Or’eira, Llanfacherth, Dolgellau 11th April 2004
Arrived yesterday – our first stay here. It is wonderfully quiet and feels very remote – hills, birdsong, fragmented fields, sheep grazing, daffodils in bloom and black-fingered oaks about to burst into leaf. Peace and a sense of timelessness. Or’eira, a four bedroom house, was formerly two ancient farm cottages, it’s origin given away by two-feet-thick stone walls.
Woke to the rural harmony of sheep and jackdaws. Breakfast – cereal, boiled eggs, toast, hot cross buns, orange juice and coffee. Siskins flocking round the bird feeder.
Into Dolgellau, a few miles to the south. It stands on the River Wnion in the shadow of Cader Idris and was the county town of historic Merionethshire. A place of stone and slate; interlocking streets form a crowded centre fringed with villas. Its prosperity was built largely on the woollen industry, worth £50,000 to £100,000 a year (£6m – £12m today) by the end of the 18th Century. More wealth came from a minor gold rush in the 1860s. Farmers drive in from the hills for the cattle market on Fridays – Dolgellau remains a traditional meeting place of town and country.