It doesn’t sound
right but, half way up the Vale of Ffestiniog, we’re on the Wales Coast Path! Further
downstream is Pont (bridge) Briwet, but that doesn’t (yet) take walkers. It’s about
to be rebuilt and maybe, in a few years time, there will be a footbridge.
Another alternative is to wade across to Portmeirion at low tide but make sure
you don’t step in the wrong part of the sands.
So, if you’ve
made it half way up the Vale of Ffestiniog, why not go the whole hog? We’ve
created this little eighteen mile diversion for your delight and delectation.
The route takes you up to the ancient village of Llan Ffestiniog, with its
community pub, then high up to the quarry which housed the National Gallery in
WWII and down the other side of the valley where the last wolf in Wales was
slain.
This is the
Vale of Ffestiniog Way. You won’t
believe how wonderful it is until you try it.
Portraits by
schoolgirls in London from back in the 1980s are the subject of an exhibition
titled MISS-interpretations of an Art Teacher.
The art teacher in question is local
artist Eleanor Brooks, famously known as the creator of ‘Mrs Spinks’.
As well as
being the art teacher, who could not bring herself to throw away any of the
pictures, she was also the model. There are some resemblances between the
pictures but, as Eleanor says in the film below ..... ‘I can’t always recognise myself in their work but I can see the students
..... every portrait is half a self-portrait’.
The
exhibition, by Eleanor Brooks and Sheelagh Stevens, is at Blaenau Ffestiniog library during normal
library hours until 27th May 2012.
Seventeen million
grenades and other munitions were made at Cooke’s Explosives Ltd during WWII.
Nowadays it’s an extensive nature reserve where the most lethal thing is an
adder.
The site has a long
history of explosives production starting from 1865 with gun cotton, then TNT
and a range of ‘safety explosives’ for the mining industry. With the demise of
British coal mining, the business was no longer economically viable and closed
in 1995. Three years and six million pounds of decommissioning later, the site
(Gwaith Powdwr) was donated by ICI to the North Wales Wildlife Trust.
On Saturday 19th
May there will be a ‘fun day for all the
family’ from 10:30am to 4pm including bushcraft, pond dipping, minibeast
hunting and so on. This is a free event although donations are most welcome. Here's a recent film clip taken in the reserve:
It’s a brilliant place
to explore, bringing together a mix of natural history and industrial history. It
used to be the biggest employer in the area with a workforce of five hundred in
the 1960s but today’s only employee is Rob, the warden, helped by a small army
of volunteers.
A massive explosion
occurred in 1915 (enemy sabotage?), totally destroying the facilities, and
responsibility for the site was taken over by the Ministry of Munitions before
being sold to Cooke’s in the 1920s.
A key feature of the
200-acre site is the partitioning into three valleys – in the wake of the big
accident, production was distributed across the valleys to limit the risk of an
explosion in one area spreading to the other.
One of these was
called KlondykeValley because the pipework required for
producing nitro-glycerine resembled a gold-rush town. The plumbing has gone but
one of the key buildings remains, the Settling Shed. Amongst other things this
housed seven settling tanks in which residues of nitro-glycerine were removed
from the water used to keep the explosives cool and stable.
When explosives are
being mixed it is essential to keep them cool and the process involved piping
in water from a nearby pond with an operator monitoring temperature dials and
adjusting the flow of water accordingly. Probably not the most fulfilling work
but exceedingly important. For his comfort he was provided with a stool but for
his protection it had just one leg – if he fell asleep, it would not be for
long!
This is the most
modern of the buildings dating back to 1988 when a huge blast destroyed the
previous one, killing two of the employees, and shaking the buildings of
Penrhyndeudraeth like an earthquake.
Ballistic pendulum
The footpath across
the summit of the hill goes through the heather to the Pendulum Shed. Not some
giant clock although people in the town could set their watches by it at 2 p.m.
every weekday. Suspended from a steel frame is a two tonne ballistic pendulum (pendil
balistig) with a pair of rails in front. A canon mounted on the rails was fired
point blank at the pendulum. The force of the explosion would cause the canon
to recoil on its tracks and the pendulum to swing – the degree to which it
swung was the measure of how powerful the explosives were!
