UKC

Ahead of an event celebrating 150 years since the foundation of the North Wales Quarrymen's Union in Llanberis, Eben Myrddin Muse explores historic and ongoing tensions between locals and climbers in the Dinorwig Quarries.

Eryri is a cultural tinderbox. Visitors to any rural area can cause tension – this is the case all over the world, but it's a problem felt more keenly since the pandemic, especially in National Parks where housing crises are made worse by second homeownership (even though the quarries have been neatly cut out of the park). In North West Wales, the Welsh language has always meant that these issues have even higher stakes – it wasn't that long ago that a guerilla movement put holiday homes to the torch in Gwynedd during the Meibion Glyndwr arson campaign. There is still discontentment in Eryri.

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I think the correct approach is that made in the guidebooks mentioned - use Welsh names where they existed beforehand with English names mentioned alongside.  It will take time (decades), but I think eventually the English names can be dropped.  There is no good reason for English place names where the places had a name in Welsh already.  Language and culture is what makes a place a place.  I say all this living in a place where English wasn't the dominant language until the middle of the 1800s and only truly took off after WW2 when most of the local schoolchildren were evacuated to the mainland UK.

I enjoyed that! Really well presented, clearly thought out and balanced. Thanks for writing.

An interesting (sad) read and a chance to practise your Welsh - 

https://www.peoplescollection.wales/items/8021#?xywh=-153%2C-1%2C847%2C850&...

It was interesting to see how many of the names have been preserved, albeit moved around.

Also.... 362 (6a)

A really enjoyable read. Nicely done, Eben!

I grew up in Llanberis, and my family from great-grandparents back worked in the quarries, so it's pretty clear what side of this argument I roughly fall on idealistically. I think the truth of the matter is, though, that the local community have completely lost touch with the surrounding landscape. How on earth do we expect climbers to come into the area and know the names of these locations when half of the people that were born and raised here don't? I'd heard of Australia and California as galleries in the quarry growing up but I couldn't have told you which ones they were, and I think that's all I could've named.

I think there's also some friction between the local Welsh speaking community and the climbing community that have moved in because they don't really mix.

Gwaith arbennig Eben, 

Let's hope sense will prevail, I strongly feel the climbing community are amongst the most forward thinking and open-minded when it comes to culture and integration.

Excellent article, thankyou.

An honest reply. I’d agree, with the number of locals that have barely explored their backyard I would be surprised if many of them knew the in depth history of the quarries. I would love someone to go around, interview the remaining quarrymen or descendants of them, and amass as many stories as possible. There must be so much out there, that will before long be lost.
 

 I would say that maybe there is just friction between people in general? I know a lot of people that are both climbers and local. There often doesn’t need to be any animosity (although obviously some people wind each other up!). 

I do see now that you wrote local Welsh speakers vs climbers that move here. Apologies!

I met someone years ago that was in the process of cataloguing and publishing the entire accident book. I’m not sure if it was just for cwmorthin (i think it was) or for a collection of mines eg all the ones in Blaenau. The parts I briefly read were horrendous. Many fatalities, often not immediate. You can’t even begin to imagine what that existence must have been like 

The slate quarries were somewhere where I learned to climb. There was a feeling when I first went there that this was a new place to climb, a new idea of what climbing was, even. Tactics around sparse bolting, new, weird moves. Designer risk, cystitis by proxy, watch my wallaby wank frank.

It was a playground for us. And bloody amazing.

But it was a place left behind and abandoned because the slate was no longer needed at the price it cost.

The pride that the workers must have felt is surely double edged. They were highly skilled, proud, but they were used up, their given lifelong physical reserves depleted and curtailed for the profit of the owners and shareholders. Exploited, dispossessed. But proud and culturally sophisticated nevertheless. 

The names given to the quarry levels and other constituent parts should be paramount as they wouldn't exist without the namer's efforts. 

But there's no need for confrontation is there? Who wouldn't agree with recognising the given names. The climbers names are also an historical record. What happened there in the '80's is also relevant.

Also is there anything wrong with having multiple names? I think having half a page of given names for a thing is actually a spur to curiosity and enquiry. I've had two given names and two surnames; guess why.

As to the accusations of, shall we say, anti-english sentiment; I don't mind a bit of over-reaction to English colonialism, it might not be the final position but it's a good counter balance to the weighty locus of power as it has existed for centuries.

A really interesting article, thank you - and while very much not Welsh, I relate to fiercely wanting to hold on to your grandparents' history.

More historical / sociological / linguistic pieces, please! 

As a Welsh-speaking local who has spent a lot of time climbing in the quarries it's pretty embarrassing to see family members support this anti-climber movement. Most locals don't even go to the quarry, the percentage that are familiar with the names of the 'ponciau' and areas of the quarry must be close to 0. There seems to be some sort of long-standing tension with climbers in the area that I've not yet grasped, might be something to do with climbers enjoying the local landscape but neglecting the local people and community. Getting in to climbing for me was pretty hard as there's such a low number of climbers who are Welsh-speaking and in the locals schools where I grew up I was more or less the only climber there. Personally, I feel the local climbing community should try our hardest to integrate with the Welsh-speaking locals, maybe start a litter-pick or community event in the quarries. If we want to protect our access and show we're not here to damage the Welsh language we need to show these people that we are as passionate as they are in preserving the quarries and their history. The first thing to do might be to organise a talk with the Eryri Wen members and try to get some sort of understating, and get rid of confusion in the discussion.

Diolch Eben, erthygl arbenning. 

Agreed, most locals are out of touch with the landscape. I went to a Welsh school and spoke Welsh at home and have only ever known the climbers' names since starting climbing. It seems that it's a very small number of people who are unhappy with the climbers' names and history in the quarries.

How about changing some of the English route names to Welsh? Particularly the offensive/ puerile ones?

As a non-welsh speaker I of course find pronouncing Welsh place names difficult,  but that's a pretty rubbish reason to impose upon/ undermine the local culture. 

When you start reading about the history of what went on in the quarries & the lockouts,  it seems unconscionable that we as a community of mostly middle class English climbers have moved in and renamed things.

I think if you live in England it's easy to perceive the use of the Welsh language as just being awkward or stubborn. But that's really not the case. It's many people's primary (sometimes only) way of communicating day to day and a direct link to their past and all that that entails. 

More to the point, as traffic increases in the quarries, I think it's worth us doing everything we can to maintain good relations with the locals. It's a unique access set up and one that relies on a lot of good will. As much as I enjoy the outrageousness of the Redhead route names, maybe they are past their sell by date?

Changing route names is not difficult.  We did it in the North York Moors for some offensive / homophobic route names. It just needs a guidebook writer to be bold and unilaterally do it. May not seem very democratic,  but who cares?

Of note, many of Caff's recent new routes have Welsh names.

Excellent article, thank you.

An ultra nationalist group with "white" in its name?

Probably tells you all you need to know.

Nice one Eben, this a well balanced article.

From the climbers' side, there are some basic concessions that could be made at no cost to anyone - particularly from guidebook publishers such as Rockfax. Giving the levels in the slate quarries back the quarrymen's names is an easy fix, and you don't need to go renaming the routes themselves (which would be silly, as those never had names before).

The same goes for crags like Esgair Maen Gwyn instead of Scimitar Ridge and Porth Gwalch in place of the joke-Welsh Llawder Zawn. Maybe the English names stick regardless, but if nothing else it's a gesture of respect and a way of keeping a little bit of history alive.

A very interesting piece and I've been making an effort to incorporate Welsh names in my vocabulary and learn/share the history. It is a bit sad to see the anti climber sentiment from some quarters as in many ways the climbers have given the quarries a new lease of life with these forgotten places being busier than I've ever seen them.

I feel the same when driving through Bethesda, a town on the edge of the most popular mountainous area in the UK but a town in decline when it really shouldn't be. Rather than welcoming people failing to provide adequate services then towing people's car. 

Ultimately if locals don't embrace the opportunities that these areas provide and see the benefits of tourism to the national park the result is it will be done for them and probably by Mr zip world

exactly. the moneys out there, and its pouring in to the zip world conglomerate every day of the week. i always always ALWAYS wondered how llanberis can have such a enormous foot fall yet fail so spectacularly to capture the economic benefits of those visitors. fair play to sarah for starting melyn, its places like this that will attract people in to enjoy the facilities, spend money, and keep people in work! 

Using original place names I agree with but changing route names to Welsh seems to have no reason as they had no previous names. I agree maybe some offensive names could be changed but I can’t think of any outrageously offensive names that marginalise any groups in the way that you stated.

I was having a debate on Facebook with the leader of Eryri wen the other day as this was shaved as the Bethesda Facebook page and another problem is he also has a problem with renaming things in ‘made up Welsh’ clogwyn y grochan instead of Craig geifre etc and Craig ddu were given as example. Its seems that anything that is not historical and utterly Welsh doesn’t cut the mustard to this group and is labelled as childish and disrespectful purely for being inspired by fantasy or the like ‘e.g Mordor’. Forgetting that many traditional place names are inspired by legend.
 

