The Road To Nanhysglain

It’s been a long time since I had a proper adventure… And in that time the world has changed dramatically. Where are we now? What is the world we find ourselves in? With trains and buses and public transport only marginally safe, I decided to get back into the swing of things with a walk. I decided to follow the road to Nanhysglain, the place where, after two hundred years, the English conquered Wales…

ON CONWY BAE
Dear Connor: Hostel Hell | Burn With Me | The Food Of The Gods | You Spin Me Right Round | The Last Stand At Nanhysglain
Calling Doctor James: Penrhyn’s Palace | The Road To Nanhysglain

Winter had practically nothing to offer in the way of interesting adventures this year. There was, first, a rainy trip to Caernarfon. They’ve added some interesting things to the castle since I was last there, like a human sized chess set of various kings and princes, and I climbed the hill opposite the castle to the radio tower for the sake of it, but otherwise it was one of those days not worth writing home about. Then there was the need to get a selfie of myself with a goat, for the purposes of the Midnight Visitor short film. I made two trips across Mon to Pili Palas; a zoo type place which has all kinds of things like meerkats, reptiles, farm animals like goats, and butterflies- The Welsh for butterfly is Pili-pala, which is one of the many, many reasons to love the Welsh language, along with the tongue-twister phrase gwyn gwin gwanwen gwenynyn.[1]  Again, it wasn’t really something worth writing about. The walk was nothing special and the zoo, whilst interesting, was not enough to write about in itself.

Once the weather started clearing up I had plans to go down to Portmeirion, a trip to London for some PhD archive work was put onto the cards, and I needed to go down to Nantmor in search of Ingrid Bergman…  The spring months looked good.

Then COVID-19 struck. The English government fucked things, royally, for the rest of the UK. Thanks to England being a lawless mess only nominally governed by a sock puppet, the lockdown came later than it should have, lasted longer than it needed to, there were more deaths than are acceptable, and appropriate measures were not put in place. Wales was sensible, and closed the borders, but thanks to the A55 and M4 and England’s fuckery, the virus got in. Had it not been for England, Wales would have been better off. It thus wasn’t until the start of July that things started to ease, and even then only bit by bit. Then England and the US (probably) caused a resurgence of the virus elsewhere.

It’s not until the later part of the month that I feel even remotely comfortable going on any kind of grand adventure. Even then, I’m fearful of the public transport or going anywhere near crowds. There are people around who, unfortunately, don’t seem to get it, don’t seem to get that we live in “interesting times.” Even in Wales there are people wandering around without masks, or face coverings, not complying with social distancing. I hate going to the supermarket right now, and I try and go as late in the evening as I dare, but even then it still seems to be full of people who think this virus is of no consequence- I was tempted to shout at people for blocking the aisles before this thing hit, now I want to subject them to full on barrage, especially the people letting children run around.

I’ve been taking short walks, but I’m planning something a fair bit longer, nothing major to start with, but something that will give my legs a good work out. Throughout the lockdown I’ve been staring at the map, trying to find some interesting places to visit, and I noticed something: The directness and ease by which the road from Bangor reaches the Carneddau, the reasonable gentility of the slope at this end. I wonder how long it would take to get up there, an hour, two?

Following the line of the road up into the mountains, I see something else. It’s in a direct line with Bera Mawr, and thus wherever the farmhouse known as Nanhysglain was. This is a murky story that fascinates me, and the last time I was up this end of the Carneddau I even went looking for the place, the alleged site of the last stand between Dafydd ap Gruffydd and the English invaders, or perhaps, as has been rumoured, Welsh traitors in the employ of the English. Dafydd wasn’t much liked by the Welsh and there were a lot of people who would have traded him for thirty pieces of silver. The conquest of Wales was as much a civil war as it was a war against the English.  Ultimately, Dafydd was betrayed by Einion, Bishop of Bangor, and I theorize, looking at the map, that if he ratted to head of the local Bangor garrison, say late one night over a glass of wine in the Bishop’s Palace, they would have rode out from Bangor to capture the errant prince. I have also discovered that trusting Einion (if he did trust him) was a really dumb move on Dafydd’s part, as this is the same Einion who in 1277 excommunicated Dafydd’s brother Llewellyn and ran away to England, where his relations (allegedly sixty of them), were getting killed fighting for King Voldemort.

