PDQ Mobile wrote:Mike Sales wrote:I would love to get you started about Bardsey, have you landed?
Firstly mickf I apologise fir drifting your thread again.
Yes I have landed, more than once.
Waved at the seals.
And have climbed the top of the mountain more than once.
Looked at the ruins of past lives,seen the birthplace of friends, looked at the Abbey graveyard and even have Afal Enlli in my garden.
But it's the name(s) that I thought could lead us astray!
Ynys Enlli is a nice name and perfectly describes one aspect of the place.
The Island in the Flood (or current but I prefer flood!).
As a sailor you will know this!
The tide surges around Enlli four times a day as if it stood in a powerful river breaking into foam over the Skerries and emitting an audible roar - beware owners of small yachts!!
But Bardsey?
I wondered about it long; puzzled over the map yet could find no definite explanation.
A bardic fellow strumming his stuff in an attempt to lure mermaids to his isolation?
Bardsey?
Then I climbed the mountain and I saw in a blinding flash of intuition what I think the name represents.
The Bearded Isle!
From the Germanic, Bart = a beard.
The lighthouse Peninsula is the beard jutting Aladdin like out to the SW. An appendage!
It is but a personal theory, mind, and discounted by some, though I am convinced.
And I have not heard a better explanation....yet?
I see Lleyn as a magic place beyond Yr Eifl, and Enlli as an even more mystic island beyond the Sound, which "serves it in the office of a moat".
Did you see the seal cave, on the mainland face of the mountain?
Ian Sturrock, who rediscovered the afal is a good friend.
I once stumbled out into the pitch darkness after a meal of island food and beer to be disconcerted by the absolute lack of light. It was only the intermittent flash of the lighthouse which got me back to my boat.
Hilaire Belloc, in The Cruise of the Nona has a stirring description of sailing through the Sound in a force 6 over a spring tide.