The Judge
RAVES!
Date: 24/06/25
Choo-Choo!
Greetings, nose pickers! And welcome to another instalment of our occasional series under the heading Incoherent Ramblings...
...And if you think that that would make an apt description of the whole of this site, then I shall have to come over and viciously tweak you.
The jaunt to Shrewsbury having been a very pleasant experience, it was time for another journey. I had decided that my next attempt at globetrotting would be to another place which - despite its closeness - I hadn't been to for several decades. This would also be the most involved in terms of the transport arrangements, as it would involve a long journey, except this time by bus.
The last time I had been to Y Bala would have been about 1988, and that would have been on a Saturday afternoon when I was fulfilling my duties as a committee member of Brymbo Steelworks FC. Bala Town were in the same league as us, and consequently visits to their Maes Tegid ground were an annual occurence.
I must now regale you with a non-football-related tale which my brother was told there one Saturday afternoon by a local farmer. Another local told him that his dog was terrible for worrying sheep (a heinous crime in a rural area), and that nothing he did seemed to get the dog to behave. "Give him to me for half an hour", said the farmer. The dog was duly handed over, and the farmer took him away.
Scarcely half an hour later, he returned with the dog, who was visibly trembling with a woebegone expression both fore and aft. "There you are", said the farmer, "I don't think he'll trouble the sheep any more."
The man looked down at his cringing cur and said, "But, what did you do to him?"
The farmer gave a fiendish grin, and replied, "Oh, I just put him in the pen with the ram for five minutes!".
Anyway. I had been through Bala once or twice since, on the way back from resolving IT issues at the Depratment's Porthmadog office, but I hadn't actually stopped.
Whether I went or not was still in the balance when I woke up last Tuesday morning. One of the problems with depression is that it stops you from doing the things you need to do to counter it; nothing seems to be worth the effort of doing it. Nonetheless, I forced myself out of bed ahortly after 0630 and got sorted, departing just before 0800 with a bottle of water, the beef, horseradish and rocket sandwich I had bought from Sainsbury's the previous Saturday, a bag of Seabrook's cheese and onion crisps and a Crunchie. The T3 bus - which was to carry me for the greater part of my journey - was to leave Wrexham bus station shortly after nine, and I couldn't be confident that the 0830 bus would get me there in time, or indeed at all, especially as it was bin-lorry day and buses tend to get delayed even more than usual as a result.
This meant, of course, that I arrived in the town (sorry, I mean city) centre with over half an hour to pass. I could see that the T3 was parked up in the waiting area of the bus station. Eventually, it was driven into position at Stand 5. The driver was waggling the steering wheel with a troubled expression on his face, and he then turned the engine off. This didn't augur well, especially as he then got on his phone, presumably to Lloyds' depot in Machynlleth.
I started wondering whether I was going to have to make alternative arrangements and change my intended destination. Ruthin, perhaps, or Mold? The driver then restarted the engine, waggled the wheel again and, seemingly satisfied with the result, opened the door and we embarked.
Shortly after the appointed time, we set off out of town (erm, city), past the hospital, onto Ruthin Road and then turned onto the A483, bypassing the villages of Bersham, Rhostyllen and Johnstown. At Ruabon, we left the fast road and manoeuvred our way through the narrow streets of the village to the railway station.
At this point, I must myself make a diversion (as it were) in order to explain the slight eccentricities of the route: the T3 was originally designated the D94, and was initiated in the mid-1960s to replace the rail service between Ruabon and Barmouth. The line was due to close at the start of 1965 following the Beeching Axe, but services actually ended a few weeks earlier due to flood damage at Llandderfel. This accounts for why the bus route for many years (and to a lesser extent today) didn't take the obvious route beyond Corwen along the A5 and A494 but turned down the B4401 through the villages of Cynwyd and Llandrillo before skirting Llandderfel and moving onward to Y Bala.
Ruabon is the only standard-gauge station on the route, hence the stop exists as a legacy of the original intent of the bus service.
From there, it was along the north bank of the Dee through Acrefair (note for aliens: this is pronounced 'Ackruh-Vire') and Trevor (well, how else would you pronounce that?), before eventually reaching Llangollen, crossing the river and shuffling through the town to the bus station.
(More about Llangollen some other time, as it's on my to-visit list).
Then we headed out along the A5. At this point, the valley starts to narrow, and we were closed in on the left-hand side by the steep slopes of Inman's Wood. This meant that the only views were to the right of us (which was the side of the bus I was sitting on). But what views! Back across the river were Dinas Brân and the Eglwyseg rocks, and the steep-sided hills between us and them were covered in greenery, that shade of deep green, the sight of which is one of the main reasons why this is my favourite time of year. After early July, the greens start looking jaded and worn.
And all the time, we followed either the river or the Llangollen Railway (one of the two sections of the Ruabon - Barmouth line which are still in use; I'll come to the other one later), only leaving the former to take a short cut round the headland, and only departing from the latter because the line goes through a tunnel under that very protruberance. On we went, through Glyndyfrdwy, Llidiart Y Parc and on into Corwen.
This town, too, now has a bus station (or, rather, an 'interchange'), whereas the last time I had been through there on a bus it merely had a couple of bus stops on the main road through the town. Emerging from there, we crossed the river again rather than head south through all those villages I mentioned earlier, and finally reached our own turnoff at Dwyryd (or 'Druid', as the colonialists have it) onto the A494 for the last leg of the journey.
It was on this road where I once nearly met my end. My brother was taking me back to Uni in January 1982, the roads were a little icy, and one of the front brakes on his Hillman Avenger estate locked as we rounded a bend. A few semi-eternal seconds later, we ended up facing the way we had come (but on the correct side of the road all the same), praising our good fortune that the only vehicle on that side was some fifty yards away.
Passing through Sarnau, I remembered the great Gerallt Lloyd Owen, who grew up in the Post Office there.
Finally, we crossed the last bridge and entered upon Y Stryd Fawr (High Street), where I got off.
I paused for a moment or two to take it all in. It was much as I remembered it being, in that there has been little if any 'development' in a long time; the buildings seemed mostly to be from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century, and although there were the inevitable terraces of structures of identical type within the streetscape, there was no sense of their having been 'planned' much beyond that. Even the less imposing buildings seemed to have a small dignity to them, a 'lived-in' look which made them seem part of a settled and deeply-embedded landscape.
I strolled slowly along the southern side of the street, as taking my time seemed to be the most appropriate response. Apart from two small supermarkets, the shops all seemed to be locally-owned (depending on whether you define 'local' as 'indigenous' or 'recent blow-ins', of course). There was even a bank, a true rarity in areas such as this nowadays.
I reached the southern end of the row and found that there was one glaring exception to the quiet stateliness; Neuadd Buddug (Victoria Hall) dates from the late nineteenth century, but its frontage suggests something significantly later, in that it is eye-wateringly ugly and in need of some serious re-fettling. What 'Er Majesty Gawd-bless-'Er made of it when it was opened one can only imagine, but it seems to adhere to the general architectural tendency of monarch-commemorating buildings to lean towards either 'rococo-a-go-go' or 'hideous flatpack':
Crossing the road, I made my way back towards my starting point, passing another fairly modern building - a garage - which at least seemed to be in far better condition than the hall.
(It should be noted here that Y Stryd Fawr still has two filling stations at the kerbside, a highly unusual state of affairs nowadays).
The centrepiece of the street is the statue of T.E. Ellis, Liberal MP and strong advocate of Home Rule, but I found another interesting artefact, namely a seat which had poetry on it; an englyn, no less, written by John Roberts and dedicated to Penllyn ('Lakehead'), which is the name given to the general area:
"Bu unllais fy nghlod i Benllyn - bro gain,
Bri y gerdd ac englyn;
Hen dalaith tant y delyn,
A bro serch llanerch y llyn"
("My praise for Penllyn was with one voice - a fine land,
Famed for music and englyn;
The old province of the harp's string,
And a land of love for the lake's glade")
In fair Gwalia, even the street furniture has a soul.
