The sky had grown grey, the air chilly, the weather was turning nasty, the saddles had perceptibly turned and were extremely nasty. These things may perhaps extenuate our bad taste in finding Beddgelert a trifle disappointing. It seemed to lack a central point; even the guide-books have to admit that its lions are not on the spot, although it seductively adds that they are within an “easy walk.” Snowdon was also included among the objects of interest within an easy walk, but a brief colloquy with the manageress of the Prince Llewellyn Hotel stamped the statement as a vicious flight of fancy.
“It’s a good four miles,” said that intelligent woman, regarding us compassionately; “but there _is_ ladies that think nothing of that.”
We hastened to assure her that we were not of such, and a few moments of confidential discussion at the bar sufficed for a programme superior to any that the guide-books had to suggest. It is in such affairs as these that the landlady and the coffee-room-maid show qualities not to be found in the landlord, or even the ostler. They can rise above convention; they have an instinctive perception of what the tourist, in his bewildered heart, prefers, but fears to acknowledge; and they are capable of giving advice with a sound disregard for the logic of precedent. Therefore it befell that our bones are not now bleaching on the “Beddgelert ascent” of Snowdon, and that, after a large cold lunch, which included a delicious but embarrassingly stony cherry-pie, we found ourselves riding slowly towards the village of Rhyddu.
This was the scheme of the manageress. We were to ride on to Rhyddu, leave the ponies at the Quellyn Arms, get a guide, and having ascended Snowdon by the shortest route, sleep on top, see the sun rise, and be back at Rhyddu for breakfast. It was almost alarming in its simplicity, and in the way in which it degraded the ascent of the highest mountain in England and Wales into a mere episode of the late afternoon. But, with a barometrical future so uncertain that, as Miss O’Flannigan’s cook is in the habit of saying, “you couldn’t tell a day from an hour,” its merit was too obvious to be disregarded.
Low as we had sunk in the social scale, we yet retained just enough self-respect to preserve us from asking the rare passer-by which of the misty bulks that confronted us was Snowdon; but none the less, we should have liked to know. Snowdon had been to our minds a lonely autocrat, unmistakable as Vesuvius or Fuji-yama; but here were four or five round-shouldered monsters, all of about the same height, and none quite as monstrous as we had expected. We settled on several, and tried successively to make the best of them, and to experience the sensations of awe which the guide-book assured us were inevitable under the circumstances; but the telegraph wire that had been given as our clue still led us onwards, and the village of Rhyddu seemed, like all our destinations, to have pitched its moving tent a mile beyond our estimate.