Qualla: Mynydd Bodafon

Mynydd Bodafon: Introduction

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

There is a lake on the top of Mynydd Bodafon called Gors Fawr - 'the big marsh' in Welsh - and local stories insist that it has no bottom. It is said to connect underground to the lakes of Snowdonia, twenty miles south across the Menai Strait. Both claims are false. The lake is spring-fed, sits in a shallow basin of pre-Cambrian rock, and contains rudd, roach and pike. But the legend is the sort that grows up around bodies of standing water that refuse to dry out even in the hardest summers, and Gors Fawr is one of those. Mynydd Bodafon is the highest natural point on the island of Anglesey, though not in the modern county - that distinction goes to Holyhead Mountain. The summit ridge holds a small cluster of peaks rising out of heathland, dotted with the remains of Iron Age huts and the older silence of druidic tradition.

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Mynydd Bodafon: Reading the Name

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The meaning of Bodafon is obscure. Bod is a common Welsh placename element meaning 'dwelling.' Afon usually means 'river,' but the topography here rules that out - there is no river to live beside. The likely explanation is that afon is a corruption of an older personal name, A(e...

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Mynydd Bodafon: Heathland and Adder

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Mynydd Bodafon's habitat is heathland, shaped by centuries of light grazing and occasional fire. Different heathers cover the slopes, with two species of gorse, cotton grass, bog asphodel and tormentil scattered through. Adders bask in the warm grass on summer mornings; small liz...

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Mynydd Bodafon: Irishmen's Huts

Sun, 24 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

East of the lake, on the eastern flank of the hill, lies an Iron Age settlement known locally as Cytiau'r Gwyddelod - the Irishmen's huts. The name is misleading: the huts almost certainly weren't built by Irish settlers but by local British people during the Iron Age and Romano-...

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