Getting to Nanhysglain from here looks far easier than it does from any other direction. The farmland appears to gently rise up to a gap between Moel Wnion and Moel Faban, a pair of lovely lady lumps, and the mountains look far less inaccessible than they do from the crags of Abergwyngregyn. It would be easier to ride horses up into the mountains that way, to get a trained squadron of soldiers up there, than by Aber Falls. By the dawn’s early light Dafydd wouldn’t even see them coming.

I decide, therefore, that I will test my theory. How long will it take me, on foot, to get to the mountains, and based upon that, how long would it take an army on a horse? I want to test the gentility of that slope, and by looking at the map the whole walk should be no more than four miles- And if I feel like it, I can always get the bus back.

I arrive opposite the old Bishop’s palace, most famous as the site of Owain Glyndwr’s one and only manic appearance in Shakespeare’s Henry IV part 1, at almost nine am. I can hear the cathedral bells chiming. Captain Stanley and his garrison would have left earlier, before first light perhaps, perhaps around five am. Though the road is pretty direct, Captain Stanley had one advantage I don’t… He could ride straight across what is now the Penrhyn estate. I will have to go around. That will diverge our times by around fifteen minutes, I’d guess.

I’ve been down to this part of Bangor only a handful of times since the lockdown began. Not only has it felt like traveling too far, there has been little point. It is disappointing, to say the least. It’s as if nobody has learned their lesson from all this. Cars are clogging the road and the car park across the way is rammed. There aren’t too many people about, individually, but none of the ones I see are wearing face protection.  As soon as they have been able, people have ran for their cars again and when they climb out, they don’t take precautions… Much like the sex round here, if rumour is anything to go by.[2]

Further down the road I see another muppet, this time on a skateboard. Skateboard’s are fine if you are ten. I had a skateboard when I was ten. But when you are, as this guy is, in your late teens (or older) you look like a twat.[3] Infantilism is rife these days. There is no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes, but there’s a limit. This particular infantilism encouraged by the likes of those God awful daily vloggers… Men in their late twenties or thirties with faces like Wile E. Coyote after he’s run into a cliff. They live falsified lives, going around everywhere on tiny skateboards, unlike proper adults who either walk or get the bus or drive.  These things they produce have no purpose. There’s no moral, no meaning, not even a dose of satire. If you’re going to film your life, at least try to make it interesting.

That’s the second thing I need to do today… Filming. My Celluloid project is primarily so I can have a record of my time here, for myself, but I’ve got to make it interesting to other people at the same time. So I’ve added a story arc involving a powerful macguffin forged by Thatcher in the late eighties and the present government trying to get hold of it… Oh, and I’m assisted in stopping this by two psycho-manifestations. Lockdown and an inability to film for three months has necessitated a change of plan. I need to extend the arc. Where last I left the action, Will and Connor (the manifestations) had vanished and the explanation, I’ve decided, is that they’ve been kidnapped by a government agency called The British Protection Service. Because of the three month gap, I have three holes to fill in so I’ve decided to film a special episode in which Will attempts to flee the clutches of the BPS. This is going to be a found footage sort of thing.

