WALES

SNOWDONIA - THE MOUNTAINS

OCTOBER 2018

Early Days in the late 1940s and early 1950s

I mentioned before that my interest in Mountaineering developed in the late 1940s when I was quite young - 13 or 14 - and a boy scout.

That came about because I saw an advertisement in the "SCOUT" newspaper for a permanent camp in Llanberis run by the local Rector who had been a keen mountaineer himself and who gave lectures to the boys on mountaincraft, and organised expeditions guided by experienced Senior Scouts.

I had forgotten both his name and the name of the Scout Group he formed but found them again in this link to the Gwynedd Archives.

He was the Rev JH Williams and the Group he founded was called "The Snowdon Scout Group".        It was possible to have dual membership of this Group as well as the one at home.       I remember still the purple scarf I wore with pride.    In the centre it had a pictogram  of the Snowdon Summit with the Welsh title - Y Wyddfa - written beneath.   

I see from the link above that the Archives also hold registers of all boys who stayed at the camp and photos of many of them.      I guess I could find my former self there but haven't verified that by trying to do so.    

Upon returning home after this 2018 expedition I also found my small black notebook written at the time in an almost illegible scrawl starting at both ends of the book.       One end contains descriptions and diagrams of the passes and mountains climbed and the other has a record of lecture notes.    

A reader can tell it was from a different era because in the discussion of different materials from which climbing ropes could be made I duly recorded that Hemp was superior to Sisal because the latter could fail without warning.       

I also remember Hemp had disadvantages too - it was inelastic and kinked horribly when wet.       Nylon ropes didn't become available until a good bit later - either because they hadn't yet been invented or perhaps because of rationing and material shortages so soon after the war.

For footwear we had heavy leather boots fitted with "Clinker" nails on the sole and "Tricounis" fixed to the welt around the edges.     The Clinkers had a rounded face and were good for walking and the Tricounis a saw-toothed edge good for fitting onto narrow ledges and cracks when rock climbing.    "Commando" soles, also known as "Vibrams" didn't become available until a good bit later.

During this period expeditions always started in Llanberis and were very nearly all confined to the mountains on either side of the pass - we had no private transport and either had to walk from the rectory grounds in which we camped or catch a bus up the pass to start our day and walk or return by the same means at the end.

At College in the mid- 1950s and Later

When at college in the mid-1950s I carried forward my earlier enthusiasm by joining the UCL climbing club.

Most meets were organised in Snowdonia during "Welsh Weekends".       Those involved travelling by coach on Friday evenings after lectures, camping, or sleeping on the floor in Tyn-y-Shanty - a corrugated iron hut at the head of the Nant Francon Valley - climbing all day on Saturday and Sunday and then returning to London by coach overnight arriving in time for lectures on Monday morning.       Recollection of those lectures is rather faded.

The club also had a traditional New Year's meet in the Lake District based in a barn forming part of the pub complex at Wastdale Head. 

Some years a group of members organised an Alpine expedition during the summer vacation.    I went on only one of those myself - to the Oetz valley near Innsbruck and to the Sella Towers region in the Dolomites near Bolzano.   

Occasionally the Welsh Weekends focussed on climbing on the Three Cliffs in the Llanberis Pass - Carreg Wasted, Dinas Mot and Dinas Cromlech.      For those we mostly wild-camped near the Cromlech Boulders, sometimes in the same area as Joe Brown and Don Whillans who were putting up hard routes at the time including the first free ascent of Cenotaph Corner (J M Edwards had climbed it in the 1930s but used a top rope). 

But mostly the Weekends were based in the Nant Francon Pass and towards the end of my time in slightly greater comfort as I had secured from the NUS at UCL a small grant towards the cost of building a club hut near Williams Farm.

Mostly our climbing was done on the mountains between the two passes with occasional expeditions to the Snowdon group - the Horseshoe Ridge - and Lliwedd.     More rarely still we occasionally walked in the Carnedds.

