Hafod Ruffydd
| Hafod Ruffydd | |||||||||
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| Type | Halt | ||||||||
| Status | Closed | ||||||||
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| Stations | Locations | Bridges | Tunnels | Map | |||||||||
Hafod Ruffydd is a location on the Welsh Highland Railway. On the original line, there was a halt and short siding to the north and west of the line just after LC 42.56.
This is the 'summer residence of Gruffydd,' who kept cattle in the 1600s. Several local farms kept cattle - no doubt the Welsh kind which come red in the dominant form, or black in the recessive; either is exceedingly good eating. They were driven over the drovers' roads each year to Smithfield in London or Northampton (which is why Northampton is to this day the centre of the English leather industry) and many farmers here became prosperous, leaving anything from £800 to £1200 in their wills in the mid-1600s. There is even visible from the railway on the Snowdon side of the valley a shed called Beudy-gwydr (English: Cow house with windows); for cows to have windows was evidence of real wealth.
From Hafod Ruffydd the line runs directly toward Moel Hebog (2566ft, 782m), from this aspect a dominating peak, but the railway blinks at the last minute and enters the Top S-bend, with Canal Curve at the top and Weirglodd Isaf farmhouse at the middle. You can see this farmhouse below you, next to you and then above you as the train scrambles down the hillside. At the bottom of the S-bend is a tall narrow embankment, but the railway soon runs across a boggy section with short straights and sharp curves until it enters Beddgelert Forest.