Nantlle has a station, but Penygroes, the junction, is so near as to make it a more convenient stopping-place. Anyone staying at Criccieth can make a good day by taking the train to Nantlle, and returning along Garnedd Goch or over Moel Hebog. Snowdon too is within easy reach.
Penygwrhyd.—In Beddgelert Church is a monument 'to the memory of Harry Owen, for forty-four years landlord of the inn at Penygwrhyd and guide to Snowdon: born April 2, 1822; died May 5, 1891.'
Harry Owen it was who did for Penygwrhyd what Will Ritson did for Wastdale Head and Seiler for Zermatt. Intellectually, perhaps, he was not the equal of either of the other two, but there was a straightforward cordiality about him which made all lovers of the mountains feel at once that in his house they had a home to which they could return again and again with ever renewed pleasure.
The house stands at the foot of the east side of the Llanberis Pass, at the junction of the roads from Capel Curig (4 miles), Beddgelert (8 miles), and Llanberis (6 miles), and at the central point of three mountain groups—Snowdon (the finest and boldest side), the Glyders, and Moel Siabod. The last is of small account, but the other two groups contain some—one may almost say most—of the best climbing and finest scenery in Wales. Most people come to the inn by way of Bettws y Coed and many from Llanberis; but by far the finest approach is that from Beddgelert, and by this way the first approach at any rate ought always to be made. Ascents and climbs innumerable may be made from here, and many valuable notes on climbs may be found here in a certain volume secured from the profane mob by lock and key.
In the same volume also several sets of verses occur much above the ordinary tourist level, among them being a very smart study of the climbing class in the style of Walt Whitman, and a few telling alphabetic distichs of which habitués will recognise the force.
K—for the Kitchen, where garments are dried;
L—for the Language we use when they're fried;
O—for the Owens, whom long may we see;
P—for the Pudding we call P.Y.G.
S is for Snowdon, that's seen from afar;
T—for the Tarts on the shelf in the bar.
The visitors' book proper also contains entries of some interest, including some lines (given at length in the Gossiping Guide) written by Charles Kingsley, Tom Taylor, and Tom Hughes, chiefly remarkable for their breezy good temper. The lines are printed, together with a mass of very poor stuff taken from the same source, in a little book called Offerings at the Foot of Snowdon.[ [7] ] The inn and the Owens play an important part in Kingsley's novel Two Years Ago. Forty or fifty years ago there was a constant visitor at this inn who might have claimed the invention of the place as a climbing centre. He corresponded in profession, and also in age, to the Rev. James Jackson, the Cumbrian 'Patriarch.' He had a mania for ridge-walking, or, as he termed it, 'following the sky line.' His name I could never learn.