COUNTRY DIARY PORTHMADOG

Gwynedd, Wales, UK

John Gilbey

I am on the last stretch of my walk and I stop to take a breather beside a dry-stone wall. A robin, feathers arrayed like armour against the cold wind, sings from a small branch. In the trees, the song seems unreasonably loud when compared with the size of the bird, a piercing call to help establish a breeding territory. The lane climbs higher, through a notch in the ridge where a wall of rock shows the steeply dipping strata. Then the view to the south opens out to a panorama of the harbour town of Porthmadog. Separating land and sea is a narrow causeway, the Cob, which carries a road and the Ffestiniog narrow-gauge railway. Built in about 1810 by the landowner William Madocks, the bank was originally intended…

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Guardian Weekly (Digital) - 1 Issue, 21 March 2025

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