Qualla: Aberglaslyn Pass

Aberglaslyn Pass: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 3.0. The Devil built the bridge. That was the deal: he would raise the stones across the gorge of the Afon Glaslyn, and in payment he would receive the soul of the first living creature to cross it. When the work was finished he walked up to the inn called Y Delyn Aur, the Golden Harp, to tell the magician Robin Ddu his side of the bargain was complete. Robin came down to inspect the new bridge with a hot loaf of bread in his hands and a stray dog padding behind him, hopeful for crumbs. Robin pretended to doubt the bridge's strength. The Devil, insulted, demanded that the magician test it with the loaf. Robin threw the loaf out across the stones. The dog ran after it. The Devil had his first soul: a dog's. He left the gorge in a rage. The bridge still stands at the south end of the Aberglaslyn Pass, the narrowest and most dramatic gorge in Snowdonia.

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Image: CC BY-SA 3.0

Aberglaslyn Pass: The Magician and the Bread

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit mattbuck (category), CC BY-SA 3.0. Versions of the Devil-built bridge story attach to nearly every old crossing in Britain, Brittany, and Switzerland, so the Aberglaslyn tale is part of a wide European folk pattern. What makes the local version interesting is that Robin Ddu was a real person. Robin Ddu ap Siencyn ...

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Image: mattbuck (category) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aberglaslyn Pass: Sea, River, and the Cob

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nigel Swales, CC BY-SA 2.0. Two centuries ago the Aberglaslyn Pass was tidal. Before William Madocks built the great embankment called The Cob across the Traeth Mawr estuary at Porthmadog in 1812, the sea reached as far inland as Pont Aberglaslyn at high tide. Small boats came up the Glaslyn to the foot of ...

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Image: Nigel Swales | CC BY-SA 2.0

Aberglaslyn Pass: Three Tunnels and a Railway

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit mattbuck (category), CC BY-SA 3.0. The Welsh Highland Railway threaded a narrow-gauge line through the Aberglaslyn Pass between 1906 and 1922, blasting three tunnels through the steep flank of the gorge so that small trains could run from Dinas, near Caernarfon, down to Porthmadog. The line was always uneconomic. ...

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Image: mattbuck (category) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Aberglaslyn Pass: What the Gorge Holds

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martinvl, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Aberglaslyn Pass is short - less than two miles between Beddgelert and the open ground at Bryn-y-felin - but it concentrates an unusual amount of Welsh landscape into that distance. The river runs fast and deep, broken by boulders, kayakable in high water for those who know w...

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Image: Martinvl | CC BY-SA 4.0