To Bangor

This was going to be the best preserved section of the A5 road, and by far the most scenic. This is my local area, so I know the road well, and, because I'm now staying at home, I have less to carry on my back. However, I was worried about the weather forecast not being so good and having three sets of people to meet along the way was potentially challenging to the timetable. In the event, the weather turned out much better than expected and I made good time.

The scenic part was the walk through Snowdonia, passing Llyn Ogwen, as the road reaches its summit before descending to Bangor. Many of the peaks were lost in cloud as I went past; Pen yr Helgi Du to my right kept out of cloud, while Y Garn ahead popped in and out of view. The autumn colours have come.

It was a day for tollhouses. Although I had just walked past the toll house at Capel Curig yesterday, I went back today for some better pictures. It has been much adapted and modernised, but still has that essential octagonal heart which has been a feature of other tollhouses I've seen on the road. The next house was on the way down, 'Turnpike Cottage' coming into Bethesda. It has the same octagonal pattern, but a protrusion on the side facing the road, almost as if it had been built too far away and had to be extended. A similar pattern is seen at Lon Isaf tollhouse; this one, like at Llangollen, retains the weighbridge house opposite, and is the best preserved of all the tollhouses and listed at Grade II*.

I had also thought that the octagonal bay window which protrudes onto the pavement at Ogwen Cottage, at the bottom of Llyn Ogwen, was also the remains of an earlier tollhouse, incorporated into a larger building. Looking at it today, I realised that it could not have been, because it's just too big - and there would have been little need of one here as just about all the traffic passing here would also pass Turnpike Cottage.

Another bit of rethinking was on coming into Bangor. At the eastern end, where the road turns into the City, there's a cutting, mostly walled on ether side and with a bridge over to the portico, all that remains of the Penrhyn Arms Hotel. The modern road goes round this, through where the hotel once stood on onwards to Beach Road, where the older road went on through the cutting to become the High Street.  I had always been told, and long thought, that this cutting was Telford's work.  In the light of this walk and the research for it, I've realised that the cutting doesn't fit Telford's style. It's just a bit too narrow, the bridge is too low over the road (Harper said hay wagons had to divert round the bridge), the arch isn't as circular as other bridges and, perhaps most of all, the turning into the cutting is too sharp. The background reading confirms this: Coflein says it's probably eighteenth century work and Gwynedd Archaeological Trust (report 861) concludes this is the work of Wyatt, who did so much for the Penrhyn estate. When Telford came along, this was already built and he had little alternative but to incorporate it into the road. This all goes to show that even in relation to my home town, there is still more to learn from a project such as this.

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