Walking past one of the shops, I saw a sign in the window advertising for sale half a dozen cockapoo puppies. What was somewhat troubling was that it was a butcher's shop. Funny, but worrying; I mean, the notice didn't even have any suggestion as to how best one might prepare them for the table. Were shallots involved? Or just black pepper and a light wine sauce? I shall never know.
(I could have taken a photo of the sign, but I was already conscious enough of appearing too much like a tourist - and I once again regretted not making a little badge reading, "Actually, I live quite near here" - and had I conspicuously snapped it, Questions Might Have Been Asked and I didn't want to have to explain my warped sense of humour to someone who works with sharp knives for a living).
Getting up to the northern end of Y Stryd Fawr, I decided that I would go and look for Maes Tegid, because that was the part of the town I had spent most time in down the years. So I turned left and found myself by the parish church. A nice-looking place, but the graveyard didn't seem to have the right dimensions for football, and all those lumps of stone would inhibit the passing game too much to be of any utility. Having realised that I was on the wrong road, I doubled back to Heol Ffrydan (where I saw a small herd of cows grazing in an adjacent field between the road and the houses beyond), and headed to my next destination with a degree of urgency.
Urgency because I had decided that I would go on Rheilffordd Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake Railway). I had had the idea of staying on the bus beyond Bala to Llanuwchllyn and then coming back to town from there, but the timetables and routes didn't mesh, so it was going to be a return trip after all.
The problem with that being that the Bala terminus occupies a site on the north-eastern corner of Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake) on the Ruabon - Barmouth track line which is about two-thirds of a mile from Y Stryd Fawr (the Railway is currently trying to raise funds to bring the line to roughly where the town's old station on the Bala - Ffestiniog line stood).
From checking my phone, I could see that I had left myself scarcely half an hour to get there in time for the 1210 train, so I had to progress at some speed south-easterly along the B4391. Despite the fact that this road was all on the flat, I feared that I wouldn't get there in time. Had I been in the state I was in prior to my surgery, not only would I not have made it, I wouldn't have even made the attempt.
I deliberately didn't check the time until I had - finally, because the place seemed to be getting further away the closer I got to it - arrived at the station. To my relief (and, truth be told, to my mild surprise), I had ten minutes to spare before the departure time of 1210. I went in search of a ticket office, to find that there wasn't one. There was, however, a man with a pouch slung around his neck who was obviously in some position of authority. I approached him, and the gist of our conversation was that I should get in the carriage and he'd sort things out later.
On boarding, I found that the carriage in question was already nearly full (this is why they prefer you to book online beforehand), and the only forward-facing seats were on the side of the train away from the lake. Nothing for it, therefore, than to take what I could get. It seemed that most of the people in the carriage had come up from Llanuwchllyn and had just sat there waiting for the journey back, and hadn't intended to go into town at all. It was clear from that that it was the actual ride they had come for rather than any other touristy intent.
(As an aside, I found that I heard hardly a sentence of Cymraeg on the streets of the town, so much has the linguistic frontier shifted westward in my lifetime. I certainly heard nary a syllable on the train or at either end of the line.)
1210 arrived, the whistle sounded and the train - slowly and jerkily - pulled away from the station. Clank clank, clunk clunk, approaching a steady nine miles per hour, past the sailing club and along the lake shore.
Then it hit me: the smell of smoke and steam. Immediately, I was transported - this time in a metaphorical sense - back fifty years almost to the month to the last time I had encountered that aroma. When I were a lad, we used to go on holiday every July to Tywyn, and one day of our week was always given over to a trip on the Talyllyn Railway up as far as Dolgoch Falls. Schopenhauer tells us that smell is the special sense for memory, and here was old Arty being proved to be bang on the money yet again.
