Visitors to Britain have long been lured by its rich history, legends and natural beauty. But while many tourists content themselves with Stonehenge and the Tower of London, those seeking a taste of mythical, ancient Britain would do well to head west to Gwynedd in North Wales.
Here, legends, language and landscape conjure a compelling evocation of both ancient and modern Wales. The county of Gwynedd was home to the last true Prince of Wales back in the 13th century. It is where the Welsh language still dominates daily conversation — more than 75 percent of its residents speak this mother tongue. And it features a rugged, often mystical landscape that has inspired painters, poets and provided the backdrop for HBO’s “House of the Dragon.”
I went to Gwynedd on a three-day road trip exploring the coastline, starting at the Mawddach estuary in the south and ending at the Menai Strait, the thin, tidal stretch of water that separates mainland Wales from the island of Ynys Mon (Anglesey). By hugging the coast, I hoped to soak up how this region was shaped by the sea and appreciate the grandeur of its mountainous interior.
My journey began with a night at the George III pub overlooking the Mawddach on the outskirts of Dolgellau — an old woolen-mill town that is famous for its dramatic if austere gray dolerite stone and slate buildings. My intention was to hike to the summit of Cadair Idris, one of the most famous mountains in Wales, which is named after a mythical giant (the name translates as Idris’s chair). Local legend maintains that anyone who spends a night at the summit will descend either a poet or insane. As I watched the peak become cloaked in thick, menacing black clouds, it was clear that I would be the insane one if I attempted the climb.
Instead, I drove to Harlech, a town perched high above the beach on Cardigan Bay. In the last years of the 13th century, a renowned military architect named Jacques de St-Georges d’Espéranche (known as Master James of St. George in English) arrived here with a special brief. Following his defeat of the last native ruler of Wales, Prince Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the victorious English king, Edward I, commissioned Master James to build a set of castles known as the Ring of Iron that would demonstrate his power to the rebellious local population.
Harlech Castle was one of those strongholds and remains a formidable sight, sitting high on the promontory overlooking Royal St. David’s Golf Club and the sand dunes that flank this part of Cardigan Bay. The castle’s audacious location makes it one of the most impressive and photogenic of all Welsh historical attractions.
It was on the beach below the castle where Bendigeidfran (also known as Bran the Blessed), once held court. The myth holds he was the son of Llyr, king of the sea, and he features in the “Four Branches of the Mabinogi,” the compendium of legends and romance tales recited by bards during the Dark Ages.
At Harlech, Bendigeidfran launched a fateful mission to rescue his daughter from her abusive marriage to the Irish king. Being a giant, he led his warriors by walking ahead of their ships through the sea. But Bendigeidfran was mortally wounded in battle, so he instructed his knights to cut off his head and carry it back to Wales, where they lived with it for 87 years. For at least the first seven years, Bran’s severed head was able to chat with the knights to keep them company.
Little Italy in Wales
A few miles up the coast, the Afon Dwyryd Estuary came into view. The sharp, peaked ridges of Eryri (Snowdonia) lined the horizon — thick white clouds hovering over them. Dense woodland covered the undulating slopes that lay between the mountains and the estuary. It was a quintessentially Welsh vista apart from one anomaly — the brightly painted white, pink, yellow and blue buildings, seemingly transported straight out of Renaissance Italy, nestled among wooded hills on the other side of the estuary. This is Portmeirion, the theme village and resort created by Clough Williams-Ellis, an aristocratic architect, over 50 years starting in 1925. It’s one of the most unlikely sights in all of Wales, and one of its most appealing.
Williams-Ellis referred to his Italianate medley of brightly painted houses, cottages and landscaped gardens as his “architecture of pleasure,” and his approach to development harked back to the picturesque estates of the late 18th century. Through the years, Portmeirion has attracted famous visitors and guests including Frank Lloyd Wright; Noël Coward; Patrick McGoohan, who filmed the 1960s TV show “The Prisoner” here; and the Beatles guitarist George Harrison.
