The estuary looking up to Farchynys on an atmospheric evening featuring an appropriately Gothic Clock House, another grand old house built by mill owners. This time the Lowe family.
Category Archives: News
How deep is the Mawddach Estuary?
According to my tame geology expert, the Mawddach estuary is not an estuary at all but a fjord carved out by the glacier and then filled with sand and sea as the ice melted and retreated.
But how deep is this estuary/fjord?
I certainly can’t say, but perhaps the prospectors of rich minerals who have drilled here over the years could tell us….
So where do you stand on the rhododendron?
So big news today.
Rhododendrum ponticum is back in the media and back in the frame.
Not only is this exotic shrub bad news in the short term for its knack of muscling in on other woodland flora but also bad in the long term with its existential threat to the micro-biome. Not everybody would agree with this view, but Victorian industrialists who wanted quick results in prettying up their newly acquired baronial demesnes probably didn’t foresee the long term consequences of introducing it.
But if you really want to know, ask Stuart Holtam, Headmaster and Warden of Farchynys. Or read all about his personal War against the Rhodies in Marians on the Mawddach:
“Bleary eyed, we returned to Hades and the fires of Hell – We came, we sawed, we got tired.”
From the Farchynys Timeline #10
2008
Railway Walks, Episode 2 was broadcast on 9th October. The wonderful Julia Bradbury introduced a whole new generation to the Mawddach, that mystery caught up in an enigma.
From the Farchynys Timeline #9
1941
Kurt Hahn the action man and visionary who inspired Sam Darby to create the QMS Welsh Centre, founds the first Outward Bound Centre at Aberdyfi
Zen and The Art of The Estuary
A Review from Bryn Mawr, PA
A wonder 541 million years in the making
I am not a Marian and I have never been to Farchynys. Most of my school years were spent forty miles down the coast in Aberystwyth and University was Abertawe. I was never in the CCF but I was in the Scouts. And yet Farchynys on the Mawddach seems somehow as real, as quintessentially Welsh, as romantic as anything I experienced in my teenage years.
The Editor, Paul Walton, one of the early Marians on the Mawddach, does a wonderful job of paying tribute to a time and place only 541 million years in the making. And if you’ve climbed Cadair Idris and looked across the Mawddach to Snowdon you know that those were years well spent. The place is certainly the star of Walton’s little masterpiece but it’s the colourful array of characters, locals and Marians, that brings the book to life and gives it its warmth and charm. It’s the characters that will have you wanting to run [or cycle] the half marathon, eat fish and chips in Barmouth or, perhaps, visit the resting place of “Mai the Milk”.
But watch out, like me, you may begin to wonder what sort of activities will be on offer to mark the 150th anniversary of the opening of Barmouth Bridge to rail traffic on October 10th. – any excuse to make the trip!
PJ Crotty
Bryn Mawr, PA
From the Farchynys Timeline #8
1973
The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) was opened on the site of Llwyngwern slate quarry near Machynlleth
From the Farchynys Timeline #7
1931/41
The Barmouth Viaduct goes to the movies – more precisely, our favourite bridge stars in two versions of The Ghost Train. A tale of a group of rail passengers temporarily stranded at a remote station, facing a night there with a warning from the station master (Donald Calthrop 1931/Herbert Lomas 1941) concerning the probable appearance of a ghost train hurtling by, from and to who knows where…it all goes horribly wrong on Barmouth Viaduct. Will Hay and Kathleen Harrison were the stars of the 1941 retread.
Coach House Cuisine
Memories of food at Farchynys
Friday was the dangerous day: tea came with us on wheels,
Our minibus smelling of boys and batter and non-standard tomato sauce;
Perhaps not exactly Mrs. Watkins’s Taste the Difference fish
Was stored precariously under seats in scratched Aluminum and threatened,
As we climbed the heights of Dinas.
Saturday often brought surprises after long fresh-air days
Like Geoffrey’s Boeuf Stroganoff and the dark brown slush of
Poires au vin du Bourgogne,
The sight of which tested the saporific nerve of even Alpha boys
But nevertheless soon passed our eager invigilation and was gone.
On Sunday, the reward for finding long lost Roman roads
Was JAD’s Brithdir Roast: a great golden bird
Displayed with squadrons of spuds and roots
And plattered to fill us up and lift our hearts for
The journey back to Mocks.
The Kitchen spick once more,
The light falls in the Dayroom,
Refectory tables are stacked,
The Coach House stands empty
Yet full of the aromas of our histories.
Marians on The Mawddach 