Walk 348 -- Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychrndrobyllllantysiliogogogoch to Caernarfon

Ages:  Colin was 71 years and 306 days.  Rosemary was 69 years and 83 days.

Weather:  Mostly sunny, calm, and warm for the time of year.  Slight breeze in exposed places.
Location:  Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychrndrobyllllantysiliogogogoch to Caernarfon.
Distance:  10 miles.
Total distance:  3592 miles.
Terrain:  Crossed Britannia Bridge.  Some woodland — muddy!  Mostly tarmacked cycleways.  Slightly undulating.
Tide:  Coming in.
Rivers: No.426, Menai Strait.  No.427, Afon Seiont.
Ferries:  None.
Piers:  No.36 in Caernarfon.  (A little one, only built in 1998!)
Kissing gates:  Nos.672 and 673 at each end of a National Trust property.
Pubs:  None.
‘Cadw’ properties:  No.7, Caernarfon Castle.
Ferris wheels:  None.
Diversions:  No.80 in Caernarfon — we had to walk through the town because the waterfront was being repaired after storm damage.
How we got there and back:  Two days ago we drove from home to a cosy little holiday cottage near Criccieth, the same one we stayed in last October.  This morning we drove almost to Caernarfon, but didn’t cross the river because we could park for free on the other side.  We then walked across a footbridge into the town, and caught a bus to Penrhos.  We walked down a lane, then crossed the Britannia Bridge on to Anglesey.  We then walked down to the church car park where we finished the last Walk back in October.
At the end we came to our car parked just across the river from Caernarfon town centre.  We had our tea and chocolate biscuits, then returned to our cosy cottage.

We started today’s Walk where we finished the last one five months ago, in the car park by the church in Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychrndrobyllllantysiliogogogoch.  The weather was quite kind to us today, brilliant sunshine all the way.

We saw snowdrops in the woods by the car park, always a cheery sight at this time of year.  Spring is on its way!  We walked up to the main road and left the village with the longest name in Britain.  I’m trying to learn how to pronounce it, but it’s not easy.

We donned our high-viz vests and crossed the Britannia Bridge back on to mainland Wales.  The road was very busy, the traffic was constant.  There was a sort-of pavement for us, but it was very narrow when it went through the arches.  Obviously pedestrians are not encouraged to use this bridge but nobody said we couldn’t.  We were relieved to get to the other side.  We could see along the Menai Strait from up high, the Nelson statue on its plinth and lion statues either side (we could see these better when we were down the bottom).

We crossed the road with difficulty, and removed our high-viz vests.  We then followed a concrete track which led down underneath the bridge.  We came to where the railway turns on to the bridge, it runs underneath the road.  We went down further and looked at the lion statues which are ‘holding up’ the bridge — or else guarding it!

Down further we came across a section of the original bridge set in concrete as an exhibit.  There was also the history of the bridge on a board.  Further down still we passed the remains of a jack which fractured during the construction of the original bridge killing several workers.  The track came to a dead end by the river where we strongly suspect a ferry across the strait was situated in yesteryear.  We went back up to where the history board was, and finding nowhere else to sit down we perched ourselves on the concrete plinth of the section to eat our pies.

The history of the Britannia Bridge is this.  Until 1970 it was just a railway bridge with no road.  It was built by Robert Stephenson in 1850 to connect Chester with Holyhead.  It was a tubular bridge built of wrought iron rectangular box-section spans.  This design was an innovation in the 19^th century, it had never been used before.  The bridge had to be high enough to allow the tall ships of the day to pass underneath, but also strong enough to carry heavy steam locomotives across the distance.  Stephenson, in conjunction with William Fairbairn, tried out his design at Conwy, a much shorter span over the River Conwy next to the castle.  He wanted to confirm through testing that the structure, the first tubular crossing to be built, would be capable of carrying the weight of a locomotive and its rolling stock. The successful results in 1848 endorsed the construction of the Britannia Bridge.

It was in regular use for the next 120 years.  In 1970 a group of teenage boys were playing underneath.  They lit a camp fire, and a burning torch accidentally set alight the tar-coated wooden roof of the tubes.  The fire spread rapidly along the whole length of the bridge.  The boys were devastated — they never intended to do any damage.  Fire brigades from all around were called, but due to the bridge’s height, construction, location and lack of adequate water supply they could do little except allow the fire to spectacularly burn itself out.  Afterwards the bridge was still standing, but the structural integrity of the iron tubes had been critically compromised by the intense heat.

