From the old toll-house at Llanfairpwllgwyngyll to Holyhead it is only twenty-one miles, but there are no fewer than five toll-houses on the way, all in as good and sufficient repair as though they had only retired from business yesterday. And indeed it is not so long since the gates were swept out of existence, and this remote corner of the country freed from these irritating taxes on the farmers and villagers. It is a curious fact that to the Holyhead Road belongs the distinction of having been under the control of turnpike trusts for a longer period than any road in the kingdom. That portion of it lying in Bedfordshire and Bucks was the first road placed in the care of trustees, instead of in the hands of the parish surveyors, and is described in the Act of 1706, handing it over to the new jurisdiction, as “now and for many years past the common post-road towards Ireland.” The greater number of the gates were swept away from 1860 to 1870, but Shropshire was not rid of them until November 1st, 1883, nor Denbighshire and Merioneth until a year later; while, under the Annual Turnpike Continuance Act of 1884, the Carnarvonshire gates levied toll until November 1st, 1890, and by the Act of that year the Anglesey gates were continued until November 1st, 1895.

At Gaerwen village the road descends to Pentre Berw, the “Holland Arms,” and the snipe-haunted Malldraeth Marsh; rising again to where the church and isolated cottages of Llangristiolus stand overlooking a vast expanse of mountains, marsh, and sea, from a curious rocky bluff, cleft by a huge fissure; the effect, perhaps, of some prehistoric earthquake. The name of Llangristiolus, grotesque though it sounds, means the “church of the most worshipful Christ.” “Mona,” two miles beyond, the place mentioned on all the Anglesey milestones, is—or was when such things were—the half-way house between Bangor and Holyhead. The inn, for such it was, is referred to by Telford in his reports to the Holyhead Road Commissioners as having been a part of the work undertaken, and the cost of building it is included in the estimates. Never anything but ugly, it is a melancholy enough place in these days of railway travel: remote in the middle of Anglesey, and now a farmhouse, encircled with trees.

Gwalchmai, by comparison with Mona, is a veritable metropolis, with inns, aye, and shops, and a post-office. Between this and Bryngwran, a stone-walled enclosure in midst of hillside fields marks the spot where some one has chosen to be buried. Why that solitary place was selected is hid from the Saxon by the Welsh inscription on the tombstone.

Now comes the village of Caer Ceiliog, with windmills and toll-house overlooking the descent from Anglesey into Holy Island. When the gate was first erected the Road Commissioners experienced some little trouble at the hands of a certain Reverend Mr. Griffiths, who had objections against paying tolls. It seems that when the parish had made all the necessary legal arrangements with the Commissioners for the new road constructed just here, the authority required for stopping up the old one was forgotten and not applied for; so when the old way was abandoned and fenced in, compelling travellers to pass through the gate and pay toll, the Reverend Mr. Griffiths, learned in the law, pulled down the obstructions and passed down the old road, toll free. Naturally, the neighbours all followed his example, and the horrified lessee of the tolls, who had bought them at auction for the year, saw his income going. The trouble had to be remedied by a special Act.

From Caer Ceiliog the crest of Holyhead Mountain, ten miles distant, is seen; a dark-blue mass suspended, to all appearance, in mid-air, like some fabled scene of Arabian Nights adventures. It is the original Holy Head; in Welsh “Pen Caer Cybi,” or the Head of Cybi’s town—Cybi himself a Welsh saint who somewhere about the year 500 founded a college where Holyhead town now stands. That rugged mountain rises from the sea to a height of 719 feet, and is rarely free from the dense sea-fogs that make the neighbourhood of Holyhead so dangerous to mariners. The billowy vapours, often leaving the upper part of the mountain clear, create this startlingly complete illusion of a suspended island, and dispose the stranger to come into Holyhead expectant of marvels.

Coming, thus expectant, down from Caer Ceiliog, the old road is crossed at Valley, a modern village with a railway station. A quarter of a mile beyond, road and rail go side by side across the Stanley Sands, dividing Anglesey and Holy Island: the road on Telford’s great mile-long embankment and the rail on the left, hid from sight by a dull masonry wall some sixteen or twenty feet high. The scene is still as melancholy as it was when Borrow tramped past, with the broad channel a waste of sand at low tide, and a furious salt-water stream at the flood, rushing with great force through the arches in the middle of the embankment. The winds that boom and buzz across the flat shores and rank grasses, and the waves lapping about the seaweed and rotting timbers of ancient wrecks, give the place a sinister and mournful air.

At the Holy Island end of the embankment stands the last toll-house, and thenceforward the town of Holyhead begins.