[XX]
SOME ODDS AND ENDS
Holyhead is an inconsequential town whose chief end is to serve as a port of departure for Ireland. Were it not for this useful purpose, few tourists would ever see it—or the Isle of Anglesea, for that matter. Aside from some fine coast scenery and the castle, now very ruinous, built by Edward I. at Beaumaris, Anglesea offers little in the way of attractions. The island is rather barren, with here and there a mean-looking village with a long, unpronounceable Welsh name. The main road from the great suspension bridge over the Menai Strait to Holyhead is excellent, but nearly all others in the island are so bad as to discourage motorists.
The Station Hotel at Holyhead is owned by the Northwestern Railway, and would be creditable to a city of one hundred thousand. It affords every comfort to its guests, and the railway people have made special provisions for the motor car, among these one of the best-equipped garages that I saw anywhere. The motor is becoming a serious rival to the railway in Britain, the heavy reduction in first-class passenger travel being attributed to the popularity of the horseless carriage; but the situation has been accepted by the companies which own hotels and they have generally provided first-class accommodation for cars belonging to their guests.
In a previous chapter I referred to our run from London to Holyhead, reaching Ludlow the first night. I am going to have my say about Ludlow in another chapter; for five visits on different occasions to the delightful old border town should perhaps entitle me, though a stranger to its people, to record my impressions of it somewhat in detail.
Bishop’s Castle marked our entrance into the hill country of Northern Wales. It is a lonely town following a steep, roughly-paved main street, at the top of which we stop for luncheon at an old-fashioned but very pleasant country inn. From Bishop’s Castle to Barmouth by the way of Welshpool, Llanfair, Dinas Mawddwy and Dolgelley, we pass through the very heart of North Wales and see many phases of its beauty, though generally in the wilder and sterner moods. The hills are often steep, but from their crests we have far-reaching views over the wooded vales and green hill ranges. In places we wind through tangled forests or run along the banks of swift little rivers. At Dinas Mawddwy we enter the Welsh mountains, the most imposing hills in Britain. The tiny village nestling beside its rippling river seems lost in the mighty hills that overhang it on every side, rugged and almost precipitous, yet velvety green to their very summits. We begin our climb out of the valley over the Bwlch Ooeddrws Pass—the name is even more alarming than the heavy grade shown in the road book—and for three miles we climb steadily up the mighty hill alongside an incline that drops sharply to the roaring stream far below. From the summit a grand prospect greets our eyes: the wild, broken, intensely green Welsh hills stretching away range after range until they fade in the purple shadows of the distance, and yet higher above us looms the crest of Cader Idris, on which still linger flecks of snow. After a short pause to contemplate the beauty of the scene, we plunge down the descent, steep, sinuous and rough, to Dolgelley, lying at the foot of the hill, a retired little town with a long history; for here the Welsh hero, Owen Glendwr, held his parliaments and made a rallying point for his adherents in North Wales. Today its old-time, gray-stone, slate-roofed houses are hemmed in by more modern villas such as one now finds in most of the beauty spots of northern Wales.
The ten miles of road to Barmouth follows the estuary of the river with only moderate grades until it reaches the town, when it plunges down the long hill to the seashore. Barmouth, or, as the Welsh style it, Abermaw, is a quiet watering-place lying along a narrow beach at the foot of the hills that rise almost sheer behind the town. The coast line of the wide rock-bound harbor is wild and broken, and the view over the estuary at sunset is an enchanting one. The hotels are rather small and the beginning of the crowded season is just at hand. Should one wish to remain for a time in Barmouth to explore some of the grandest scenery in Wales, he would be more at ease in May or June.
As we leave the town an obliging garage man hails us and warns us to beware of Llanaber, two or three miles to the north; a trap for motorists has been set there, and as if to convince us that wealth and station will not protect us, he adds in a rather awe-stricken manner that Her Grace the Duchess of W——, wife of the richest nobleman in the Kingdom, was stopped last week and fined ten pounds. We feel that a contribution to the exchequer of Llanaber would hardly come so easy from us as from the wealthy duchess, and we pass through the wretched little hamlet at a most respectful pace. The rain has begun to fall heavily and has apparently dampened the ardor of the Welsh constables, for we see nothing of them. The road continues many miles between the mountain slope and the low green marshes stretching seaward, but the driving rain obscures the view. At only one point does the ocean lash the rocks directly beneath us; elsewhere along the coast the road is separated from the sea by marshes and stretches of sandy beach, varying from a few hundred feet to two miles in width.
Suddenly the gray bulk of Harlech Castle, standing on its commanding eminence, four square to all the winds of heaven, looms up grim and vast in the gusty rain. It is the last of the great feudal castles of Britain that we are to see on our pilgrimage—save some of those we have seen before—and it marks a fitting close to the long list that we have visited—nearly every one of importance in the Island.
Harlech is one of the seven great castles built by Edward I. in his effort to subdue Wales. It contests with Carnarvon and Conway for first place among the Welsh ruins and is easily one of the half dozen most remarkable castellated fortresses in the Kingdom. It is perched on a mighty rock which drops almost sheer to the wide, sandy marsh along the sea, and just below it on the landward side is the village that gives the castle its name. Inside the great quadrangle, we find the trim neatness that characterizes the ruins belonging to the crown. We ascend the stairway leading to the battlements and follow the path around the walls and towers. A thousand pities that the rain shuts out the view, for surely there are few such panoramas of sea and mountain in Britain as one may get from the walls of Harlech. Shall we let one more fortunate than we, having seen the prospect on a cloudless day, tell its beauty in poetic phrase?
“It is a scene of unparalleled beauty, whichever way one turns; whether to the sea, out beyond the sandy beach at the foot of Castle Rock, running far away, a sheet of intensest blue, until it meets the pale sapphire of the sky; or whether toward the mountains of the north, Snowdon, the snow-crowned king of them all, rising in matchless majesty above his satellites; or to the landward where the tiny village nestles at the foot of craglike hills; or to the westward where the great promontory of Lleyn stretches away, throwing here and there into the sky its isolated peaks, so full of savage sternness tempered with weird beauty.”