ELAN LAKES— WILD SOUTH WALES 



of oak, ash, or sycamore, their meadows in the vale, their 

 unfenced sheep-walks in the wild above. The Aberyst- 

 with road, too, cUngs to the valley, even to its water- 

 shed fifteen miles away, where on a fine grade it climbs 

 the high, wild pass of Steddfa-Curig on Phnlimmon's 

 foot. A narrow, little-used, but well-laid and beautiful 

 road was this to travel on but a dozen years ago. Now, 

 however, the seaward-bound motorist has made it his 

 own, half-ruined its surface, and turned the once quiet 

 and rarely travelled byway up an entrancing valley 

 into a species of uproarious race-track throughout the 

 summer months. One may well wonder what glimmer- 

 ing of consciousness abides with these people of the 

 infinite charm of this uppermost valley of the Wye 

 that they are tearing through at twenty-five or thirty 

 miles an hour, for the even grade tempts them. Let 

 us forget them, however. It is not always July and 

 August, thank heaven ! And even August has not yet 

 discovered anything south of Plinlimmon, for which we 

 may render further thanks. 



By the church of St. Curig, the patron saint of the 

 vale at the hamlet of Llangurig, ten miles up from 

 Rhayader, there is an excellent fishing-inn of old and 

 good repute, the Black Lion. The Wye runs within 

 a bow-shot of the door, and the privilege of fishing for 

 some miles up and down is attached to it. One of 

 those fine, old, Welsh landladies, and there are none 

 better, catered here for a generation of anglers, and 

 was a power not only in her own house but in the 

 valley. She is dead now, but the hostelry is still carried 

 on. Llangurig is a veritable little oasis in a fine, wild 

 country, though but five miles by a good road from 



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