strewing them about the decanter, he added, “there are the houses.”
Dolgelley does a little business. It has long been noted for the manufacture of the “Welsh web,” and it is a famous resort of fishermen, though the well-whipped streams do not abound in finny denizens as they did at one time; moreover, the fish have grown uncommonly wary. The neighbourhood has within reach many lakes more or less deserving of the angler’s attention, and all meriting a visit by anyone who has an eye for the beautiful. To the fisherman comes the choice between stream and tarn, between following up the brawling torrent to its source, lingering by the pools in which the trout glide like shadows, and dreaming in a boat on one of the lakelets, whilst a gentle breeze ruffles its surface. Some clever lines were written by the late Major George Cecil Gooch, some years ago, contrasting the fishing in England with that in Scotland. They apply equally to the contrast between angling in England and in Wales.
“Oh! yon angler in Kennet and Itchen!
How he creeps and he crawls on his knees.