This part of the site
is the area where nightjars breed and during early summer the footpath is
closed to prevent disturbance. Guided walks are organised by Rob – it’s unusual
to see these pre-historic looking birds, but the noise is unmissable, it sounds
like the rumblings of a diesel engine.
Sandbag wall - great for nesting
Dotted around the site
are several Explosives Sheds where products were wrapped and sealed in wax to
protect them from the damp. The sheds have detachable roofs and are surrounded
by thick safety walls made of sandbags so that in the event of an explosion,
the force of the blast would go upwards and not sideways … adds a whole new
dimension to ‘raising the roof’. Sparks
were a hazard to avoid and to that end the floor was lined with lead and
workers provided with rubber shoes and anti-static overalls.
Linking all these
buildings and remote areas of the site is a network of tarmac and railway
tracks. My first impression of the fading tarmac was that it was out of place
in a reserve but on the other hand they make easy access for pushchairs, wheelchairs
and mobility scooters. One of the railway tracks went through a tunnel which is
now grilled off and makes a great hibernation roost for lesser horseshoe bats.
Bats have also colonised the emergency shelters where workers would take refuge
in the event of the alarm being sounded.
The final building in
the explosives process is the Belfast Store where explosives were safely stored
prior to shipment by rail or by ship. One of the many safety features of this
building is the lightning conductor, an unlucky strike could set the whole
thing off. Cooke’s had their own steamship called the Florence Cooke which
started work in 1923 and during the war was used as an ammunition ship at Scapa
Flow and took part in the Normandy landings.
Alas in 1959, the year
after Mr Cooke retired and ICI took over, it was decided that road transport
was more efficient and she was sold for scrap.
Seventy years ago, in the first week of April 1942,
three trains arrived in Porthmadog from Y Fenni (Abergavenny), carrying almost a
thousand men and officers and a thousand mules and horses. They were the three
companies of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps mule transport. The muleteers
were Muslims from Rawalpindi in India (now Pakistan), with a few English and Indian
officers. They had come up through France in WW2 with the British Expeditionary
Force and were known as the ‘Rice
Corps’ – their motto ‘Heaven’s Light Our Guide’.
At the start of the war the British Army realised they
needed animal transport and India sent four companies by boat to Marseilles at
short notice. Company 22 was captured by the Germans, companies 25, 29 and 32 were
evacuated at Dunkirk and had to leave their animals behind. First they were in Cornwall, then in Y Fenni
and for three months in 1942 they were in Llanfrothen and Nantmor doing
mountain warfare training. Company 32 was camped on the Gwernydd in Llanfrothen
and companies 25 and 29 around Dolfriog in Nantmor. New mules were imported
from the USA and horses for the officers were collected from here and there. From
north Wales they went on to Scotland and in 1944 they were repatriated and went
on to fight in Burma.
Edgar Parry Williams from Croesor, aged ten at the time,
remembers them well. ‘We had never seen a
coloured face before and we were very interested in these strange men in
turbans. They didn’t speak much English and neither did we. They seemed very
gentle and civilised and rather sad. They would come past, along the Roman Road,
with strings of mules three abreast, taking an hour and a half to pass.’
William Morris Roberts and Annie Roberts of Ty Capel
Nantmor in the garden of Castle Cottage Penrhyndeudraeth
Dilys Rees’s (nee Jones) father farmed Dolfriog for Mr
Priestley. She remembers the Indians’
camp and the mules lined up, looking over a wall. Her mother used to trade eggs for sultanas
with the Indians, who also gave sultanas out to the children. Dilys remembers
walking through the camp, quite unafraid, with a rice pudding her mother had
made for a Mrs Wade who lived in the ‘Stablau’ at Dolfriog. The camp took up so
much land that there was no land left to farm and Dilys’s family had to move to
another farm. She remembers the 6am ‘call to prayer’ and the big prayer tent. A
bugle was blown several times a day when the animals had to be fed and watered.