Unsurprising from a man that was charge with racially aggregated abuse of a police officer and leader of a party that wants English and bilingualism to be erased from wales. And unfortunately he seems to not realise that all names are made up by someone slate miners climbers or historians. And a lot of the time historians can’t even agree on the names of things! 

unfortunately people are happy to jump on the anti- climber bandwaggon without knowing any climbers or anything about climbing. But we must be careful not to fall fowl of the same trap and tar all Welsh speakers with this nationalist brush when many don’t agree with its sentiment.

education and open conversation on both sides is the most empowering thing for everyone.

Good article, nicely balanced.

It’s a good idea to include Welsh names in guide books, where they exist (this would be for some but not all place names). English translations should be included, so that people know what the names actually mean (otherwise it’s just a name).

I would also suggest including a phonetic explanation for each Welsh name so that people know how to pronounce it (along with a section on Welsh pronunciation). UKC could include audio clips of Welsh speakers pronouncing the name. This is an important point because Welsh pronunciation is not obvious or straightforward to English speakers. How many people know how to pronounce Yr Wyddfa correctly? I have a vague idea but it’s probably not entirely right.

However, some perspective is needed. Climbing is a niche activity, so how climbers call / refer to routes and place names is largely irrelevant to most other people (unless they happen to have a bee in their bonnet…). The vast majority of non-climbers wouldn’t even know what place / route names climbers use (non-climbers don’t generally read climbing guidebooks), in fact most people probably don’t even know that rock climbing routes have names. Conversely, climbers don’t force anyone else to use names which are used by climbers. Welsh speaking locals are free to use historic names.

As the article suggests, there is a sort of compromise position to be found.

It would probably help if English speaking people who have moved to North Wales (not just climbers) learned Welsh to a decent level. Knowing the language helps integration. Some people have done this of course. I gather Welsh isn’t the easiest language to learn though.

It also strikes me that there are bigger fish to fry in the language debate. How about taking English place names off road signs and maps (see if Google agrees)? This is not unreasonable in a majority Welsh speaking area. Ynys Mon sounds better than Anglesey anyway. Edit - not sure Ynys Mon is actually majority Welsh speaking but it’s a nice name anyway!

Wales will still be a poor place with not many options for the locals, but at least they’ll have an obscure lump of rock named the right way. And no English bank accounts will have been harmed in the process. It’s a WIN for everyone!

Not directing this at your personally Andy, more at the very American notion that a few nods to identity obliterate any sense of class politics. 

Just as well Sean, because my suggestion makes no pretence to obliterate class politics! It's a bit humbler than that, simply giving things back their local names.

I'm aware there is a risk of that kind of gesture being tokenistic, and I know it's not going to make an appreciable difference to Welsh/English tensions, but in the niche domain of climbing nomenclature it's a simple but meaningful adjustment for guidebook publishers to make, and it's not just a gesture for the sake of a gesture - these are names still in living memory or written on current maps, so it has the benefit of also being correct.

It's obviously not going to appease the likes of this Eryri Wen person (not that we should be doing so) but it's exactly the kind of thing that reasonable voices for local history and language like Tudur Owen are appealing for.

This is a very well written and thoughtful piece.

When I was working on my guide to Eastern Cyprus I was contacted by the Cypriot authorities who made it clear in a letter that they had a fixed stance on names. Quite rightly they made it clear that arbitrary naming of geographical locations was not acceptable and that any proposed new names should fit local and national conventions.  Having this guidance meant that any potential conflict or offence was easy to avoid.

Additionally the Cypriot authorities made it clear that the naming of individual routes was at the discretion of the first ascentionists and guidebook writers. There was no attempt to demand that climbs should have Greek names.

This seems a wholly sensible and clear approach. Obviously, the Welsh situation is different but within this whole discourse there is an unfortunate tone of the political football being used. Some of the anti English language saddens me greatly and some of the suggested remedies are no more than the spoutings of mindless political activists.

Language is in itself a political thing. Should we decide that geographical placenames across the globe can only be referred to in their original state. if so then Transport for Wales need to stop using Welsh names for English railway stations (Nantwich for example). We are going to have to stop calling España by it’s anglicised form of Spain. The list is quite literally endless.

The key point, to me at least, and going back to the Cypriot example is about mutual respect. I certainly acknowledged and conformed to the Cypriot wishes and they made no demands on route names. No politics involved.

In terms of route names themselves - clearly we can’t go around (globally?) demanding that new routes must be in the language of the host nation and that routes must all be retrofitted with a new monicker. However, there does need to be consideration given to some.