So, I became familiar with most of the cliffs in the area including the East Face of Tryfan, the Milestone Buttress, the Gribin Facet of Glyder Fach, the Idwal Slabs and so on.

These Welsh Weekends were great social as well as physical occasions.       The outgoing coach journey from London was always a lively affair with several people playing musical instruments and all joining in the singing of climbing songs or listening to a recitation.     

The "Ballad of Idwal Slabs" by Showell Styles was always popular.     

It recounts in verse a competition for the hand of the President's daughter between the hero - "John Christopher Brown was his name" - and - "A villain named Reginald Hake".      The competition required the rivals to "Climb headfirst down Hope without rubbers or rope" ("Hope" along with "Faith" and "Charity" are three climbs on the Idwal Slabs, and "rubbers" refers to the use of tennis shoes instead of nailed boots - this was long before the introduction of stiff-soled specialised climbing shoes or even the continental "Kletterschue").       

I always liked particularly the lines describing the spectators and their mode of transport - 

      "The mobs came from Bangor in buses, 

       And the Nobs came from Capel in cabs" 

The full story can be read here

Visit in 2018

I had mixed feelings about returning to an area where I had spent such happy and formative times 60 - 69 years ago.      As Housman wrote:

        That is the land of lost content
        I see it shining plain
       The happy highways where I went
       And cannot come again

But it didn't turn out quite like that.

Several man-made things had changed but several remained the same, including Tyn-y-Shanty resplendent in a new coat of paint.

And as we always used to say when sailing with out-of-date charts - "The rocks don't change".      But after a lifetime of travelling the world and seeing new places perhaps even these rocks looked a little smaller than they had done.

People were still climbing on the Three Cliffs in the Llanberis Pass, with others watching from the laybys.     But I didn't see many tents and none where we used to camp by the Cromlech boulders.   

There were new buildings on the Dinas Mot side of the pass that looked as though they might be climbers huts.     More prosperity and more intrusive regulation have probably reduced the simplicity of earlier years but improved equipment and technology have raised standards with modern climbers skimming up routes we wouldn't even have attempted.

More regulation was also evident in the Nant Ffrancon Pass (it used to be spelt with a single "f" - is the change an improvement?).      This time it manifested itself in the name of conservation with the open hillside path from the Youth Hostel to Llyn Idwal now replaced with a wide boulder-lain track.        I suppose this is necessary but it does diminish the sense of wilderness that used to be felt.

That didn't seem to bother the several groups of teachers and schoolchildren I encountered as I slowly plodded up and down to the lake, taking about five times as long as I used to require even when carrying a tent and full camping gear.

Nevertheless I was hugely pleased to see again the places I'd been in earlier years - even if only from a distance - the "Tennis Shoe"  climb ((V Diff) on the slabs up which my wife-to-be had elegantly glided, the vertical "Ash Tree Wall" (Severe) on the East Face of the slabs whose last pitch ends in the same place as "Tennis Shoe" and up which I had followed Bill's lead, and so on.

A ridge descends from the summit of Glyder Fach towards the open bowl in which Llyn Idwal lies and ends in another cliff - the Gribin Facet on which there are a number of routes.      I had fine views as I returned down the track.

Facet of the Gribin

The clouds were high that day so I also had a good view of the Western side of Tryfan though it was hard to photograph as I had to tilt the camera to get the summit in the picture - so the photo foreshortens the view and the mountain looks less impressive than it is when seen with the human eye.

Of course, the East Face is much steeper, rockier and has most of the rock climbs - Gashed Crag, Munich, Belle-Vue Bastion and so on.       But the approaches are over rough and sometimes boggy ground so I didn't attempt to get any photos on this trip.

Nor did I attempt to climb to the summit and sit on Adam or Eve - the two huge boulders at the very top.     

Alas, I am no longer capable of such scrambles as the North Ridge of Tryfan, Bristly Ridge to the summit of Glyder Fach or the Snowdon Horseshoe.

