Rolling in the deep
The water looks so tranquil as you walk along the lakeshore. But what lies beneath?
Come wrestle a lake monster in the beautiful Brecon Beacons.
‘ THE CREATURE DISPORTED itself, rolling and plunging for fully a minute, its body resembling that of a whale, and the water cascading and churning like a simmering cauldron. Soon, however, it disappeared in a boiling mass of foam. Both onlookers confessed that there was something uncanny about the whole thing, for they realised that here was no ordinary denizen of the depths, because, apart from its enormous size, the beast, in taking the final plunge, sent out waves that were big enough to have been caused by a passing steamer.’
The story ran in the local paper in May 1933; later the same year there was another report of a strange creature with ‘a long neck, which moved up and down in the manner of a scenic railway’ as it crossed the road to reach the water. They were of course talking about the Loch Ness Monster, the elusive serpentine beast said to live in Scotland’s most voluminous loch – one that contains more water than all the lakes of England and Wales combined. But Nessie isn’t the only monster reputed to swim in Britain’s freshwater pools. Nessie has company. ▶
Llyn Syfaddan – or Llangors Lake – is the largest natural lake in south Wales, drawn like a giant comma in the sandstone hills of the Brecon Beacons. On sunny summer days kayakers and rowboaters splash their way across its twinkling ripples, apparently unaware of what lurks in the water that drops up to 25 feet beneath their hulls.
Some say it looks like a crocodile, some describe a dwarf, some talk of a giant beaver, and some of a loosely defined ‘demonic creature’. The afanc, as this particular variety of lake monster is known, has been depicted in many seemingly incompatible ways, but there’s agreement on one thing: it gets snappy with anyone who swims, paddles or falls in the water. In one tale, it got so annoyed that its thrashing flooded the whole of Britain. Only two people – Dwyfan and Dwyfach – survived.
I tread gingerly towards the shore. On this winter’s day, the near water gleams stilly, broken only by golden reeds and some sculling ducks. Further out the wind is whipping the lake to white caps, making it harder to spot any sign of the demonic beast – known locally as Gorsey – breaching the surface. Beyond that Mynydd Llangorse, where I’ll be walking later, forms a shapely wedge with slopes tinted russet by bracken.
The shore runs for five miles around this llyn, its depths gouged by a glacier thousands of years ago. Technically it’s classified as a eutrophic lake, rich with nutrients that foster a wealth of aquatic plants. Gerald of Wales wrote in his 12th-century book Itinerarium Cambriae (Journey Through Wales) of the mysterious way the water would change colour: sometimes it ‘assumed a greenish hue’ while on other days it would be ‘tinged with red... as if blood flowed partially through certain veins and small channels.’ Local elders believed the lake turning green foretold an invasion; modern scientists put it down to an algal bloom, which can blanket the water red, green and yellow.
Such lush vegetation supports an abundance of other life – insects, fish, mammals and birds, including rarities like the scarce blue-tailed damselfly and ospreys in summer. The lake is both a Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Special Area of Conservation, with a hide near this southeastern corner where you can watch for birds.
Or for Gorsey. All that wildlife would make tasty pickings for a hungry afanc.
Llangors isn’t the only lake to lay claim to this particular monster. It’s been spotted in Llyn Barfog in southern Snowdonia and Llyn yr Afanc near Betws-y-Coed is even named after it. But the 15thcentury Welsh poet Lewys Glyn Cothi placed him here: ‘The afanc am I, who, sought for, bides/In hiding on the edge of the lake/Out of the waters of Syfaddon Mere.’ And Gorsey could be living like a king in its depths. Legends tell of buildings sunk beneath the ripples – a castle, a city, a church where the bells still ring on wild nights (the details differ).
There’s a notable construction sitting above the waves too. Across the lake, I can see a wooded isle. Measuring roughly 140 feet by 95, it’s not natural, but was built in the late 9th century. Sharpened oak planks were driven into the lake bed as piles, and the space between filled – somehow – with giant sandstone boulders. Smaller ones were added to level the floor, timber stakes bashed in as a defensive perimeter, and a wooden causeway linked it to the shore over 100 feet away. Crannogs, as these manmade isles are known, are common in Ireland and Scotland, but this is the only one yet found in Wales. Thought to have been home to the King of Brycheiniog, the cone-thatched hut you can see off to its left is how the main building would have looked, its pointy profile mimicking that of Pen y Fan on the skyline behind you. It wasn’t quite the island getaway he’d hoped though, as in the year 916 Aethelflaed, Lady of the Mercians and Alfred the Great’s daughter, sent an army and captured the king’s wife and 33 others. Charred materials found during a later excavation of the crannog are thought to be from this attack.
