Anglesey and North Wales
Map coordinates: OSR 6 (Wales/Cymru & West Midlands) and Elliott 1997
(p. 106).
Route: South from Bangor via the A5 towards Betws-y-Coed, through Snowdonia.
Log: Heading south from Bangor at 8:15 on a cool, clear and dry morning--the
only sunny day in a week--we drove past cloud-capped
hills and steep, sloping pastures.
Gawain’s journey in SGGK begins in Camelot, which, in keeping with Arthurian
convention, is not identified with an historical location. (Malory puts it in
Winchester, but this is a late development in Arthurian legend.) The first reference
to an historical place-name occurs in 697-98, when Gawain enters North Wales
and passes Anglesey. Here the SGGK poet writes that
Gawain “keeps all the isles of Anglesey on his left” (698) and then crosses
by ford at “the Holy Head” to the Wirral (700-01), the peninsula between the
mouths of the Rivers Dee and Mersey which in the 14th century was a notorious
wilderness.
In the century before SGGK was written, Edward I had fortified North Wales and
Anglesey with castles such as Caernarfon (birthplace
of Edward II) and Beaumaris as a means of controlling
the Welsh. In the Vulgate Cycle of Arthurian romances, North Wales is the domain
of the King and Queen of North Wales. In the Prose Lancelot and in Malory's
Morte Darthur, the Queen of North Wales is one of Morgan le Fay’s companions
in an attempt to seduce Lancelot. Thus, North Wales would be the first hint that
Gawain’s journey will take him to Morgan le Fay.
Anglesey is today the name of the largest in a group of islands off the coast
of North Wales, accessible from Bangor via the Menai Bridge, one of England’s
earliest suspension bridges. It is dotted with Neolithic standing stones and
tumuli,
and it is the site of one of the oldest hermitages in Britain, St.
Seirol’s well.
Our route down the A5 to Betws and then back up along the Conwy is not likely
the route that Gawain would have taken from Angelsey. After passing Anglesey
on his left Gawain more likely would have headed due east towards the Wirral.
However, it is possible that Snowdonia was part of the “realm of Logres” (691)--the
literary name for Arthur’s kingdom--through which Gawain passed on his way from
Camelot on the way to Anglesey.
This site by Michael Twomey; last updated: see home page