Daily Archives: October 16, 2019

Thursday, 10th October 2019 The final full day of the tour takes us to the Welsh Highland Railway. The coach drove a very scenic route through the centre of the Snowdonia National Park. Unfortunately, Snowdon itself was hidden in clouds today. The coach dropped us in the village of Beddgelert. It is a pretty Welsh stone built village, which has won “Britain in Bloom” competitions. It has also been described as “a wondrous valley”. Gelert was the name of a dog that belonged to Prince Llewellyn. The Prince returned from hunting one day to find the dog with blood around its mouth and his son missing. Believing that the hound had killed the boy, Llewellyn slew it. However, the child was found alive and a dead wolf was discovered nearby. The dog Gelert had saved the boy from the wolf. Llewellyn was filled with remorse and allegedly never smiled again. The legend was embellished in the nineteenth century by the landlord of the Goat Hotel. It is possible to visit “Gelert’s grave”. The train is hauled by a South African Railways narrow gauge Garratt. This is a huge 2-6-2 + 2-6-2 locomotive. The demise in 1936 and the eventual reconstruction of the Welsh Highland Railway had been a long, tortuous and of highly legal progress such that it is too long to relate here. There were legal cases, liquidations, funding issues, public inquiries and political intrigues. However there was above all else a determination to reconstruct the railway and extend […]