To Cernioge

Today I was looking forward to seeing, early on the journey, the Ty Nant bends and Glyn Diffwys. The bends were replaced by a new cutting in 1999, getting rid of what used to be the worst stretch of the whole A5 for the driver. They had to be reopened to traffic a few years later, when problems required more work on the new road, a telling comment on the long-term utility of the Telford design. The old road is still open to walkers.

I had driven this way many times on the old road, but the nature of the road meant  I was totally focussed on navigating the winding road before me and avoiding anything coming towards me; I didn't look at the view. Only in doing the background research for this walk did I learn that the original road design incorporated 'viewing platforms', so that travellers could stop off and take in the scenery. That scenery is the gorge and waterfall of Glyn Diffwys, far below under the massive retaining wall. And, yes, they're still there: two apsidal protrusions, hardly big enough for more than two people, but built into the retaining wall, all the way down. Here I enjoyed the view seen by George Borrow in 1854, Charles Harper in 1904, and nameless others, while also marvelling at the civil engineering achievement.

I was looking at the tops of trees below me. It did occour to me that to build all this, they might have

needed to fell some trees to get access. When Borrow and Harper came along, the vegetation would have regrown quite nicely and now, 200 years later, I'm standing over a mature forest. I could hear the falls below, but couldn't really see much; possibly the views of early travellers had been artificially enhanced by less tree cover.

Cerrigydrudion has very straight stretches of road on each side, both lining up into the village centre. The A5 skirts the village, very much in the style of a modern bypass, with the roads into the village joining at junctions. This possibly the first bypass ever, the gradients on the lines into the village being too severe for Telford, and a coaching in stop wasn't essential here. The bypass is shown on the oldest OS maps and includes a standard Holyhead road milestone (57 now to go): it's the prototype for all subsequent bypasses.

Quartermaine et al. reckon that those two straight stretches, mostly embanked over wet ground, weren't Telford's work but predate it. Whether built then or earlier, I wanted to test a theory that the road here was built after fields were enclosed, and so cut across pre-existing field boundaries. It seems that way, passing through by car, but on today's walk I had a chance for a closer look. I'm afraid the outcome is not conclusive one way or the other: in places it looks a wall has been cut by the road; in others there's no match between left and right.

Cernioge Mawr, once the coaching stop named on the milestones, didn't last long as an inn, soon supplanted by the Voelas Arms.    It had become a farm by the time Harper visited, as it still is today. I had Harper's sketch with me, and it's mostly still there, just trees having grown. I took some pictures and had a chat with Dafydd Evans, the present farmer.

Not being able to stay at the coaching inn this time, tonight I'm at the Giler Arms, Rhydlydan, a little further on from Cernioge.

Today's depot count: 24