Looking out of my window right now I can see the Clwydian Hills in the distance. The Welsh border is 500m away. I feel fortunate to live in a part of the borders without any known antipathy - we cross in and out of Wales daily and the two villages exist without an issue except that the pub on the border closed during Covid and has never reopened - a loss to our broad community.  But while thanking the readers for indulging my rambling, let me also ask a question:

25 mins away is Trevor Quarry above Llangollen. Some of the routes there have “hybrid names” such as “Over yr on my Heddlu”. This name doesn’t actually make sense and appears to be poking a bit of fun.  Is this name actually offensive? Should it be changed? Who gets to decide not just on this one but on so many more, and how do we prevent ourselves from falling into the clutches of political activists whose agenda will always be divisive rather than constructive?

Diolch.

MD

All names are made up. There is no “correct” name, just an arbitrary choice we use to reference a thing in the world. As alluded to above, I suspect the people who want us to change the names will not ever be referencing those objects, because they have no need to do so. That means this is about an exercise of power on their part, forcing other people to change their behaviour (via threats as well). Perhaps this is to assuage a feeling of powerlessness? It will still be there after this, because the root cause of their (perhaps perceived) powerlessness will remain.

In fact you can see this at the anger at work in the compliant that the climbers’ names are derived from “fantasy”, as if there is something wrong with the association of the mythic or the playful with this landscape. Isn’t this part of the transmogrification of a place of brutal extraction into somewhere valued for play and self-realisation - a very modern trajectory. But anger and the politics of resentment have no room for the fey or the creative. 

As for Misha’s suggestion that we will actually learn to say the correct names correctly, look at the name of a certain French bouldering destination which we struggle to pronounce. That’s a language that’s easier than Welsh and which most of us are taught for several years in school. 

Why not just have both? After all we have been creating a new history, and isn’t an acceptance of multilingualism generally thought of as more open and liberal than the imposition of monolingualism? 

I knew as soon as I'd posted that that the choice of word 'correct' opened a door for pedantry. Fine, I'll qualify it: 'correct' in the sense that it's a pre-existing name that is/was recognised locally. I don't need a lesson on semiotics!

I'm not arguing for the imposition of monolingualism, and I doubt you think I am. I'm arguing for the reinstatement of a few names, which would exist alongside a load of English names for things (routes) which had no previous name, in respect of the previous history of those places and at no cost whatsoever to climbing history. And I'm also not arguing against having both - like I originally said, maybe the English names will stick regardless, because it's in the nature of language not to remain fixed. However there are obvious asymmetries between the usage of English and Welsh placenames, so it's disingenuous to claim that the decision of how one or other or both are presented is not a loaded one.

I think you're arguing against something far more radical than what I've suggested.

I agree that something like this will do absolutely nothing to change the sense of powerlessness that motivates the like of Eryri Wen, but it does demonstrate a degree of respect from the climbing community towards local history and culture. That's not meaningless.

Pedantry is the compliment sloppiness pays to care! Sure, it’s just custom, but sometimes custom comes up against other things: vitality, newness, imagination. I’m merely surprised that climbers are preferring the conservative vision. Emphasising the old names can be a way of expunging the new ones. 

Both names is a great idea, everyone I know almost certainly thinks Eryri is a wonderful renaming but obviously never uses it, so I’m sceptical at how much language change occurs via diktat, official or otherwise.

Peaks or Peak? See, pointless! Still, if the threat of losing climbing at Stanage were hanging over us, we’d call it the Mid England Uplands if we had to…

It’s the nature of reply button that suggests I’m arguing against you. It’s more an expression of surprise in general. 

It’s not meaningless, but it is a small thing. I’d be very surprised if in 20 years time climbers are talking about going to “the Dyffryn” but I guess you never know. 

So am I, to be honest.

The current Llanberis guidebook is very particular about names - not so much Welsh/English as apparently more accurate Welsh - yet I don't hear anyone referring to the crag with The Grooves as Diffwys Ddu instead of Cyrn Las. The same is true in a million instances more broadly, e.g. people don't get to choose their own nickname - some names just stick.

Nevertheless, keeping older names alive, without having to be militant about their everyday use, can be interesting and enriching as well as respectful.

To expand on the meaningless argument. In my typical trip to Wales, packing food in my car, staying at the CC huts, maybe going to the cafe, barely ten percent of the cost of my trip even goes anywhere near a local business. Tourism is often quite extractive and the type of tourism we practice is the worst. Still, the guidebook that I bought (perhaps elsewhere) has had a name change.