The late Jos Williams of Gardd Llygad y Dydd in Nantmor who was 25 years old in
1942, remembered the beautiful horses the English officers rode. One of the
Indians taught him how to ‘cold’ shoe a horse which he did like that for ever
after. Several people remember Malik
Mohamed Khan, a highly intelligent man, an Indian officer (maybe a vet) who
rode a white horse at the head of the troop.
‘Standings’ were built for the animals by local farmers
before K Force (as the company was called) arrived. The manure was carted away by the farmers
whose land they were on and the food swill from the camps went to feed pigs in
Tremadog. Every Sunday sheep were killed for the camps at the supply depot at
Trawsfynydd. Local people remembered the ‘chapattis’ the Indians cooked. Marian
Roberts, whose father was a baker in Penrhyndeudraeth, remembers her parents were
friendly with some of the men and would invite them in. One day her parents
were at the cinema and Marian, aged ten, and her aunt, aged twenty one, invited
two of the men in for tea and gave them an egg each (eggs were scarce!). ‘There was a massive row when my parents got
back from the cinema!’ said Marion ‘for
inviting them in!’
Indian vet paints child's throat!
She also remembers once coming out of the cinema when it
was pouring with rain. She and her friend walked home under the capes of two
Indians (who always walked in single file) holding on to their waists! She
still has the autograph of one of them ‘NOWAB KHAN 180697’, carefully printed
and then written in his own Indian script. He was 19 years old. The men had
been taught to write their name and number in case they were captured by the
Germans. Nowab Khan said to Marian one day ‘You come India – I buy you silks’! Marian
said children got on very well with the Indians, neither group could speak much
English and that seemed to make a rapport between them.
John Griffith, Penrhyndeudraeth, who lived opposite the
present garden centre in Tremadog in 1942, remembers going for walks with his
mother and sister when he was about three and the Indians coming along the road
with their mules pulling carts. The family had to get over a wall to be safe
from the carts which had no brakes. Elspeth Parry, Penrhyndeudraeth, still has
a photo of her grandparents William Morris Roberts and wife Annie (with dog) of
Castle Cottage, Penrhyndeudraeth with one of the Indians.
Betty Evans, daughter of Hugh and Sarah Griffiths of
Penrhyndeudraeth, said she suffered a lot as a child from tonsilitis – she
remembers one of the Indian vets painting her throat to treat it!
For the local children the Indians were of constant
interest but not so for the local farmers. The mules and horses would ride
through growing crops and hayfields and the mules would batter down walls. When
the farmers complained they were told ‘There
is a war on’. It is true that they did get compensation later on but had to
build up the boundary walls again. Then over a couple of days in the middle of
July 1942, after only three and a half months, the Indians were gone. Edgar Parry Williams says ‘The valley seemed suddenly very quiet’.
But the memories remain for many people.
Many thanks to everyone who told me their stories of the
Indians. Giovanna Bloor, Cae Glas,
Croesor. March 2012.
Paddy Ashdown's father, John, was an Indian Army officer
in the 14th Punjab Regiment and the Indian Army Service Corps. During the
retreat to Dunkirk in May 1940, John Ashdown ignored an order to abandon the
Indian troops under his command, instead leading them to the port and on to one
of the last ships to leave, without losing a single man. Although court
martialled for disobeying orders, he was exonerated, and by the end of the War
had risen to the rank of colonel. I think this story will be part of the new
Channel 5 series War Hero in My Family - Paddy Ashdown is in episode 3 (15th May).
John and
Sandra stay in our cottage for four or five weeks each year, they love this
part of Wales and make the most of every day, whatever the weather. Long walks
combined with a ride on the Ffestiniog Railway and lunch at a local cafe.