I continue round the south shore of the lake, where grassy meadows – a blooming spectacle in ▶
spring – shelve gently towards the water. Gerald of Wales wrote how Brecknock Mere, as the lake was also known, ‘supplies plenty of pike, perch, excellent trout, tench and mud-loving eels’ and many believe Gorsey may really be a huge pike. The theory was fuelled by an incident in 1999, when a water-skier called Darren Blake was attacked. ‘The fish clamped its razor-sharp teeth round Darren’s foot,’ reported The Mirror, ‘and began dragging him under. He struggled free and was hauled screaming on to the boat towing him as blood oozed out.’ When interviewed Blake said “I was in pain but mostly it was the shock of something trying to eat me.”
The largest pike ever caught by rod – in fact, the largest pike the world has ever weighed – was reeled in here in 1846 when O. Owen nabbed a 68-pounder. Or that’s how the story goes. What is substantiated is the fish here can be colossal. Oll Lewis of the Centre for Fortean Zoology made a film about the afanc called The Monster of Llangorse Lake (watch it on YouTube). In it, Mike Tunnicliffe from the Lakeside Caravan Park shows the skull of a pike which is 14 to 18 inches long. The full fish would have been an absolute beast; even more scarily it looked like it has been attacked by something else.
Access to the lake’s eastern panhandle is restricted to protect the bird population (or keep us away from Gorsey maybe), so I turn away from the water at the church. St Gastyn’s sits in a peaceful spot close to the shore, its Medieval foundations rebuilt in the 19th century. Field paths and quiet lanes lead to the foot of Mynydd Llangorse, and as I start climbing the view across the lake widens.
Britain has a lavish history of things in lakes; the waters are cluttered with monsters, ladies, and lost towns. There’s the monster Morag, first reported in 1887, who lurks in Loch Morar on Scotland’s west coast. She’d have plenty of space: Morar plunges over 1000 feet and is the deepest body of freshwater in Britain. There’s Muc-sheilche, an eel-like beast said to live in Loch Maree and its neighbouring lochans. A local man from Letterewe was so intent on killing it he had a crack at draining the nearby Loch-na-Bèiste and then poisoned its water with quicklime. England has them too. Eachy, commonly described as a sort of slimy humanoid, has been reported in Windermere and in Bassenthwaite Lake in the Lake District.
A number of pools are proclaimed as the home of the Lady of the Lake and King Arthur’s sword, Excalibur, including Llydaw, Dinas and Ogwen in Snowdonia. In fact, a sword was placed in a stone by the shore here at Llangors, but in 2017 someone – maybe a true king, maybe a thief – removed it. And on the other side of this national park, a lady (and some oxen) are said to live in Llyn y Fan Fach at the foot of Mynydd Du, or the Black Mountain.
Britain even has its own Atlantis lost beneath the ripples of Semerwater in the Yorkshire Dales.
The wealthy town was flooded by a visiting angel as punishment for every resident turning him from the door when he arrived dressed as a beggar (except one cottage on the hill which he ensured the rising water never reached). And there are the real lost villages drowned by the building of reservoirs. In the 1890s plans were mooted to flood this entire valley to a depth of 100 feet to make a vast reservoir to supply London; plans that were obviously shelved.
Ahead of me now the ridgeline of Mynydd Llangorse stretches north, with the plump, curving contours of a well-fed lake monster. It’s not a huge hill – a trig point marks the top at 1690 feet/515 metres – but the views span far. To the east, the long uplands of the Black Mountains rise roundly from valleys chequered with fields, away to the west I can see the distinctive angles of Pen y Fan, and down below Llangors Lake takes the grey of the overcast sky and turns it to a muted silver.
Even with binoculars I can’t detect any sign of the crocodile-beaver-dwarf-pike patrolling its lake today, but it’s been a lot of fun looking. During the 1990s, excavations at the crannog revealed an extraordinary piece of textile, finely detailed and embroidered with creatures. There were lions, birds, and something harder to identify, which Oll Lewis wonders might have been the afanc.
If so, it’s the only image of this legendary lake monster ever captured. Nessie may have been caught (or faked) on film but never Gorsey. Maybe you’ll be the one to get that elusive photo; just make sure you don’t step too close to the water.