It was essential to get the railway link reopened as soon as was possible.  The remains of Stephenson’s box bridge were demolished leaving the original stone substructure which was scorched but undamaged.  The 20^th century bridge which replaced it is of a different construction. Initially it was a single tier steel truss arch bridge to carry the railway only.  But by 1980 it was realised that Telford’s suspension bridge was inadequate to carry the volumes of traffic now crossing daily over the Menai Strait to and from Anglesey.  So a second tier was added to the Britannia Bridge, “upstairs” above the railway, so that the busy A55 could be diverted across it relieving the pressure on the Menai Bridge.

There were no footpaths marked on our OS map leading from the site where we were sitting, so we were pleased to see a Coastal Path sign pointing off into the woods.  It meant we didn’t have to walk along the busy main road.  Yesterday we had reccied this spot and found a Road Closed sign blocking this path.  But it was gone today, so we were pleased.  (We were going to ignore it anyway in our inimitable way!)

The path was good at first but like many paths we have walked, it quickly deteriorated.  It became uneven and muddy.  I tripped on a tree stump hidden under leaves — I was not hurt, I just got a wet bum!  Colin started to pull me up but I got cramp in my legs as he did so and staggered about in agony for a couple of minutes.  We were astounded that such a hidden stump had been left in the middle of the path.  Initially we were alongside the Strait — we could see the Britannia Bridge behind us and Nelson’s statue across the water.  Then we were turned more inland, deeper into the woods.

We passed through a wrought iron gate in a stone wall as we crossed into National Trust property.  There the trees were closer together.  There had been a lot of work recently done in this wood — was that the reason for the Road Closed notice we had seen yesterday?  Conifer branches had been thrown down on the muddiest sections of the path, and they helped a little.  The path climbed steeply, then we came to a stony track where a logo arrow told us to turn sharply back, seemingly in the “wrong” direction.  There was a log across the track in the “right” direction with a lot of brushwood which would have been difficult to pass.  So we followed the logo.  The track continued to climb, but as it did so  it curved round until we were walking in the “right” direction after all.

We passed a mausoleum deep in the woods.  It looked vandalised and neglected with broken windows and tall trees growing up around it.  It was a forlorn sight, rather sad.  A notice on the door said, “PRIVATE  Legal action will be taken against unauthorised persons found on this property”.  It didn’t look as if anyone had been “found” on the property for the past hundred years!

After that the track was straight to the edge of the wood where we passed through a brand new kissing gate.  The logo arrows told us to take a short cut across a field of sheep, but we noticed that the logo arrows for walkers in the opposite direction pointed them to go round the edge!  We went up through a glade of early daffodils to a picnic area.  It was all very pretty, but too early to stop for lunch.

After that there were no logos!  Absolutely nothing to tell us which way the official Wales Coast Path continued.  So we followed the road which took us uphill and seemed to be curving back the way we had come.

Every possible turning to the right was labelled Private.  We were nearly up to the main road when Colin found a disused road blocked to traffic by large rocks.  We went up there thinking we would be able to get round the rocks on foot, but we still couldn’t get on to the road.  We had to divert round a Premier Inn before we managed to escape.
We crossed the main road, which was difficult because there was no central reservation.  We both felt angry and let down because we’d walked in a big circle and, after two hours, we were almost back where we had started!

If it was any consolation (it wasn’t) we had good views of Snowdonia with patches of snow from that roadside.  We could pick out Snowdon by its characteristic shape and, through our binoculars / telescope, we could even make out the summit railway.  We were convinced we had lost the Wales Coast Path, but we hadn’t because at the next roundabout there were the logos!

There was a slate sculpture each side of a cycleway near the roundabout.  We turned on to a B road and passed the grand gates of the estate we’d just walked through, but hadn’t been allowed to go in the direction we’d wanted.  The B road was busy, so we decided to follow cycle path logos on to the Llanberis road, then take a “yellow” road parallel to the B road (the walkers’ Wales Coast Path logos had disappeared again — we were getting a bit fed up with this).  A cycleway forked off the road to the right, so we followed this.  Then the cycleway itself forked and there were no logos.  We chose the right hand one because it was nearer the sea.  It took us along an old railway track through a cutting.

At the end it went under the main road, and we thought we would be able to get down to the dock at Y Felinheli from there — but we were thwarted by tall iron bars!  It struck us that this section of the Wales Coast Path needs to be thought out again.

We backtracked a little so we could sit on some steps and eat our sarnies.  An old man with a basset hound staggered along and stopped for a chat.  His Welsh accent was so strong we had difficulty in understanding him, so we went along with his well-meaning advice about our route although we didn’t know what he was on about.  It was easier that way.  He said the dog was only eighteen months old though it looked obese and out of condition to us.  He told us his granddaughter had bought it for £500!!
Finishing our lunch, we took some steps up to another cycleway and went out to the B road—it seemed to be the only way we could get out.  Further along we saw Wales Coast Path logos pointing up into a wood.  Should we have come out from there?  How?  Where did we lose it?  We were above the dock inlet of Y Felinheli, and we puzzled as to where the sea was because the Menai Strait is quite narrow at that point.  Perhaps we were tired, but we couldn’t quite work it out.

