Missed a trick
Excellent article (though I'd be interested to know how those photos were created - they look like heavily sharpened framegrabs from a widescreen video) but at the risk of making it even longer (I love a good long read), it might have been enlightening to some of our non Welsh-speaking colleagues to have explained one or two of those difficult-to-pronounce place names.
I believe that "Dolgarrog" itself probably refers to a "rocky valley", while "Carnedd" is Welsh for cairn or mound, so alongside a name probably refers to an ancient burial. "Moel" (Foel in the article) means "bare" and is often part of the name of a hill or mountain.
The really fun one though - and one I've not spotted previously for some unknown reason - is Pen Llithrig y Gwrach. "Pen" has several related meanings but probably simply means "hill" in this context. "Llithrig" means "slippery" or "smooth" (though as this is a mountain we're talking about, could it be a corruption of "Llethrig"; "steep"?). The most common modern use of "Gwrach" is "witch", but I am told (by my dictionary) that it can also refer to many other things, from particular birds, to woodlice, to a respiratory illness (presumably because it made you cough like an old hag), to the "lid" of reed or bracken put on top of a hayrick. Which is it in this case I wonder? "The Witch's Slippery Hill"?
And what is the origin of "Eigiau"?
Sorry, somewhat OT, but this sort of thing interests me :-)
M.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
