FOLLOW THE southbound river past the little shops and cafés and out of the village, and you’ll soon find a sombre monument in the middle of a meadow. It marks the final resting place of Gelert, a wolfhound whose demise came about at the hands of his owner Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, King of Gwynedd, who slew the dog after mistakenly believing he had killed the king’s newborn baby. Fortunately, this tragic tale is in fact just a myth. The story of Gelert was, in reality, cooked up by the landlord at the nearby Royal Goat Hotel: a cunning 18th-Century marketing ploy to draw more visitors to the village.
These days, Beddgelert’s reputation goes far beyond folklore. Many would argue that it’s the most picturesque village in all of Eryri (Snowdonia). On one side looms the dorsal
