A Cambered Surface of the Road Look East

© Kanovium Project

Climbing to the second highest point of the Caerhun - Caernarvon Roman road, looking east. The surface here is a mix of gravel and fairly large cobbles, evidence of Medieval and much later maintenance of the road explains the differing surfaces, all the time bordered by these large grey stones, are they in situ or have they been placed here to indicate the route?  At the head of the pass here stands the fine standing stone shown on image one of this page, just as columns are placed today on exposed mountain ridges.  This can be seen today on Y Wyddfa, the track from the Pen y Pass Youth Hostel is a popular one, known today as the P.Y.G (Pen-y-Gwryd) track, after the nearby inn at Pen-Y-Gwryd, the only problem bieng that walkers in time of bad weather failed to notice the whale back ridge upon which the railway runs and actually walked off into oblivion.  Therefore a stone column was erected at the oint were the track met with the Snowdon Railway. While I am not suggesting that the head of this pass is anything as near as severe as the coll at Bwlch Glas it is still not a place you would want to find yourself at nightfall in winter, or in snow or mist, Kanovium is but a few miles distant to the east in the Conwy Valley, you could almost see it beyond the Bwlch, but the mountain terrain would have been less drained in those far gone days and it is just possible the Roman surveyors would have been happy to leave any previous route markers in situ.