#trawsfynydd

[disease]

ROB JENKINS // TRAWSFYNYDD 06 [TRAWSFYNYDD, 2023]

[cydrhos]

Trawsfynydd footbridge, spanning the 360m narrows of a reservoir built in the 1920s for hydroelectric power. The footbridge was built as a solution to the loss of rights of way into the village from the other side of the valley. From 1965 the water was use for cooling the adjacent nuclear power station. The station closed in 1991 and decommissioning will be completed in 2083.

92 years to close something we only used for 26 seems like a waste. I imagine that it would still be generating were it not for the social preference for industrialisation of our AONBs.

I'm not a big fan (no pun intended) of what we fatuously call wind farms. They're not farms and they don't ameliorate environmental damage -- they are environmental damage. If we must have them, let's put them where they belong: on existing developments, in tandem with PV panels, and not in prominent locations in the countryside.

[lovewales]

Pont Gain, Trawsfynydd  |  by Myfyr Tomos

[breuddwydcymraeg]

Yr Ysgwrn, Tŷ Hedd Wyn, Trawsfynydd, 2016.

A part of the house and farm of the famous Welsh poet Ellis Humphrey Evans, more commonly known by his bardic name Hedd Wyn.

He was killed on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele during World War I. Hedd Wyn was posthumously awarded the bard's chair at the 1917 National Eisteddfod, one of the highest honours a bard can recieve in Wales.

[mariocki]

Hedd Wynn (Ellis Humphrey Evans) 13.1.1887 - 31.7.1917

The Welsh poet, killed on the first day of the Battle of Passchendaele and recipient of the ‘Black Chair’ at the 1917 Eisteddfod. Hedd Wynn was his bardic name, meaning blessed or sacred peace; Ellis lived on the family farm in Trawsfynydd and spent his days working the land, writing by night. A socialist and a pacifist, he initially refused to enlist in the army - but when conscription was introduced, only one man of military age could be spared to help run the farm. Ellis enlisted to spare his younger brother, Robert.

Ellis had won several chairs at local Eisteddfodau, but always hoped to win a national award. He completed his final poem, Yr Arwr, in Fléchin, France and submitted it to the 1917 Eisteddfod via Royal Mail. He did not live to know he had won.

At the Eisteddfod, trumpets sounded for the author of the winning poem to present themselves and take their chair. After sounding three times, the Archdruid stepped forward and announced that Hedd Wynn had fallen in battle - the empty chair was draped in a black cloth.

A committee was formed in Trawsfynydd to safeguard Ellis’ legacy and preserve his manuscripts. In 1923 a bronze statue was unveiled in the centre of the village. Tellingly, it depicts Ellis not as a soldier or writer, but as a shepherd.

[lovewales]

Trawsfynydd  |  by Keith O’Brien

[anny-chovy]

Rest area, Trawsfynydd nuclear power station, landscape designed by Sylvia Crowe. Photo courtesy of People's Collection Wales / Casgliad y Werin Cymru

[anny-chovy]

picnic at the power plant - on the way home from our holiday we stopped by the decommissioned Magnox nuclear power plant in Trawsfynydd