Nevertheless I felt some sort of sense of accomplishment in managing the walk up and down to Llyn Idwal and was thoroughly pleased I had revisited these mountains of my youth.

WALES

 ANGLESEY AND SNOWDONIA

TOURING THE AREA

OCTOBER 2018

When I left Bala I thought it would be a good idea to find a campsite in the heart of the mountains .         There wasn't a wide choice that accepted caravans in the autumn and I settled on one in the forest near Beddgelert.     

The journey down the valley was easy to begin with and then up over the hills and past the site of the Trawsfynedd Power Station whose Reactor Pressure Vessel I had stress analysed in my early years of employment.      

The station was also interesting as an early example of a pumped storage scheme with nuclear generation operating as base load, supplying the grid during the day and pumping water up hill at night so it too could supply hydro-electricity to the grid when demand was high. 

I left the main road soon after Maentwrog for a much narrower thoroughfare that also rose very steeply in places, including one where the road was wet and, with the weight of the caravan to pull, the car's CVT dropped right down to first gear with one of the back wheels spinning freely.      But the all wheel drive came into its own with both car and van continuing uphill without stopping.

BEDDGELERT

There are two campsites at Beddgelert and I chose the second, in the forest on the road towards Caernarfon, mainly because they advertised good WIFI throughout the site.        

This is a very pricy and upmarket site catering mainly for visitors staying in chalets, some of whom stay for "team-building" conferences. The good WIFI has been provided mainly for the latter and was priced at £5/night in 2018!

There is a section of the site for tourers off to one side down deeply rutted tracks and some vans are clearly left there throughout the year - they looked rather sorry for themselves in the damp gloom under the trees in conditions ideal for the promotion of green stains and moss on both vans and awnings.        Mine was the only van that was actually touring.

A violent storm with rain and very high winds blew in from the Atlantic during my second night.        I became a little concerned about a risk from falling branches, or even whole trees, but none did succumb and the van itself was protected from the wind by the forest all around.      

But that didn't apply either to the awning of an adjacent unoccupied van that collapsed completely nor to power pylons on open hillsides.  So there was a power cut and the next day I learned there were many such throughout the region.      

The site's electricity supply came through two separate circuits, one to the communal areas and chalets and another to the touring section.        Supply to both was cut off but whereas the first was reconnected relatively quickly that to the touring site had still not been restored by the next morning.

So my fridge was no longer being cooled and the lights were running off the van's own battery.        As I'd had to use the motor mover to park in a rather awkwardly shaped pitch I became concerned I wouldn't be left with enough charge to get out again if I stayed as originally planned (and paid for), and decided to cut short my stay.       There was enough power left in the battery to manoeuvre the van into a position where I could hook it up to the car and recharge that way but by then I was committed to leaving (the site manager expressed his regret and refunded my unused payment for further nights).

So, I've now experienced two interrupted nights and forced departures due to natural causes - one in France from flooding and one in Wales from a violent storm.

The wind blew strongly all the following day but I found an acceptable pitch sheltered behind a stone wall and hedge on a farm near Llanrug between Caernarfon and Llanberis.

I stayed here for the next week or so using it as a base from which to visit the Menai Straits and Angelesey as well as the mountains of Snowdonia.

Caernarfon (it was spelt Carnarvon in my youth) is famous for its castle.       In 1284 Edward I established a very long tradition by responding to his newly conquered subjects demands for their own Prince of Wales by presenting to them his son Edward who had just been born in this castle.

It is situated in a very strategic spot commanding the sea approach to the narrowest section of the Menai Straits and the land routes along the coast.

The town grew up around the castle and though it has now spread out to surrounding areas the harbour and old town still nestles around the walls.

The Afon Seiont encircles the town on three sides and flows past the foot of the castle where it joins the Straits.       This photo was taken from the opposite side on the Aber Foreshore Road that then, as its name describes, closely follows the Menai Straits shore for a few miles.

