RUGGED WALES

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 478, 6 October 1928, Page 22

RUGGED WALES

(Written tor THE SUN by

"Anemone”—B. E. HOLDS WORTH.)

Fellow-passengers are always interesting; the Australians on my right greeted me with the friendliness one expects from unknown fellow-countrymen in a foreign land riding from Chester to North Wales. There is a great bond between travelling Australians and New Zealanders. They were tired of racing hither and thither in a desperate endeavour to see everything possible in a very short time and had become critical of English ways and of English food. “Look at the little bits of bread and butter they give you! Why, in Australia they’d put the whole loaf on the table!” “Well, I’ve been loving it all so much the food hasn’t troubled me,” said the pleasant American on my left. “I notice you don’t. have butter with dinner as with us, and potatoes are usually boiled —we fix them up in different ways. Some of your words have different meanings, you call oats

’com’; corn with us always means the cob. I make mistakes sometimes; the other day I told a man that I was tired of buying my father suspenders for Christmas; he thought I meant ‘garters’ and roared with laughter.” At Wrexham, the largest and surely one of the dullest of the Northern Welsh towns, stands the tall stone house in which Elihu Yale, of University fame, passed his early years. We crossed a tossing stream spanned by a straight stone bridge. “It was built by the Romans,” said someone, and an American, true to type, turned with an air of great determination: “I’ve been under one that was built by Adam,” she stated aggressively. . . . The car began its uphill climb and entered a region of wooded valleys, towering mountains and white-frothed rushing streams that made one feel that here at last was the Wild Wales one reads about. Amidst all this grandeur of the mountains, in an ideal ■pot for climbing and fishing, nestles the little village of Bettws-y-Coed. Oh, these Welsh names with their inVolv®d pronunciation and their poet-

ical translations! Bettws-y-Coed means House-in-the-Woods. Our car climbed to the summit of Llanberis Pass, with its two lonely dwellings, and attacked the rugged Snowdon Range. Snowdon is only 3560 feet high, and it is possible for tourists to be conveyed in effortless comfort to the summit in an important little train that travels at the rate of five miles an hour; yet it is a steep and rugged mountain with precipices and uncertain brown rocks. In the deep valley below Snowdon, near the lake and ruined castle of Dolbaron, are the Dinorwic slate quarries. It is difficult to give any idea of the immense size of these great colourless quarries; terrace upon terrace, each with its line of rails, towers above the placid lake. Tunnels pierce the hillside and run far into the darkness of the mountain, and the workmen employed number three thousand odd. Needless to say, slate

is put to many uses in that district; and besides slate roofs and pavements one sees fences made from wide upright slabs placed side by side. In these out-of-the-way spots one almost expects to come upon women attired in the costume one has always associated with Wales —striped full skirt, neatly folded kerchief, and a tall black hat worn over a frilly cap of snowy whiteness. Here and there a girl in this quaint costume shows herself to passing tourists, but it is a case of “for exhibition only,” for since motors linked these wild districts to civilisation the national dress, with other old customs, has rapidly become disused. Northward and westward from Snowdon we came to a little town of stone houses and cobble streets; from among the greyness rose a mighty castle with massive walls and turrets that towered high above the humbler dwellings—Carnarvon Castle. To this castle came Eleanora “the faithful,” in days so tempestuous that a was revived decreeing that “to

strike the queen” or to "snatch anything from her hand” was a punishable offence. Here, in fulfilment, of an old Welsh prophecy, was Dorn the first Prince of Wales, the baby Edward, presented by his father to the rough men of the hills who clamoured for a Prince. A flat grey stone standing in a dim passage that leads from the great courtyard, bears, cut on its surface, the names of all the Princes of Wales beginning with this oaby boy in 1201, and ending with our own Prince, whose investiture took place in 1911. The rain had cleared and I climbed the 150 steps of the Eagle Tower; narrower and narrower the stairs, smaller and smaller the tower, past deserted banqueting halls and gloomy passages until the open battlements were reached. Carnarvon left behind, our way led through pleasant open country .that sloped to the Menal Straits, beyond which, well in view, lay the island of

Anglesey. It was from this seaward side thst we had our first clear view of England's highest mountain. Sav* for a, suspicion of mist across its summit, the blue cone of Snowdon stood out clearly, a homely little mountain. In the days when all travellers to England from Northern Ireland, and all produce too, had to cross the wide Conway, the castle of that name wa a built in a strategic position at the river's mouth. The massive fortress is a ruin now, with dark towers and crumbling walls from the top of which one can trace the line of those other ereeper-clad walls that enclosed the little town and provided a haven in troublous times for all who sought refuge. Preparations for a pageant in Conway were in progress; the dignified old castle was to be illuminated and wires were being secured here and there, above the courtyard and about the round towers. Whence, I wonder, will the wandering ghosts of the past betake themselves when their seclusion is thug destroyed? Bermondsey.