To Corwen

Now that I'm in north Wales, my bible for the trip is Thomas Telford's Holyhead Road: The A5 in north Wales by Jamie Quartermaine, Barrie Trinder and Rick Turner. This book documented the archaeology of the road in considerable detail, and I can't hope to improve on it. It's my guide for things to look out for.

Yesterday, approaching Chirk, I was struggling to find Telford's roadside depots. Today, between Chirk and Corwen, I found (I think) 83 of them, with another 3 possibles. As I was stopping to take a picture of each, needing to wait for traffic to pass, then noting down details, this slowed down my progress along the road. (I also had rain some of the time.)

I have also been looking at where the Telford road laid out a new route, avoiding gradients to speed up the coach journey. First at Froncysyllte, the older road can be seen as Alma Road going up the side of the Dee valley, becoming Cwmalis Road, where the new road ignores all that to plot a smooth gradient round the valley side. Inevitably, this meant cutting into the hillside on the left and a retaining wall on the right.

Then, coming into Llangollen, the earlier road was Maesmawr Road, becoming Birch Hill into the town; this has a number of 18th century buildings along it. Driving along the alternative today, lined with tree branches on either side, it's a comfortable enough ride: you don't realise it's basically a ledge hewn into a cliff. Even in Llangollen itself, Telford's obsession cut a new course. What is now Hall Street was the old road, and has older buildings along it, one, convieniently for me, datestoned 1799. Berwyn Street, the newer road parallel to it was more evenly graded and bypassed Hall Street; it's only been built on since.

At Glyndyfrdwy, I was keen to find the 'whale' described by George Borrow in Wild Wales. Travelling in 1854, he too was following Telford's road. Just upstream of the bridge known as Pont y Pandy, he described a huge rock, which he likened to a whale on its side. The bridge has had work done to it since, but not so much as to let the whale through. Allowing for Borrow's poetic licence, I was able to fit his description to my observation: yes, the whale is still there.

I could hardly miss two tollhouses, one with its weighbridge house opposite. Most of the milestones in this section have reproduction iron plates in the original limestone.

Now I'm at another old coaching inn, Owain Glyndwr in Corwen. I was pleased to see their food menu quoting Borrow on his having stopped here for a pint.