I have to reach Llandegai first, but there are obstacles in my path. At the entrance to Porth Penrhyn there is some tree cutting work going on, and the workmen have parked right on the corner. This is never the nicest road to cross, thanks to a curve that makes visibility impossible, and the workmen make getting across even more of a challenge. It’s a case of wait for a gap in the traffic, sprint across, jump to the side and lunge for the free bit of pavement. Then, by the bus stop opposite the Maesgeirchen estate a woman and a child are sat in the middle of the narrow pavement. Granted, this a narrow, hardly travelled stretch of main road, but you still can’t be sitting in the middle of the pavement. She sees me coming but still doesn’t move. I have to perform a dance into the undergrowth in order to get around. I hear a muttered ‘sorry’ from the woman, but I doubt she’s sorry.

It’s nine forty when I reach the entrance to Penrhyn Castle. Usually when I come this way the gates are open and the drive up to them is near impossible to cross due to traffic. Today they’re shuttered, not a car nearby. This makes it, unusually, a nice place to stop for a quick breather and a think.

Forty minutes on foot. A horse could walk that in thirty minutes, and I doubt Captain Stanley was walking. He and his men would be charging as fast as they could, hooves churning up the track. Plus, with only a fortified manor at Penrhyn instead of the large country estate, they would have been riding direct. So, at a rough estimate, I would say it took them ten minutes to get here from Bangor.

There is another possibility. The manor house here, founded only about forty years before by Ednyfed Fychan, a progenitor of the Tudor Dynasty, could have been the base for Captain Stanley and his men. They could have ridden from here. Instead of being informed during a glass at the Bishop’s palace, it could have been a glass at Penrhyn where the fateful treachery was delivered. It’s possible, especially as one of the men who has been heavily associated with aiding the conquest in this area (albeit only after 1283), Iorweth ap Cynwrig ab Iorwerth, known as Penwyn, was married to Angharad, great granddaughter of Ednyfed Fychan. The family were, it’s more than likely, on the side of the English. It’s worth considering, but I can’t hang around here trying to consider which is more likely. I have a job to do.

Check it is safe. Camera out… On my way through Llandegai I deliver the first of my paranoid “found footage” pieces. I find it ridiculously easy to switch between Will’s voice and my own these days. Not so long ago, following a really bad panic attack, it was all I had for a few weeks. I had to train my own voice back, and I still don’t think it’s quite right. I worry, sometimes, that our voices are becoming too similar.

With the streets this quiet and life-free it really ups the paranoia feeling. This is the perfect time to be filming something like this. Setting my brain into paranoid ‘the government is after me’ mode, really starts getting me a bit paranoid. By the time I’m at Tal-Y-Bont and dodging off from the road it’s really set in. Further along, this path leads into a cornfield with a slightly rotten cottage and it starts to get really high. I start thinking there really are people hiding behind the hedgerows or in the corn.  It’s a really weird feeling because I know that they’re not, but there’s this part of my brain that’s telling me otherwise.

From here, on the other side, to the uber-small village of Tan-Y-Lon it’s pretty much busy road all the way. Though it is just as wide as the A5, this isn’t even a B-road according to the map, but the traffic is A-road levels. This is barely even a country lane in places. It’s easy to see what’s happening by looking at the map. At Llandegai the road from Bangor splits in two. One road, the A5, goes straight down to the A55 Expressway. The other, this road, is the old Roman route from Chester and there’s an intersection with the A55 at Tan-Y-Lon. Most of the traffic, rather than joining the A55 at Llandegai, is heading up here and joining at Tan-Y-Lon… I’d say it was to avoid traffic lights, but no. There are no traffic lights at the A5/55 roundabout.

It’s a case of rat running, drivers using a road not intended for heavy traffic as a convenient bypass route. A supposedly faster, less traffic alternative. I’m not sure it even works in this case, however. It isn’t just a problem here. I used to live on a rat run. It’s apparently becoming an increasing problem, evidence of how the modern motorist seems to think that they own every road and nobody else has a right to use them.

Tragically, this means that this B-road is far from safe. Further back, close to Tal-Y-Bont, there is no pavement at all. Here the pavement is only on a single side of the road, and it’s narrow and weedy and not very pleasant. In places it is virtually non-existent. The other side is all hedge. All the cars driving close to me make me anxious. I don’t like walking along roads like this.

