But in the immediate neighbourhood of Rhyl even the famous vale has no attractiveness. The bare river flows through bare mud. This enormously wide valley is, for the most part, a soft, dark marsh, on which a thin vegetation struggles to maintain a dank existence. But even from Rhyl there are agreeable views of what the Welsh call Dyffryn Clwyd, the Vale of the Flat, "the Eden of Wales." Three miles away, over an absolutely level and barren space, the wooded knolls and the dark towers of Rhuddlan advance almost to the centre of the valley, and have a fine impressiveness when they are thrown into relief by the shadow of some passing cloud. The Clwydian hills seem to close in behind them, with Moel Fammau in the remote distance. The old poet, Thomas Churchyard, says:
"The vale doth reach so far in view of man As he far of may see the seas, indeede; And who awhile for pleasure travel can Throughout this vale, and thereof take good heede, He shall delight to see a soyle so fine, For ground and grass a passing plot devine; And if the truth thereof a man may tell, This vale alone doth all the rest excell."
However, it is not until after Rhuddlan has been passed that the great fertility of the Vale of Clwyd declares itself, and to pass Rhuddlan is impossible without some examination, and without some ransacking of one's historical memory; for poor and unimportant as it now seems, this little place has played a great part in the history of Wales.
[Illustration: VIEW FROM RHUDDLAN CASTLE.]
A long bridge of several arches stretches over from the high road which crosses the marsh, to a steep, firm ascent, a little church with a square tower, and a few small cottages. Other cottages, mostly set amid neat gardens, border on the curves of what is more like a country lane than a village. Then suddenly, for it has been hidden by trees, one comes face to face with the colossal fragments of what must have been a nearly impregnable castle, poised on the summit of a bare, rounded hill, its huge towers buried in ivy, its outer walls sloping down to the Clwyd, and to an outer tower which has long been half in ruins, but which is so strongly built that it may still, for centuries to come, defy the malice of Time. On the partially reclaimed morass on the further side of the river, where a herd of black Welsh cows is grazing, the Saxons under Offa, King of Mercia, fought a great battle with the Welsh, under Caradoc, Prince of Wales, in 795. Caradoc and many of his principal chieftains were slain. The well-known air of "Morva Rhuddlan" commemorates the event, and the native poet sings, not without sweetness and pathos: