As he gazed at a map of Britain the bored schoolboy could imagine a kind of seated, turbanned figure looking west about to draw on a poster – Ireland. We could even see that he was holding a pen, with his thumb cocked over it, in contemplation. Well if the thumb is Anglesey, then the poised pen is the Llŷn (or Lleyn) peninsula.
And if he had a detailed map the boy could, at a squint, realise that a drop of ink was geologically falling from the nib of said pen… And that was Bardsey Island.
This is a great part of the world to explore, and if you are afloat there are some great little anchorages where you can tuck yourself away from the weather. The Llŷn peninsula extends some 30 miles from NE to SW out of the rugged beauty of Snowdonia with the picturesque city of Caernarfon at its (north landward) Anglesey end and Porthmadog to the south.
Anchored in Tremadog Bay waiting to enter Porthmadog Hilaire Belloc wrote: “There is no corner of Europe, not even the splendid
Yr Eifl’s western shoulder cascades down to the sea above Trefor halfway down the northern coast of the Lleyn Peninsula
amphitheatre standing in tiers of high Alpine wall around Udine, which so moves me with the awe and majesty of great things as does this mass of the northern Welsh Mountains seen from this corner of their silent sea.”
The Llŷn or Lleyn is green and unspoilt with several mountains of its own, the largest of which is Yr Eifl 1,841ft (561m) overlooking the north coast. On the south side is the only port of Pwllheli, though there are anchorages at Llanbedrog, sheltered by cliffs to the west and a river into Abersoch (a shallow harbour) also well sheltered from westerly winds at this northern end of Cardigan Bay.
There is also an anchorage at Bardsey (if you can handle the swells in a bit of weather), and two further nicks in the northern coast at the old fishing village of Porthdinllaen (Morfa Nefyn) where the Tŷ Coch Inn is a gastro pub… and then there’s old Trefor’s Pier – though this is shallow.
Relevant charts are Imray’s 2700 North and West Wales Chart Atlas, Admiralty Small Craft 5609 folios and Reeds Almanac.
You can find Hilaire Belloc’s Cruise of the Nona (1925) at abebooks.co.uk
DH