Llyn Dywarchen
Llyn Dywarchen
Deep in Snowdonia lies a lake across which an island once floated. In folklore, this is not unusual. St Brendan’s Isles drifted around the globe for centuries, and seven of Britain’s canonised saints apparently floated to our shores on a sod. But in this case, the island was real, and unusual enough for Edmund Halley the astronomer to swim out and see for himself in 1698. He described a piece of turf broken loose from the bank and buoyed up by the lightness of “broad-spreading fungous roots on its sides”. Others will tell you it was the tylwyth teg – the fairy folk – who created the floating island on Llyn y Dywarchen. Respect must be paid to the mischievous tylwyth teg. Their world is a shifting one. They thwarted me with bogs, felled trees, redirected paths, vanishing buses, and even conspired to send me to the wrong lake. There is, it transpires, more than one Llyn y Dywarchen.
Rory Trappe
Image size: 5760 x 3840, 20.36Mb | Camera details: Canon EOS 5D Mark III | Date uploaded: 12/09/2019