A VILLAGE IN SNOWDONIA - BEDDGELERT

JUNE 12, 2026

              THE VILLAGE COMMON, WITH THE MOUNTAINS JUST OUT OF TOWN

This week I would like to take you to a village in the midst of Snowdonia National Park in North Wales. Fran and I were privileged to spend a week in this area, in the very quaint and prosperous village of Betwys-y-Coed, one of the gateways of the park. This village contains 400 souls, and is devoted to serving two groups - “pensioners” like us and mountain climbers of all ages. Half of the stores were devoted to hiking equipment, and we could have probably gotten retail jobs there since a lot of the stock seemed to be right out of Portland stores in the Pearl.

We were blessed to stay at the bed and breakfast which was owned by Chris and David, who went so far beyond the call of duty in accommodating a couple of guests who just barely could manage their traditional property at the edge of the village. They made our stay a week to remember. 

One morning David offered to show us some of the park near Betwys-y-Coed. We gleefully agreed, since Fran would get out of driving and get to pay her full attention to the scenery for once. David was game since he got out of cleaning one of the rooms, and off we went on a short jaunt to one of the parts of this incredible park. Four hours later we returned to the B&B, and our delight was only exceeded by David’s pleasure in showing us around the amazing place they called home. 

Snowdonia contains most of the mountainous area of North Wales, and even thought mountains are just one fourth the height of the mountains in the Cascades, they are so formidable that England’s Everest expeditions train in the area. Great Britain’s National Parks were inspired by America’s, but they have a very different definition of wilderness than we do. Everything is so old that it would be almost impossible to find an area that had not been inhabited sometime in the last few hundred years. So our definition of a “roadless” wilderness is not really applicable. On the other hand just because a country lane leads to a medieval village in the middle of a forest doesn’t mean that you will find yourself completely alone in an area seemingly devoid of humans just over the next hill. The juxtaposition of what is essentially wilderness with small villages from time immemorial was something very new for Fran and myself as we drove through the park.

We went for some coffee and pastries in one of those small villages in the park. Beddgelert was on the map, and I had even noted it as a place to go, but we would have never found it without David driving us there through the mountains on roads which were not readily apparent to foreigners. Beddgelert was typical only in the fact that it was in the middle of nowhere, seemingly out of some other time period, but had pubs, teashops and stores galore. It seemed to be thriving despite the fact that the roads probably cannot support tour busses to bring the tourists around. 

Beddgelert was centered on a common area that seemed to be the social and recreational center of the village. This image is my attempt to capture the atmosphere of one area of that common. An ancient stone wall and an heroic Oak tree out of The Lord of the Rings form one of the boundaries of the common land of the village. Just beyond that wall lie some of the mountains that have defined the village’s isolation for centuries.

This image was pretty much straight-out-of-camera, at least for me. Just a little straightening, since I was comfortably sitting on a bench in the park, but you would be amazed at how eliminating that 1% out of whack can do fro your images. The colors were fine, but I did use three masks to even out the exposure, which was beyond the camera’s sensor, to what I remembered of the scene. Dehazing was necessary to bring out some of the details in the mountains. As usual, the sky was reduced a full stop to balance out with exposure of the overall scene. In this case I used a brush to further reduce the exposure on the middle of the mountains to bring out even more detail. Finally I brushed back a touch of exposure to brighten the lighter areas of the mountain slope. If you can “see” any of this manipulation, even after I have told you about it, then I have failed in my mission to convey the reality of what I felt at the time.