Time when travel across strait was far from easy

TODAY travelling across the Menai Strait is so straightforward that Anglesey shoppers going to Bangor or Llandudno, and holidaymakers going to the island’s numerous beaches, can easily forget that Anglesey is in fact an island.

A new book by Iolo Griffiths, who compiles the Community News for the Holyhead and Anglesey Mail, and Caernarfon and Denbigh Herald looks at a time when travel between Anglesey and the mainland was far from easy.

In past centuries the tidal conditions in this narrow arm of the sea presented challenges that the great Admiral Nelson acknowledged, as he said that anybody who could navigate the Menai Strait could sail any sea in the world.

Indeed, tragedies on the ferries, and narrow escapes while crossing the Lavan Sands by foot, were a common feature of the strait’s history, while the methods used by cattle drovers up to the early 19th century for swimming livestock across the narrowest part of the strait would contravene

today’s standards.

However, losses were than might be expected.

By the late 18th century the rough conduct and extortion of the ferrymen led to a call for an alternative means of crossing, but despite the numerous schemes proposed for bridges or causeways to cross the strait, there was strong opposition by shipping interests, who saw such structures as a potential obstacle to vessels.

It was not until Thomas Telford was able to gain firm approval for his bridge, which was later to be hailed as a triumph of engineering and an object of great beauty, and opened in 1826.

This was followed in the 1840s by Stephenson’s animal welfare 1819 fewer t h a t Britannia Bridge, which carried the railway.

After rebuilding, following a fire which destroyed the bridge in 1970, this bridge now also carries the A55 across to Anglesey. This was by no means the end of the ferries, as some continued up to the

1950s, being more convenient for quarrymen living in the Brynsiencyn area of Anglesey crossing to y Felinheli for the train to Llanberis, than the more circuitous route via

Menai Bridge.

Crossing the Menai

Strait, by Iolo Griffiths, is available from Amazon, at £5 (paperback), and £2.61 (kindle). Pic: Mandy Jones

● Iolo Griffith’s latest book traces the history of the various ferries and bridges across the Menai Strait ● Representatives of Penysarn Youth Club receive their Your Community Your Choice award: from left, Assistant Chief Constable Sacha Hatchett, Carol Whittaker and Gordon Hayes with PCC Arfon Jones.