The Foreshore Road is completely flat and though it is used a bit by cars its main purposes seem to be as an access road to the local Golf Course and for recreation by walkers and cyclists.     Naturally I was one of the latter and enjoyed a couple of rides whilst based at Llanrug.

Wylfa Nuclear Power Station on Angelsey was built in the mid 1960's and I was deeply involved in the design and construction of its boilers.       Amongst other things that involved attending Monthly Site Progress meetings during which I and my colleagues used to stay at the Treaddur Bay hotel just outside Holyhead.

An exploration from Llanrug confirmed the hotel is still there, on one side of a beautiful bay, though now much extended and in countryside containing many new developments.

I also drove out to the site of the Power Station that was decommissioned and mostly razed to the ground in the early 1990s.       Of course, I wasn't allowed to go into the site but I did enjoy a long chat with the gate guard who told me he should have retired long ago but is hanging on in the hope of a redundancy payment when the site is closed for good.        

He may have a long wait as the site has been chosen for development of a new generation Station supposedly to be built by Hitachi - but as with all large infrastructure projects in the UK when and whether this will go ahead is anyone's guess.

Cemaes Bay is a delightful seaside and fishing town near Wylfa - at least it is when the sun shines as it did during my visit.

The coast between Wylfa and Cemaes is designated as an Area Of Outstanding Beauty and as one of Special Scientific Interest.     Amongst other attributes its geology has been determined to include the oldest rocks in Wales, pre-dating even the slates found in Llanberis, Festiniog and other places.

The Menai Straits separating Angelesey from the mainland were formed by movement of glaciers in pre-historic times.    The resulting waterway is shallow and not very wide and has different times of high and low tide at each end.

So, in common with many other similar configurations around the world it experiences complex tidal flows, fast currents, and many navigational hazards.

Traffic between the Mainland and Anglesey must have been by boat for many hundreds if not thousands of years.      Many megaliths - carved stones from around 10,000 BC and earlier - have been found and when the Romans arrived in Britain Angelsey was inhabited by Celtic priests known as Druids - whom the Romans mostly killed in battles and wars.

The technology and materials to build bridges long enough to cross the Straits was not brought to bear until the 19th Century when two were constructed to make the crossing easy.

The first was designed by Thomas Telford and finished in 1826.      It's still in use and here is a photo I took after crossing it this year.

       

Sight of this bridge and the rectangular channels up the inside of the supporting pillars trigger other memories for me.        

The Site Manager of the firm for which I worked and with whom I had frequent contact during construction of Wylfa Power Station lived in Bangor (on the mainland side of the Straits) so his teen-age son could attend school there.        He was an ex-Regimental Sergeant Major with a keen mind and an interest in how things were built.      I recall he and I found a way to the foot of those support pillars and he explained the channels up them in the following way - 

Telford was faced with the problem of installing the bridge span between the two pillars.       He solved it by assembling the span on barges which then floated up on a rising tide with the ends of the linked barges inserted in the channels.       It must have been a worrying few moments at the top whilst supports for the span were placed under it from the roadways on land at each end - before the tide went out again!

I remember also that on the same occasion the Manager told me his English Speaking son was alone in a class of local children but still came "top of the class" in Welsh because he'd learned it as a foreign language, whereas the others, though fluent in speech,  had no idea of the grammar they should be using! 

The second bridge across the straits only carried trains and was designed and built by Robert Stephenson in 1850.      But it was severely damaged by fire in 1950 and replaced with one built in steel carrying both rail and road traffic. 

WALES

MONTGOMERY, BALA AND DOLGELLAU

OCTOBER 2018

During this year's expedition I intended to revisit the happy hunting grounds of my youth and early career by visiting Snowdonia and Anglesey but calling on the way at three other places having special associations.

Near Montgomery

The nearest of these was near Montgomery where friends from University College days have lived for many years.