Eventully I hit the village of Tan-Y-Lon, where a man decides to say ‘good morning’ to me. Firstly, people don’t do that in the modern world. Secondly, this gets me suspicious. What are you? GCHQ? British Protection Service? Am I about to get swooped on by black clad SAS officers?

It is now ten twenty, and it has taken me another forty minutes to reach here. Approximately thirty minutes with a horse, at little more for the gallop, around twenty minutes? What has taken me eighty minutes, would have probably taken Captain Stanley and his men just over thirty. A little under half the time. A car could have done all this in ten minutes. It brings home how arbitrary distances are. The world shrinks the faster you go, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Ten minutes from home is ordinary. An hour and a half and you’re far away, on an adventure!

Beyond Tan-Y-Lon, crossing the bridge over the A55, I’m on quieter roads. This one is a lost, idyllic forest lane, closely crowded with trees that winds up, steeply, from the coastal plain to the foot of the mountains. It’s a bit steep, but it’s relaxing and although it has started to rain, and I’ve had to put my raincoat on I wouldn’t want to be doing anything else right now.

Eventually, after reaching the top of the road, I can divert across farmland to the mountains. The path is a channel between fences which zig-zags up to a bolted and immovable gate. I struggle to look for another way, but the only way is over the top. Some sheep have gotten in here and are trapped, spooked by my appearance.  I have to be careful they don’t charge and knock me over. They are considerate and when they run they run to one side. In return I’m careful not to spook them further.

Through the next gate the path is again clear, not too steep, but a gentle climb. It’s easy to follow and some of it is lined by a geological depression. Behind me the bay of Conwy looks good. The tide is in, so the mud flats are hidden. The bay area doesn’t look so much the land of myths and majesty as the interior does, but it’s a sweet, cool looking place. There’s not a lot worth seeing between Llandegai and Llanfairfechan, half way along, in fact almost nothing, and despite all my years hanging around here, I hardly know that sweep of coast at all. All the interesting stuff is further along or inside these mountains which I climb into.

Rounding a corner, the bay is lost and the wilderness envelops me. There’s a light drizzle as well. The top of Bera Mawr is visible. It is ten minutes to twelve. Two hours and fifty minutes from Bangor.  A bit of rough maths has me thinking this is just over an hour by horse from Bangor, less if Captain Stanley had ridden from Penrhyn. The ease by which it is possible to get up here, much easier than by other routes, makes me convinced this is the route they took.

From here, the land looks too exposed to be any sort of reasonable hiding place. It makes me think, as I did last time I was up here, that Nanhysglain was on the other side of the mountain. There, were the Afon Goch runs down to Aber Falls, is a secluded canyon, not the wide open grasslands and gentlish slopes which I see around me.

I decide, since I’m here, that I’ll film a quick Past Force video. It’s my first ‘on location’ Past Force, and it’s made extra cool by some b-roll footage of the mountains and the desolation. I’d like to do more of them, and I think of, perhaps, the Eigiau Dam, not far away, would make a brilliant subject.

With a paraglider circling Moel Wnion behind me, I set off on the final leg of my filming adventure, the capture. Because it’s just me it’ll mostly be done in the edit, a few sound effects, an ‘oh shit it’s them’, and the leg of a ‘captor’ shown through a lonely, abandoned camera shot from the ground. I’m not near Nahysglain when I do it, I’m further along, and I’ve been doing a hunt, not a hide, but there’s something of a mirror that my short, paranoid chase should end here.

Alas, the journey is far from over. I have to somehow return to Bangor.

[1] Another one I like is: Mae Noel Edmonds wedi cael ei gymhathu gan y Borg.

[2] Rumour has it that half the Bangor Student population caught crabs last year!

[3] Yes, this even applies to pro-skaters.