Date | 3 July 2015 | ||
Location | Malltraeth, Anglesey | SH 40836 68453; 53.18927°N, 4.38369°W | |
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Malltraeth Cob is a 1.6 km long sea embankment forming part of the flood-defence system of Malltraeth Marsh. The latter is a flatland valley 8 km long and 3 km wide lying on either side of the Afon Cefni to the south of Llangefni on Anglesey. The river Cefni itself is 17 km long, starts at Llyn Cefni and empties into the Irish Sea at Malltraeth Sands. With existing defences having been breached by storms in the 1790s, extensive repair work overseen by Scottish civil engineers Thomas Telford (1757-1834) and John Rennie (1761-1821) was undertaken in the early 19th century, with the current cob being completed in 1812. The river was also canalised and embanked and the draining of the marsh enabled agricultural use of the land as well as the development of the A5 road and the coal mine at Pentre Berw. The Chester and Holyhead Railway was also lain across the reclaimed land, with the viaduct over the river being completed in 1848. Malltraeth Marsh has been designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and it includes an RSPB reserve.
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Looking towards Malltraeth village. The village grew up around the maintenance base and workers’ housing created during the early 19th-century flood-defence development.

Former tidal door. This was removed from its original location in 2010 and put on display. Telford developed self-acting sluice doors which closed at high tide to prevent flooding and opened again at low tide to allow water in the sluices to flow out.

Malltraeth Cob. The path along the top of the embankment is part of the Anglesey Coastal Path and also forms part of the Lon Las Cefni cycle route from Newborough to Llyn Cefni.

Afon Cefni with the railway viaduct in the distance. The viaduct carrying the Chester and Holyhead Railway (now the North Wales Coast Railway Line) over the Afon Cefni was completed in 1848 and was strengthened in 1966.

Flood relief channel, with the main river lying behind the embankment on the left. The river was canalised and embanked to prevent flooding and is itself tidal. The flow of the side relief channels into which water from the flatland drains is, however, controlled by sluice gates.
Beautiful landscape.
Thank you! The path along the top of the embankment makes for a very pleasant stroll.
I like to walk on such embankments. I am a flat country kid and grew up with rolling down the grassy sides (or even sleighing there) in my home area near the river Elbe 😀
Sounds like fun!
Brilliant shots, Graham – as always! Your photos have this serene strength! Very unique. 🙂
Many thanks, Marina. Your comments are much appreciated,
interesting place, looks quite barren but I imagine its a great place for wildlife.
Also a good place for wild samphire on the sand flats!
Beautiful place captured beautifully by you.
Many thanks, Lynn.
Nantlle – this is perhaps Llew’s river?
According to Place-names in Snowdonia it is from Lleu, a Celtic and Brythonic sun god, whose name also features in Dinas Dinlle near Caernarfon.
Thanks, lovely photographs! I have visited the Nantlle Valley. Calling Lleu a sun god suggests to me the author was consulting some rather dated references on mythology. Western mythological thought has been under the sway of the classics since basically Roman times, and the Greek material they absorbed had changed since the Greek archaic period, when these myths were formed. Accordingly – and in concert with late pagan antiquity – we tend to see the sun as exclusively male in gender and the moon as female. I would suggest the contrary was more the norm in remote times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lugus#Etymology
Indeed, to the lay person the consonance between Lleu (=Lug?) and the Proto-Celtic word for the moon is striking: *loukno- / *louxsno- (?), *lug-rā- . Lleu alights in an oak tree within the Nantlle Valley as an eagle, and both bird and tree are emblematic of Roman Jupiter, in essence a lunar, bovine weather or storm god I believe http://www.wales.ac.uk/Resources/Documents/Research/CelticLanguages/EnglishProtoCelticWordlist.pdf
Cobblers, eh?
Thanks for the link, Ric. I was interested to note the toponymic connection to Lothian – my home county!
No worries – yes, a lot of what we take for granted is just that: cobblers 🙂 So what is Lleu’s connection to shoe-smiths? I think it’s horses, August 1st in especially Ireland -‘Lughnasadh’ was associated with horse racing and both the shod and unshod impression of a horse’s hoof resembles or suggests the lunar crescent http://understandingthehorse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/horse-sole.jpg
Beautiful photographs of what is really a very hard place to do justice to. I loved your inclusion of the Nantlle Ridge in the first shot. I went looking for Charles Tunnicliffe’s house in Malltraeth, but failed to find it…he’s a favourite illustrator with me 🙂
Yes, I couldn’t not include some of the mountains on view there 😉
There is a picture of Tunnicliffe’s house here: http://malltraeth.com/index.php/tunnicliffe Is it just by the bridge then?
I’m glad you have decided to leave these shots in color, Graham!! they are beautiful, the colors are fresh and cheerful… the scenes are so serene yet energizing… love your clean and minimal compositions… !! wonderful series indeed ♥
Alexandra, I’m very happy that you liked them. Colour was absolutely necessary for these 😉
oh and… the man and his dog could be the cover of a book, lovely story there 🙂
🙂
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There are some frames of Nantlle here. One of the lakes has now been drained which gave Baladeulyn its name and there was no oak tree here – as there is in the Mabinogion – so I had to find one nearby. We film-makers are facing a challenging time since Kodak pulled the plug on Ektachrome and the Italian company who were going to fill the gap are now overdue by months – no sign of any cine film yet from that quarter https://youtu.be/Rglo4za0EHQ