The lake itself was visible for a while, but then we entered a stretch where there was woodland between us and it. Finally, as we neared Llangywer, we got the full glory of the scene to our west. The waters were grey but were being whipped up to whiter peaks by the moderate breeze which was blowing along the lake's length. Its broadness reached across to Glanllyn on the further bank. And behind that, the greens, greys and blues of Arenig rising ruggedly grand beyond.
We finally left the shore of the lake at its south-western end and chuff-chuffed, chug-chugged and clatter-clattered into Llanuwchllyn station where - as they say on the trains nowadays - this service terminated.
(Shortly before our arrival, I had overheard a couple of men talking about our long-lost steelworks, and was able to clue them in on the latest developments regarding the site. It's nice to feel useful. Not to say smug...)
I found the conductor - who had missed me on the way out - and bought my ticket, which he wrote out by hand with the times of the outward and return journeys.
There was to be about fifty minutes turnaround time (for those who were for turning), so I found me a spot behind the signal box to sit and lunch, and then wandered around the station. Amongst other attractions - like the inevitable gift shop and heritage centre - I found this sign:
(Traditions are important, and British railway companies persist with some of them to this day, in that they're not dedicated to the public either.)
I noticed that the locomotive which was pulling our train had a somewhat puzzling and troubling name. I felt sure that there was a story behind it, but I wasn't sure that I wanted to know (apparently, it was named after a racehorse):
All too soon, it was time to board for the return journey. I hopped into the carriage a bit ahead of my fellow travellers so that I could get a forward-facing seat on the lake side. At 1330, off we set again.
Some thirty minutes later, we arrived back at Bala. I had about an hour and a quarter before my intended T3 homewards, so there would be just enough time for me to check out one last landmark.
Tomen Y Bala is a mediaeval motte which is hard by the north-eastern end of the town's layout down a back street. To get there, I had to get back to the town itself, but had figured out a shorter way to get there than the route I had taken to leave. So, having crossed Pont Mwnwgl Y Llyn (The Bridge of the Neck of the Lake), I branched off left along the lake's embankment, then right past the rugby club and right again along Heol Y Domen. There stood the fort, nestling somewhat incongruously next to a terrace of houses built in the typical nineteenth and twentieth century styles. I certainly wouldn't want to have to mow that:
My time was all but up, so I made my way back to Y Stryd Fawr to await the bus. By the bus stop was the local Catholic church - dedicated to Our Lady of Fatima - which was housed in nondescript premises which looked as though it had once accommodated a retail tobacconist. There was a notice in the window stating that, "The first Mass of Sunday will be held on Saturday at 5.00 pm". There was a perverse ecclesiastical logic to this, and I suppose if that nice Mr Prevost in Rome says it is so, then it is so.
The first bus to come along was a T3C, which would reach Corwen by way of all those back roads I mentioned earlier, but Corwen would be as far as that would go, so I let it by. The T3 turned up about ten minutes later, I boarded and off we went back through Sarnau and Bethel.
(I had worried that the bus would be full of teenagers, given that the last time I used this route in June 1982, I had in Barmouth unwittingly caught the bus which picked up from the secondary schools in Y Bala. This led to my enduring the pleasure of their company all the way to Corwen. I was able to comfort myself ex post facto when I discovered a few days later that I had been incubating chicken pox and I may have passed it on to some of the brats.)
This bus was supposed to take us all the way to Wrexham, but when we got to Corwen interchange, the driver told us we had to get off and wait a few minutes for another bus to take us on. Once we had all disembarked, the driver changed his display to 'T3C' and set off on those back roads towards Llanuwchllyn. After about fifteen minutes, another Lloyds bus appeared, which we got on and it was away home with us. Allowing for the change in Wrexham, I finally got home at about a quarter to six.
Was it worth the trip? Certainly, and probably would have been even without the ride on the choo-choos. Will I go there again? Almost certainly, as there were things I didn't check out this time. But I doubt that it will be this year.
Next stop? I don't know. Possibly Llangollen (before that Eisteddfod gets going), or Ruthin (before the school holidays kick in). Mold, Oswestry and Chester are also still in the mix. We shall see...