I started my mountaineering and climbing career as a teen-aged boy by cycle camping from Weston-super Mare to Llanberis in Snowdonia passing through the countryside I was now crossing so easily in a car and caravan. 

That enthusiasm was continued at University when I joined London  University College's Climbing Club and as a result first met Bill and Pam Towlson who married several years later.     

Bill was a leading member of the club and a far better climber so I was pleased frequently to be chosen as a partner during "Welsh Weekends" and New Year "Camps in the Barn" at Wastdale Head in the Lake District - not forgetting illicit routes up the buildings and dome of University College itself.

I had known Pam too in those days, not least for the notorious occasion when she and Rose (see Grandpa'sVoyages - Vanuatu and other posts) floated easily up Little Tryfan but had difficulty in the chimney on "Gashed Crag" leading to the three of us being ignominiously rescued in the dark by other members of the club - despite my vociferous protest that we'd prefer to remain where we were until daylight!

Bill and Pam's house has a huge garden but is situated in a narrow lane and I drove straight past it on a first approach.      That resulted in a tricky multi-point turn further up the lane that I could make only by unhitching the van and using the motor-mover.    

But Bill came up in his car and guided me into a mini-field at the bottom of their garden to which he ran a power cable thus providing me with a private campsite in which I could sleep in the van, run the fridge etc.

I very happily stayed with them for three or four days during which we went out for pub lunches and dinners, reminisced about the old days, and enjoyed a couple of local expeditions.

One of the latter was to Powys Castle near Welshpool in the Upper Severn Valley.        The valley is quite wide here and was used as a major route for invading Anglo-Norman armies, and no doubt for Welsh guerilla raids in the opposite direction, so it has many castles along its length.

Wales developed more or less independently of the Saxons and Danes after the Romans left Britain and evolved into three separate kingdoms - Dyfed in the South, Gwynedd in the North and West, and Powys in the centre and east, including a fair proportion of the land that became Mercia under Danish rule.  

So, Powys was a really important place in those days and the site of the present castle was fortified from an early date.    But, in the closing years of the 13th century the last King of Powys acknowledged Edward I of England as his overlord, renounced his kingly title and became the "Baron de la Pole" (a reference to the pool after which Welshpool is named).

The castle was captured by Parliamentary forces during the civil war but returned to its family owners during the Restoration and remained in their hands until it was bequeathed to the National Trust in 1952.

During the late 18th century the daughter of the Lord of Powys married the son of Clive of India who was said at the time to be the richest man in Europe as a consequence of all the loot he brought back from Plassey and his other battles.

Much of that cash was spent on improving and maintaining the Castle and Gardens and equipping it with famous paintings and Indian artefacts now displayed within.

Here is a photo of Bill and Pam enjoying refreshments in the courtyard with  the foot of the castle in the background.

Bala

Bala is notable for being at one end of Llyn Tegid which is the largest natural lake in Wales - other larger bodies of water being man-made reservoirs.

Northern End of Llyn Tegid

Looking North West 

Lake Vyrnwy is one of those and lies about 10 miles south east of Bala on the far side of the Berwyn mountains, a range of sparsely populated moorland rising to about 800 metres above sea level.

There are two minor roads traversing this range and the drive across them between Bala and Rhiwargor at the head of Lake Vyrnwy is interesting in fine weather - I wouldn't want to try towing a caravan along it in bad weather though as its very narrow with sharp hairpins and steep drops to one side - nor did I during this visit though the weather was fine.

A Valley in the Berwyn Range

Bala town is little more than a single street with buildings on each side but is conveniently located between Bettws-y-Coed to the north east and Dolgellau to the south west.

I remembered it principally as a place of screaming winds and horizontal rain experienced during a cycle-touring and Youth Hostel trip with my father in 1950 when I was fourteen years old.       

By 2018 there were obviously some changes but remarkably few in comparison with other Towns and Cities in the United Kingdom.

