Qualla: Swallow Falls

Swallow Falls: Introduction

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Worm That Turned, CC BY-SA 4.0. Stand on the viewing platform at Swallow Falls in spate after a wet autumn and you can feel the bedrock through your feet. The River Llugwy comes down off the Carneddau and runs past Betws-y-Coed in a series of steps and pools, and at this particular bend, a few miles west of the village, it has carved itself into a multiple waterfall that flows around a central rock and splits into shapes that the eighteenth-century guidebook writers thought looked like a swallow's tail. The Welsh name Rhaeadr Ewynnol means foaming falls. The English name has rather more elegance and less truth to the etymology, but it has stuck for two and a half centuries.

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Image: Worm That Turned | CC BY-SA 4.0

Swallow Falls: A Question of Name

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland, CC BY-SA 2.0. The name puzzle here is real. The English Swallow Falls and the Welsh Rhaeadr Ewynnol look like translations of each other but do not actually correspond, and neither matches an older Welsh form that might have lurked beneath them both. Place-name scholars have suggested that the...

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Image: Tom Parnell from Scottish Borders, Scotland | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swallow Falls: Electricity for Betws-y-Coed

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Raintheone, CC BY-SA 4.0. By 1899, the falls were already enough of a tourist draw that a local proposal suggested using them to generate electricity for Betws-y-Coed and to illuminate the falls themselves for night-time viewing. The plan, ambitious and a little theatrical, foundered, but the idea showed ...

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Image: Raintheone | CC BY-SA 4.0

Swallow Falls: An Embezzlement

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. In 1939 Richard Morris, a former chairman of the local council, was charged with making false entries in the upkeep of the tolls. The total deficiency was sixty-seven pounds, fifteen shillings, and sixpence. Morris had already repaid the sum by the time the charge was laid, which...

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Image: David Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swallow Falls: Visiting Today

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit David Dixon, CC BY-SA 2.0. The falls remain a paid attraction, accessed from a roadside layby on the A5 between Betws-y-Coed and Capel Curig. A turnstile takes the fee. A path with steps and viewing platforms drops down through the woods to the river, and on a busy summer weekend you queue for the railing ...

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Image: David Dixon | CC BY-SA 2.0

Swallow Falls: The Llugwy and Its Country

Mon, 25 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Clintheacock66 (talk) (Transferred by Hogweard/Originally uploaded by Clintheacock66), CC BY-SA 3.0. Swallow Falls is one feature in a river that produces a string of small wonders along its course through Snowdonia. The Llugwy rises near Capel Curig under the shadow of the Glyderau, threads through Tryweryn and past Pont-y-Pair in Betws-y-Coed, and joins the Conwy at the villag...

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Image: Clintheacock66 (talk) (Transferred by Hogweard/Originally uploaded by Clintheacock66) | CC BY-SA 3.0