We crossed the road in front of a large pub where every window and door was boarded up — a sad sight.  We turned off the main road and walked by the dock.

We passed a lifting bridge and lock gates.

We walked round the marina, and then past loads of empty buoys for summer visitors — Colin counted over fifty.

We went down on to a slatey beach which was easy to walk on because the flat stones don’t roll around.

We met a swan with two surviving almost-grownup young from last year.

We left Y Felinheli on a cycleway which took us all the way to Caernarfon — a bit boring really, but at least we were off-road.

We went under a farmtrack bridge where the ivy had loosened the brickwork and brought some of it down next to the path.  There was soot still on the underside of the bridge from when this cycleway was a railway — Colin knocked some off to confirm this.  We stopped at a picnic table to eat our chocolate.  I was feeling very tired, and decided I wasn’t as fit as I would like to have been.  I must admit I didn’t do much walking over the winter — oh dear!

In a field opposite there were numerous molehills.  They looked very fresh, bet there were a lot of moles digging there.  I’ve never seen a mole, and Colin has only ever seen a dead one.  But we have seen molehills moving as the animals dug underneath.  Further along there were sculptures of giant seashells in a field — we must be getting near the sea again.

It seemed a long long walk!  As we neared Caernarfon we met more and more dog-walkers ambling along.  We couldn’t understand the significance of a slate standing circle, was it a memorial of some kind?

On entering the town we diverted to Morrison’s to use the toilet.  We returned to exactly the same spot on the waterfront and carried on feeling much more comfortable.  We walked on a little wooden pier in front of some flats — it was only constructed in 1998, very modern. 

On the quayside there was an old crane which used to be used for unloading ships.  We passed the marina full of luxury yachts.  The occasional flagstone was chequered, which added interest to our stroll — for we were only strolling by now.  One boasted the word Polska, so we assumed it was designed by Polish people.

The footpath round the waterfront under the castle walls was closed because it was being improved before the summer season, so we had to divert through the town.  Caernarfon is a walled medieval town, so we had to enter through an imposing gateway.  We passed some posts leaning at a steep angle, had they been hit by a lorry?  We walked along next to the intimidating castle walls, and out through a tunnel to the riverside.

We then crossed the river on a footbridge to our car which was parked on the other side.

That ended Walk no.348, we shall pick up Walk no.349 next time on the south side of the river by Caernarfon Castle.  It was twenty-five to five, so the Walk had taken us six hours forty minutes.  We had our tea and chocolate biscuits, then returned to our cosy cottage.

The  Welsh  Highland  Railway

The twenty-five mile long Welsh Highland Railway runs from Porthmadog to Caernarfon in North Wales.  It passes through magnificent countryside including Beddgelert and the Aberglaslyn Pass.  It originated in 1863 as the Croesor Tramway which ran from Porthmadog up into the Croesor Valley and the slate quarries in that area.  This was a horse-worked line laid to a nominal 2 ft (610 mm) gauge.  There followed a long and complicated history, mostly of losing money, closures and bankruptcy.  The extension to Caernarfon was only opened three years ago, at the beginning of 2011.  Narrow-gauge steam engines tow trains full of tourists along this magnificent and exciting little line.

Colin and I travelled on it in April 2014.

Caernarfon  Castle

There was already a motte-and-bailey castle on the site when Edward I arrived in 1283.  He began replacing it with the current stone structure.  Building continued until 1330 all through the reign of his son, Edward II (dubbed Edward of Caernarfon) and into the reign of his son, Edward III.  Even then it was never actually finished because Edward III had business elsewhere.  Edward I fortified the town of Caernarfon with high walls.

The town and castle acted as the administrative centre of north Wales and as a result the defences were built on a grand scale.  It also had accommodation for the king’s household and family, but today the interior buildings no longer survive.  Many of the building plans were never finished because in 1294 the town and castle were sacked when Madog ap Llewellyn led a rebellion against the English.  The town and castle were recaptured the following year.   It was again besieged by Owain Glyndŵr in 1403.

During the Tudor dynasty castles of this type diminished in importance and Caernarfon fell into disrepair.  Even so, during the Civil War it was held by the Royalists and besieged by the Parliamentarians three times.

Caernarfon Castle was never used for War again.  It was neglected until the 19^th century when repairs were funded by the state to stop it falling down altogether.  In 1911, and again in 1969, Caernarfon Castle was used for the investiture of the Prince of Wales, a title currently held by Prince Charles.