A plate of golden veg at the end of the rainbow
We thought
they came back just because of our lovely cottage, but one of the many reasons
is the great selection of vegetarian meals. Unlike their home town, with a
chain pub offering just one or two unexciting options, Blaenau provides choice
and great taste.
One of their
favourites is De Niros, run by Kevin and Sue. The specials blackboard usually
contains six vegetarian dishes with recent favourites being: roasted vegetables
in honey with rice, nut roast, brie and spinach crumble.
They also
like Bridge Cafe where Gaile serves great food including vegetable lasagne and
John’s favourite after a long walk, chips, cheese and baked beans. Between De Niros and Bridge Cafe, tucked away
above the main street, they have also enjoyed CellB – the old police station now
converted to cafe and venue for events complete with lock-up cells.
Just a stop
down the line is the Lakeside Cafe at Tanygrisiau. Lots of options here but a
favourite is the all day vegetarian breakfast complete with vegetarian sausages
and lots of mushrooms.
I had never
realised Blaenau was such an oasis for vegetarians.
A young slate
worker in Ffestiniog aspired to be a doctor but, aged ten and one of a dozen
children, he was obliged to work in the quarries to contribute to family finances.
When there were problems at the quarry, and the men laid off, he used his
savings and began his medical career in the 1880s. They say the original recipe
came from a ‘vagabond’ who gave it to Morris in return for some act of
kindness.
Manufactory
There were
two main product lines – household oils for humans and oils for horses. In his
day he was a pioneer in advertising through the medium of Welsh, which made him
popular with the farmers, but he was also quite international. One of his
promotional leaflets, targeting military buyers, tells the tale of a young
soldier buying the oil at Cape Town on his way to fight the Boers. ‘The Riding Master of the Battery found it a most valuable preparation in war time for the ailments of horses,
whether caused by the climate, the hard work, or the work of the enemy’.
It’s
difficult to imagine the small village of Llan Ffestiniog having a
‘manufactory’ for the production of medicines but it was there, conveniently
for mail order, next to the railway line between Bala and Blaenau, until not so
long ago. Morris died of tuberculosis in
1923 and the oils continued to be made up until 1980 when his youngest son
Frank died. Members of the family say they still have the secret recipes but
there are no plans to reintroduce them. This is a great shame as there are lots
of people around who swear by it. It worked on anything. ‘Sore throat? Suck a sugar lump with a couple of drops of oil!’
Morris
Evans’ Oils (Olew Morris Evans) didn’t make it quite as big as Elliman’s
Embrocation which was manufactured in Slough from 1847 onwards by the James
Elliman family. By 1911 the product was on sale in 42 countries. In the 1960’s
Horlicks took over the product and they in turn were taken over by Beechams in
1970, now part of GSK (GlaxoSmithKline).
Bottle and packaging
According to
the Slough Museum the three ingredients of Elliman’s Embrocation are eggs,
turps and vinegar! Eggs were imported from Ireland by the million to the extent
that the staff would spend six weeks just cracking them. As for the addition of
turpentine this was especially dangerous and the process overseen by the fire
brigade.
Like Morris
Evans, James Elliman had two main product lines ‘Universal Embrocation’ for humans and ‘Royal Embrocation’ for animals. Apart from the names they were
identical but tax was payable only on human medicines.
The good news is that there is another product called Muscle Oil or Olew Gewynnau which is locally produced by descendants of the Bonesetters of Anglesey! Full details at http://www.muscleoil.co.uk/
Two weeks on
Saturday and it’s Ras y Moelwyn, the yearly dash over the Moelwyns. This is
what the race was like last year. The winner does the 10.2 miles and 2,800 feet
of altitude gain in just 80 minutes!
I’m busy
training for my fourth entry of madness into this race, all part of an even more reckless plan to do the Coed y Brenin marathon on 23rd June.
It’s slippery enough in good conditions but I’m not sure how I’ll fare if the
snow is still around. This is what it was like half way up on 5th April.
