A Day not Finding Bodylltyn

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Been out and about a bit today. I set out from home around eleven this morning to pick up Jane from her trip to Carnforth, meeting up about halfway at The Stretton Fox Inn off junction ten of the M56. As I had around ninety minutes slack on time, I decided to take a more scenic route than the usual, rather tedious A55 route, and headed off to Betws Y Coed, up the Conwy valley to Llanrwst and thence over the hill into the hinterland behind Abergele.

From there I ventured into territory that once chilled the blood of my former, working self, collectively and colloquially known as the Llan's: Llansannan, Llangernyw, Llanfair Talhaiarn. In wintertime, an outside worker's nightmare, but today, with sun, blue sky and Mediterranean heat, a beautiful place to travel in; only the lack of aircon in my car taking the edge off it all a bit. Having been informed that our meet-up would be delayed for a further two or three hours, I decided to try and find the places whence my Welsh ancestors hailed and were often laid to rest: Rhosymedre and Bodylltyn, near Rhiwabon, Denbighshire [blog posts passim].

I found Rhosymedre and the parish church of St. Mary's, but could not locate Bodylltyn, which I knew existed quite close to the little town: the current OS 1:50,000 shows no sign of it, and Apple Maps, is well, Apple Maps, 'nuff said. So when I finally managed to hook up with Jane and Kevin at the Fox at around five o'clock for a pint and a debrief, I'd already clocked up a good chunk of today's 220 miles of meanderings. The journey home took twice as long as usual with hideous traffic hold-ups and a much-needed break to cool down and get a quick bite to eat at some random services on the A55, as well as a quick shop in Llanfairfechan for even-more-much-needed wine for the evening.

On getting home, I looked around on the net for the flighty Bodylltyn, and found the above pictured, from the second edition of the Ordinance Survey of the district. We're already planning on an exploratory revisit to see what's left there, and have a mooch around the graveyard. Meanwhile, I need to do a bit more digging to see if I can access parish records to verify any or all of this stuff. This time we'll take a slightly more sensible and definitely shorter route, via Llangollen. Keep you posted...

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