Dolgellau

Dollgellau was first established as a human settlement in the 12th century and lies near the head of the Mawddach Estuary that penetrates about 10 miles inland from Borth Sands and the seaside town of Barmouth on the West Coast.

In the 17th Century many inhabitants became Quakers and were so persecuted for their beliefs they emigrated to the United States under the leadership of Rowland Ellis, a local gentleman owner of a farm called Bryn Mawr.        Unsurprisingly they named the Pennsylvanian Town they founded after the farm and many years later the prestigious Ladies College established there took the same name and became the Alma Mater of many famous American women.

By the mid-1800s Dolgellau was the western terminus of a railway line via Llangollen connected to the rapidly expanding national network.

Railway Station and Private Toll Bridge at Penmaenpool

 In the second half of the century the line was extended along the southern shore of the Mawddach estuary which it crossed to Barmouth via a massive and still extant wooden bridge.

But in the 1960s the extension was closed during the "Beeching Cuts" and the route converted to a walking and cycling track known as the "Mawddach Trail" along which I naturally rode my own bike.


Here are some photos I took along the way.

Mud Flats in the Mawddach

Extensive Salt Marshes

Moel Cynwch across the Estuary

Barmouth Town and Harbour

   

WALES

BUILTH WELLS and NEARBY TOWNS

SEPTEMBER 2018

Here is another copy of the marked-up map of Wales showing the relative location of Hay, Builth Wells and other nearby places. Unfortunately I made a fatal mistake when processing photographs of my time here so I cannot illustrate this post in the way I would wish.

Builth

is another old town built near a ford across the Wye only 20 miles upriver from Hay.

It too was a strategic site and here Edward I built a castle that in this case had earthworks rather than stone walls. In 1282 Prince Llewellyn was denied refuge in it as he fled Norman forces who killed him nearby – making it a place of commemoration visited by many Welsh people on the anniversary of his death.

The town was militarily and economically important for a long time due to its position at the junction between major east-west and north-south routes, with cattle rearing of animals that were later named after the nearest large market – Hereford - being one of the most important activities.

In due course and with the coming of the Railways in the 19^th Century the town was developed as a Spa by the Victorians and the word Wells added to its name.

The town's agricultural roots are no doubt one of the reasons it is also chosen each year as the site for the Royal Welsh Agricultural Show. 

About 5 miles farther on along a minor road to the north east a farming family have decided that these days providing facilities for tents and caravans will probably pay more than rearing cattle.

Fforest Fields Campsite is large, spacious and well-equipped and is set in very peaceful countryside yet with good access to nearby towns – particularly Builth and Llandrindod Wells. The family are all very helpful and friendly making it very popular amongst campers visiting Mid-Wales, though in late September it wasn't at all crowded.

I find it hard to decide if the spelling of the site name is a bit of daft political correctness or a fitting acknowledgement of a real cultural difference between the English and the Welsh.

Apparently, in the Welsh language a single letter 'f' has a hard pronunciation and a second 'f' is added to soften it when necessary. To produce the welsh sound the English would have to spell the name as 'Forest Vields'.

Another example I came across later during this expedition is that the town I always used to know as 'Caernarvon' is now spelt 'Caernarfon' on all official publications such as waysigns, maps, weather forecasts and so on – its still pronounced the same way though. 

Llandrindod Wells

lying just 10 miles north of Builth and 5 across a range of hills from Fforest Fields was another rural community that experienced a major expansion in the 19^thCentury with the coming of the railway. Here too entrepreneurs built Hotels, houses and places of entertainment attracting city-dwellers to visit the countryside and 'Take the Waters' in this 'Healthy Spa Town'. The town has experienced a new lease of life in the last few years with an influx of Local Government Employees as it has become the administrative centre for Powys County Council.

Rhayader

lies just ten miles northwest of Llandrindod and also on the river Wye only 20 miles from its source on Plynlimon mountain. 