Nowadays, the estate also welcomes day-trippers like myself. I arrived at the entrance and wandered through the faded salmon Gatehouse arch that is built around the cliff face, into the main piazza and then to the waterfront.
With the tide out, the bright yellow sands of Traeth Bach (Little Beach) stretched almost the entirety of the estuary. A couple of walkers looked as if they were trying to recreate the famous scene from “The Prisoner” where McGoohan sprints along the sands in a desperate attempt to escape his mysterious captors.
A Trip to the Tip of the Llyn
The Gwynedd coastline takes an abrupt westward turn at the town of Porthmadog (where I ate a fine bistro meal at Yr Hen Fecws Guesthouse) and the start of the 30-mile-long Llyn Peninsula. I was headed to the village of Aberdaron, but first I grabbed a quick coffee at Dylan’s in Criccieth, home to another spectacular hilltop castle. Like Harlech Castle, Criccieth’s stronghold sits high above the town and dominates the surrounding coastline. You can see how it inspired J.M.W. Turner in the early 19th century.
I arrived in Aberdaron, 25 miles down the coast, just as a heavy rain shower moved inland. The sun was shining but the tarmac streets glistened with a watery sheen. The village’s wide, sandy beach was busy with dog walkers and a few intrepid families building sand castles despite the weather. From here, the Wales Coast Path leads out around the headland, where, between March and October, you can take a boat over to Ynys Enlli (Bardsey Island) if the weather allows.
In the early centuries of Celtic Christianity, islands all around the coast of Wales were seen as sacred places. The sixth-century Welsh saint Cadfan built a monastery on Enlli and, over the centuries, it became known as the Isle of 20,000 Saints because so many holy people headed there for solitude and a final resting place. Not just saints. Legend has it that King Arthur retired there to heal his wounds and that Ynys Enlli is the fabled island of Avalon — though, as with so much of British mythology, plenty of other places also claim Arthur as their own.
I left Aberdaron, following a country lane that ran up the coast. I made a quick detour to get a glimpse of the old fishing village of Porthdinllaen and grab a pint at the Ty Coch Inn, whose beachfront location provided an unobstructed view of my next destination — the sheer, intimidating and almost otherworldly steep granite cliffs of the northern Llyn, which featured in “House of the Dragon.”
After a short but winding drive (even by Welsh country road standards) I descended via a series of stomach-clenching switchbacks to the spectacular old granite quarry village of Nant Gwrtheyrn, which sits at the top of a long stretch of pebble beach. In the late 19th century, this bay was the source of the granite that paved the streets of cities throughout the Victorian world. By 1886 more than 200 people lived here — even though the only way to reach it by land was a single-track trail that snaked up over the mountain.
The granite industry declined after the First World War. By the late 1950s, the last family had departed the village and it fell into ruin — only to be resuscitated in recent decades by a community-funded effort to remake it as a Welsh-language learning center. Nowadays, people travel from all over Wales and the wider world to study in this sturdy, stone-hewed village on the side of cliffs.
The sea salt and seaweed hot tubs at Halen Mon on the Ynys Mon side of the Menai Strait offered the perfect opportunity to reflect on my journey and soak up magnificent views of Gwynedd’s tall peaks, including a glimpse through the clouds of Mynydd Mawr, Glyder Fawr and Yr Wyddfa (also known as Snowdon, Wales’s highest mountain). Further down the strait, I could see the stone ramparts of Caernarfon Castle — another of Master James’s creations — situated at the mouth of the Seiont river. It was there, according to another medieval tale, that the Roman emperor Magnus Maximus (Macsen Wledig in Welsh) fell in love with the beautiful Welsh princess Elen, who became his wife. Their offspring are said to have started the Welsh royal lineage that included the later princes of Gwynedd.
Ina dream, Macsen sees a magical land with the mountains as high as the sky and great rivers running down to the sea — “the fairest and most level regions that man ever yet beheld.” Modern-day Gwynedd might look a little different from how it was described back in medieval times, but from what I could see from the comfort of a warm seaweed bath, it has lost none of its magical charm.
Matthew Yeomans is the author of “Seascape: Notes From a Changing Coastline.”
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