From Corwen to wild Cerrig-y-Druidion--the Rock of the Druids--the road rises steadily, and leads to nothing of note but the lovely little Pass of Glyndyffws, a deep and narrow defile of sudden unexpected beauty that connects two tracts of rather dull country. Here, where the Ceirw flings itself into the ravine from a great height and foams among the rocks far below us, Telford has thoughtfully supplied us with several little recesses in the wall from which to enjoy the view. I have heard that he cut his name in the stone of one of them, but I have never been able to find it. Perhaps it was to his name that George Borrow objected when he came here and laughed at “Mr. T.” for being eager for immortality. There was no need for Telford to be over-anxious about his immortality; nor yet, indeed, was there any for Borrow to flout him because he was not a Welsh bard!
Tyn-y-nant, where “little Dick Vickers,” late of Shrewsbury Mail, hanged himself rather exclusively, is a place of a dreary sort; and so is Cerrig-y-Druidion; and so, most of all, is the straight road from Cerrig to Cernioge, a piece of road that catches all the winds of heaven, and always seems longer than it was last time. Open the throttle here, and be thankful--if the weather be cold--that your good engine is humming before you, and is making a better pace than the eleven miles an hour of which the shivering travellers on this road used to boast. Cernioge is to us merely an unkempt farmhouse, but to them it meant a fire and hot drinks, for it was once a posting-house of considerable renown.
At Cernioge begins the descent into the valley of the Conway; and it is here that we first see, stretched out before us like the Promised Land, the distant grandeur of Snowdonia, the wild, impenetrable fortress of the Welsh and the trap of the invading English. When Pentre Voelas is passed the beauty grows and grows, mile by mile, and we are gently gliding down into the very heart of it; wild crags to the right of us, and before and below us a sea of woodland, valley beyond valley and hill beyond hill. There is one turn of the road where nearly every car draws up. The valley of the Conway lies at our feet, with here and there the river shining through the trees; the Lledr Valley stretches away and merges into the distant moors; Moel Siabod’s peak rises at the end of it; and over Siabod’s shoulder appears, on a clear day, a wedge-shaped corner of Snowdon, faintly blue. I have seen this view at many times of the year, and the best time of all is May.