The surrounding area has been occupied by humans for thousands of years and though no written record earlier than the 12^thcentury has been found, Bronze Age Burial sites and Roman Jewellery have been discovered. Some of the latter – the Rhayader Hoard – is displayed in the British Museum.

Rhayader came to national prominence in the 19^thCentury for two principal reasons.

The first was around 1840 when protests against excessive Tolls on Turnpikes (the motorways of their day) turned into the 'Rebecca Riots”. These were so named because many local farmers and agricultural workers, dressed up as women, attacked and destroyed no fewer than six of Rhayader's tollgates without being caught and punished. Of course the authorities reacted by increasing military forces in the region but they also removed most of the grievances by changing the laws on Tolls.

The second change was even more profound with consequences that last to the present day.

This arose because of the rapid and uncontrolled expansion of cities during the Industrial Revolution of the early – mid 19^thCentury. This resulted in death and incapacity for thousands from Typhoid, Cholera, Dysentery and other diseases that thrived and multiplied in the crowded and insanitary conditions prevailing before development of water supply and sewage drainage systems for which the Victorians are justly renowned. 

Birmingham, just 80 miles east of Rhayader, was affected particularly severely by these problems since it was at the heart of the new Manufacturing Industries. The City Council successfully petitioned the Government of the day to pass an Act permitting the city to acquire by compulsory purchase all the land in the water-catchment area of the Eland Valleys just a few miles from Rhayader.

Birmingham's Civic Water Department's Engineers conceived a design comprising five huge dams and a viaduct from the Elan Valley to Birmingham requiring the employment, housing and feeding of thousands of navvies . Four of the dams were completed by 1900 and the viaduct by 1906 though the fifth took until 1952 and was opened by our present Queen soon after she assumed the throne.

The viaduct is notable because water travels the entire distance under gravity taking 2 ½ – 3 days to flow from one end to the other (Pooh sticks anyone?).

Elan Valley Trust

was established in 1989 to conserve the rights established by compulsory purchase of the estate so they would not be eroded by Privatisation of the Water Supply Industry. 

The Elan Valley website describes the Trust's objectives and has many links to interesting information and photographs that sadly I have to rely upon as I inadvertently destroyed my own.

My Cycle Rides

There are many walking and cycle trails in the Trust's lands but first I explored by car.

In truth, the first half was fascinating but the second rather tedious. My route took me from Fforest Fields over the unfenced hilltops to Llandridnod Wells and thence to Rhayder and the Elan Visitor Centre at the bottom of the valley. 

The lower reservoirs were half empty but water was pouring over the highest dam after the recent rains – 'sob', 'sob', photos lost - as I continued up and over the mountain road past the headwaters of the Wye and Severn rivers on Plynlimon, down the western slopes, and south again via minor roads and a small town called Tregaron until I could finally reach Llandovery (Grandpa's Cycle Rides) and turn north west again for Builth Wells. 

But I did go back to enjoy two days when I finally got to ride a total of about 8 miles in both directions.

To illustrate those rides I can display this map showing the route of the railway originally constructed in the 1890s to convey men and materials from the specially constructed Elan Village for workers to the site of the highest dam. 

 

Nowadays that railway line has been converted into a trail for walkers and cyclists. But it has to be said there's a fairly demanding gradient in some places so I don't regret splitting the total into two expeditions.

WALES

HAY-ON-WYE

SEPTEMBER 2018

Hay is an old market town about half way along the river Wye between its source on Plynlimon mountain in central Wales and its confluence with the River Severn at Chepstow. 

The Severn also rises on Plynlimon but takes a more leisurely course through English lowlands to the start of its estuary, with Chepstow on the right bank and the small village of Aust on the left between Bristol and Gloucester.

It is likely Hay was first put on the map as early as 1070 when William Fitz Osbern, a cousin of William the Conqueror, was ennobled to become the first Earl of Hereford and built a castle there to aid his campaign against the Welsh.

Fighting between the Normans and the Welsh continued sporadically for the next 300 years until the Glendower rebellion (the Welsh called it the War of Independence) in the early fifteenth century. 

In the first five years Glendower drove back the English until he controlled most of Wales and the adjacent English counties.    He formed an alliance with the French in the hope of further success but they were more concerned with events on the continent and Glendower himself lacked a navy and, critically, canon with which to overcome and capture castles. 

The English King, Henry IV, was accomplished in pitched battles but unused to the guerilla tactics of the Welsh. 

His son gained command around 1405 and gradually turned the course of events by using the numerous castles still in English hands as bases from which to attack the Welsh in the field and to deny them supplies.

These tactics succeeded and Prince Henry recaptured territory and castles previously lost to the Welsh.     By 1410 the tide had turned completely and although Glendower was never captured he disappeared in 1412. 

A year later the old king died and the Prince became King Henry V. He brought an end to most of the fighting by offering a general pardon to all who surrendered (except for Glendower himself and his committed followers the Tudors).

That left Henry free to pursue the Hundred Years War in France during which he gained his famous victory at Agincourt in 1415, commemorated in  Michael Drayton's (1563 - 1631) famous ballad starting with the lines -  

Fair stood the wind for France,

When we our sails advance,

Although Glendower's rebellion was defeated there is no doubt his defiance stimulated a sense of National Identity in the Welsh that continues to the present day. 

That is why road signs in Hay are displayed in both Welsh and English even though it is only just within the national boundary and 20 miles from Hereford, a quintessential English city.

The wars of the Roses started 40 years after Glendower's rebellion but their origin lay a few years before in a fight for succession between descendants of King Edward III's four eldest sons.    

When they ended, all male descendants in a direct line had either died naturally or been killed - it was a distant cousin of the Lancastrian's, Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII and achieved reconciliation of a sort by marrying Elizabeth of York. 

Prominent along the Borders were members of the Mortimer family, ennobled as the Earls of March, who were local rulers of the English-Welsh borderlands south of Shropshire and deeply involved in both the Glendower rebellion and the wars of the Roses in the second half of the 15th Century. 

I've found no record of specific incidents in or near Hay during either conflict but think the inhabitants must have been severely affected as they were so close to the Mortimer heartlands. 

Its similarly hard to believe Hay's inhabitants escaped involvement 200 years later during the English Civil Wars.    Shropshire, Hereford and most of Wales were Royalist and Gloucester Parliamentarian.        Hay, along with other border towns must have suffered as the fighting ebbed and flowed, if only as the armies foraged for food and recruits.

It was after these turbulent times that Hay became a quiet market town - no doubt to the relief of the inhabitants - but in 1962 a Welsh collector and vendor of specialist and second-hand books named Richard Booth set up shop in Hay and encouraged others to do the same. 

Many others had opened similar shops by the late 1970s and in 1988 Peter Florence, who made his living by organising Arts Festivals of various types, financed the first Hay Literary Festival that has been held every year since, in late May and early June.

I attended in June 2016 whilst staying in Hereford and an account of my visit is included in a blog entry posted in February 2017.

This year I decided to revisit the town and browse one or two bookshops in the off-season. I stayed at two sites, one quite near town south of the river and one up in the hills on the opposite side of the valley.       I preferred the second because it was less open and with fewer visitors at this time of year.

I did browse the shelves and bought a couple of books – a young writer's fictional story about life in the San Blas Islands, interesting to me because of my own cruise there in Alchemi (Grandpa's Voyages March 2014 Post) – and a biography of EM Forster bought on the spur of the moment because I found he had lived with his mother at Tunbridge Wells and concluded that English Suburban Life was pretty repulsive. 

But I also found standing in narrow aisles between shelves with hundreds and hundreds of books lost its appeal after a bit so I also toured locally by car on one or two days and soon moved on.