To Holyhead

The last day!

Anglesey has a south-west to north-east trend of geology, ridges and valleys. Travelling to the north-west, as I was, necessarily involves crossing this pattern, so although Anglesey is lower lying than the mainland, it's still up and down. The road of course alleviates these by embanking all the valley bottoms and cutting into the hilltops, evening out the gradients.

It was another day of spotting depots, milestones and tollhouses, and also more of the linear villages which in Anglesey grew up along the road - Llanfairpwll and Gaerwen yesterday, and today  Gwalchmai, Bryngwran and Caergeiliog (Valley is more around a crossroads).   This all having been a new road, I have been thinking that the roadside buildings along it would date after the road was built, because generally the Anglesey road was built through open countryside. This theory was slightly disproved at Caergeiliog, the Calvinistic chapel dating from 1786 (not the present building, it's been rebuilt since), followed by a row of cottages (appropriately, Tan-y-Ffordd) below street level by enough to suggest they were there first  - pictured.

I was hoping to examine more of field boundaries crossing the road. As near Cerrigydrudion, I think these happen in rural Anglesey because the road was built after land was enclosed. I've seen it on maps, old and new, but wanted to see if it was obvious on the ground, ruling out boundaries which are that way because they follow natural features. However, this really was not a success, partly because the height of roadside hedges prevented me seeing the pattern, and maybe also that I just wasn't being observant enough.

At the Valley Hotel, I met up with Andrew Hudson and Bob Daimond for the rest of my walk. Andrew is the author of This Ancient Road: London to Holyhead, a Journey Through Time and we have been corresponding about our shared interest in this road. Bob is a former colleague of mine from local government, a trustee of the Menai Bridge Community Heritage Trust and a member of the Institute of Civil Engineering's panel for Historical Engineering Works - so we had a lot to talk about. After crossing the Stanley Embankment and seeing the relocated tollhouse at the Country Park there, we found the old course of the road from before the building of the Anglesey Aluminium works and managed to follow it until we came to a fence. Along the Telford road, before this I had only seen two spots where private land has (legitimately) encroached over the old road, but here at the former aluminium works, there is a massive plant straddling and obliterating a good section of the old road. It is also where the two miles to Holyhead milestone once stood, and it hasn't obviously been moved to the new road, nor had a modern reproduction put there in its place. This is one issue I will follow up, with Bob's help.


I had arranged with Alan Williams, harbourmaster at Stena's Holyhead Port, to gain admission to the port area so we could walk to the George IV Arch (also known as the Admiralty Arch), and we met him at the bridge to Salt Island with John Cave and Richard Burnell, stalwarts of the Holyhead Maritime Museum. The arch in Holyhead is the counterpart to Marble Arch where I started, and this truly was a fitting end to the walk.

Depots:41

This blog was about today's walk. More will follow about themes and conclusions from Phase 2, and maybe the walk as a whole.