The scattered cottages and old toll-house of Glasfryn bring one to Cernioge, the place to which the milestones have been insistently directing, since Corwen. What, the stranger wonders, is this place (“Kernioggy” the Welsh pronounce it) that it should be thus dignified? Well, here it is, just a farmhouse lying back from the road, with a pond beside it under the trees, a few outbuildings, and an older toll-house than the Glasfryn one. Not, nowadays, a very striking spot, except for its remote solitude; yet this, in the old days of road-travel, was a quite famous inn and posting-house, a stage between Bettws-y-Coed and the “Druid’s Head.” The inevitable reflection here is that if it was to such lonely places as this that travellers of old were glad to come, exclaiming with delight as to their comfort, how discomfortable must travelling then have been!

The older toll-gate standing close by, and early deserted, was found to be inconveniently close to the inn, and certainly no postboy, having been halted at the gate for toll, could in the few remaining yards drive his patrons up to the house with the flourish and circumstance that the times demanded. It is all very well nowadays, when even a first-class fare between London and Holyhead only costs a trifle over two guineas, for the traveller to leave the railway station in the decent obscurity of a cab; but, in times when a journey between those places might cost anything from thirty to fifty pounds sterling, travellers liked some pomp and circumstance for that expenditure. And they generally obtained it, for when travelling was so costly that few but the well-to-do were found upon the roads, and when the guest at an inn was wont to drink many bottles of the best port, it was eminently desirable he should be received and despatched with the greatest show of consideration.

“Cernioge Mawr”—or “Great Cernioge”—was the full name of the place. George Borrow conceived it to have derived from “Corniawg,” which means a place with many chimneys or turrets; certainly not descriptive of the existing house, but perhaps so in remote days when an old mansion stood here, its gables and clustered chimneys prominent to wayfarers in this solitude while they were yet far off, down the road.

The accommodation at Cernioge, whose sign, by the way, was the “Prince Llewelyn,” seems to have varied considerably at different times, and somewhat over a hundred years ago it appears to have been very bad. Some tourists in 1795, hearing that the inn kept three chaises and a post-coach, assumed a larder to match, but found “not a single article of food that even hungry appetites could relish.” Another, three years later, in speaking of the house as “a solitary inn, in the midst of a desert, chiefly intended for the accommodation of the coaches which run this road,” talks bitterly of the larder “in unison with the population of the country: nothing to be had but a leg of mutton, which it seems was tripping over the dark brown heath about three hours ago.”

By 1836, however, a change had come over the scene, for another tourist is found to speak of the “comforts and accommodations not being exaggerated”; but by that time its day was almost done. Another ten years saw the road exchanged for the rail, and Cernioge became what it is now, a farm.

Beyond this sometime inn the road descends, and “Snowdonia”—a term invented by Pennant a hundred and thirty years ago—opens up before the advancing explorer; a majestic disarray of tumbled peaks and lesser hills, smeared across with trailing mists. Then, in two miles, comes the hamlet of Pentre Voelas, with the “Voelas Arms,” a slate-fronted inn, by the way, displaying a very elaborately blazoned coat-of-arms over its door. “Toujours Prest” says the motto under that family scutcheon, and a very good motto too. Let us hope it has always been descriptive of the inn also, and that it, unlike Cernioge, was “Always Ready.”

From this point it is a seven-mile descent to Bettws-y-Coed and the Vale of Conway: a descent beginning gradually and gently, with pleasant scenery on either side, and culminating in a two-mile length of steep and winding road, with towering rocks overhanging on the one hand, and a deep wood-enshrouded valley on the other. Beside the road stands an inscribed stone that tells how Llewelyn ap Seicyllt, an obscure Prince of Wales, was slain in 1021.

Passing Henresea toll-house at five and a half miles from Bettws, the rocky chasm is skirted where the Conway boils and frets and splashes over obstructing boulders, or flows swiftly and with an unwonted calmness over some reach of smooth-slabbed rock. At the bridge of Glan Conway, where the road is taken across, is one of these quiet interludes. The water glides with a silent swiftness, infinitely impressive, over rocks clothed in moss, as it were in green velvet: the “Lincoln green” of Robin Hood and his merry men. Deep pools, a little aside from the main current, have the hue of dilute stout and porter; as though a raft freighted with Barclay and Perkins’ best had made grievous shipwreck here; shallower pools resemble brown sherry, and the sliding main stream, threaded with gold by the glancing sunlight, resembles some god-like brew of nectar or ambrosia, tipped into the kennel and run to waste by the fanaticism of some celestial Wilfrid Lawson.

The Conway presently plunges quite out of sight below the mountain road that winds on a cornice at Dinas Hill, lodged midway between the depths and the heights, and buttressed by sturdy masonry against sliding down into the woods whose tree-tops are seen far below. Away ahead, blocking a long valley, the great peaked mountain of Moel Siabod rises up and pretends to be Snowdon; imposing on many a confiding stranger with its 2,800 feet and bold outline, and discounting the real view of Snowdon, 700 feet higher, but not so effectively seen, at Capel Curig.

This profound valley, or rather, meeting-place of valleys, is a kind of rendezvous of many waters—the Machno, the Llugwy, the Lledr—pouring into the Conway. Fairy glens and waterfalls abound down below in those dense woods, and on still summer days, when the winds are hushed, one may hear the voices of those confluent streams and falls, mingled in a hoarse whisper. The pilgrim, strange to this road, adventuring afoot or awheel from these commanding heights onward and downwards to Bettws, is presently possessed with a curiosity to know how much further the descent goes. Downward and still down, meeting cyclists, carriages, and waggonettes crawling up, he goes and, passing another toll-house, comes at last to the valley, beside the Conway again. Here, where the road turns with a singular abruptness to the left, Telford has spanned that stream with the Waterloo Bridge, a single cast-iron arch, beautiful in itself, and, decorated with emblematic and symbolic representations of the Rose, Thistle, Shamrock, and Leek—the floral and vegetable badges of our composite kingdoms and principalities—proving that Telford had something of the artistic sense, as well as engineering genius. Cast-iron lettering, pierced and easily to be read, follows the course of the arch and explains why “Waterloo” Bridge was so named. “This arch,” it says, “was constructed in the same year the battle of Waterloo was fought.” The names of Telford, of the iron-founder, and of the foreman of works, are all recorded in cast iron.