Language is political, and the English suppression of local placenames should be resisted in Wales, just as in Ireland
It has been well over a year now since I last laid eyes on Yr Wyddfa, the mountain that presided over my childhood, and which the English call Snowdon. I could draw the shape of that peak with my eyes closed. Jan Morris called it a “dream-view” and an “ideal landscape”, writing that “it is as though everything is refracted by the pale, moist quality of the air, so that we see the mountain through a lens, heightened or dramatised”.
I daydream about Yr Wyddfa, mostly of swimming in the clear, cold river that we would walk up to on hot days – a secret spot, known only locally (when I Googled the name of the pool, which is Welsh, nothing came up, and I will keep it that way). Less romantic is the last time I climbed the mountain, where at the summit the inevitable queue awaited us. Yr Wyddfa is a victim of its own popularity, though you could argue that it has kept the surrounding mountains wonderfully empty of tourists.