If UKC were having long articles about all of us paying a tourist tax every time we visited Wales, to reinvigorate local customs by the virtue of an actual improvement in North Wales residents’ material quality of life, well maybe I’d be more convinced at how seriously we took them. 

An annoying fact of life for crusading bureaucrats the world over!

Totally agree with this sentiment.

Well could you not adjust your habits to benefit the economy? I generally don't take food with me anymore and try to shop local.

I'm neither for or against a tourist tax in Wales however it does strike me that very little has been done by the locals or local authority to promote tourism and reap the benefits of the popularity of the local area and maybe if a bit more effort was spent making people feel welcome this would happen organically. 

I am fully supportive of the sentiment in the article. It seems very well balanced. However, it does seem quite difficult, as an outsider who does not specialise in languages, to find the Welsh names for relatively small features such as individual crags or to establish their provenance (is it a widely accepted name locally or just one person's pet name?) I have recently put up quite a few new routes in Nant Ffrancon and have asked welsh speaking contacts about pre existing cliff names. I have drawn a blank. One (very) local climber who I didn't know personally, didn't reply, the other I am sure would have replied if he knew. I need names for the crags because, when writing descriptions it is too cumbersome to refer to a crag every time I want to mention it as something like "the buttress x00 metres NW of xxx and just behind yyy". For conciseness (not my strongpoint) I need names and have had to invent them. If someone can put me right on the names I have chosen (with enough authority to show ,even anecdotally, that the names are in common use amongst local welsh speakers who know the area) I would prefer to amend my suggested names to the proper ones. I don't invent names out of disrespect but out of ignorance.

I guess you'd have to speak to the farmer or shepherd who's land the crag is on - to be honest they are likely the only other people who'd have the need to name things at the level of detail that climbers require. I doubt even the older Welsh speakers from Bethesda could give you a specific name for every bit of crag up there. I find it fascinating talking to the farmer here  - there's an entire tapestry of field, stream and hollow names that he uses for a 10+ mile radius that I have to concentrate hard to figure out where he means, even though I've been here for 20+ years and wandered over a fair bit of that landscape looking at the map - few of the names are on there. He was grumbling that one of the "youngsters" (probably in his 50's!) that farms up here didn't know where he meant when describing some lost sheep, so the names are incredibly specific, almost to a personal "mind map" level. 

I was pondering whether back in the eighties even the Welsh speaking local climbers that may have known the quarry level names from talking to family or down the pub may have done that compartmentalisation thing that comes with bilingualism and happily discussed exploring Sinc Harriet with family and Dali's hole with fellow climbers...

I wouldn't worry too much about "inventing" a nice Welsh name for your crag with some feedback - by all accounts even the draconian Mr Williams isn't above inventing names for bits that even the farmers haven't got names for. Good on you for checking though and it has been heartening to see the positive response to Eben's article.

I'm intrigued to know where the "wrong" Welsh names, like Cyrn Las, come from. Is it a case of a name for a larger (or smaller, or nearby) feature being applied incorrectly? Is it that different locals might have different names for the same cliff? Are they "cod Welsh" invented by climbers with a smattering of Welsh vocabulary? Or "genuine Welsh" but simply invented or descriptive. Or perhaps all of these at different times and places. Who gets to decide on the "real" name?

Just to expand on your point, it’s not even as simple as changing route names to Welsh in Wales, because Welsh is not the majority language in all of Wales. I have never heard Welsh spoken in Pembrokeshire, whereas in Gwynedd it’s commonplace.

To quote the 2009 CC guide, Diffwys Ddu is a lower offshoot of Cyrn Las proper 

Ehh, no, you're simplifying too much. Welsh is alive and well and relatively commonplace in north Pembrokeshire (though less so than Gwynedd), but you're correct that there is a bit of south Pembs that it is historically uncommon - the "Little England beyond Wales - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_England_beyond_Wales

You can see the split line on the OS map - from Newgale eastwards, all English/Norman names for features, westwards, Welsh names. 

It is one of the reasons why normalising Welsh names is important - it helps break down the compartmenting of language/experience for kids that are learning Welsh at school. For me, saying "I'm going for a walk up yr Wyddfa" is just as weird as saying "dwy'n mynd am dro i fynu Snowdon". For the kids in school these days, hopefully the former phrase won't seem weird, as the Welsh place names get normalised, which is an incremental step in normalising using Welsh outside of school - especially for the vast bulk of schoolkids that don't live in an immersive Welsh environment.

It makes very little difference to non Welsh speakers - apart from the Eryri Wen type fringes, no one is going to be too upset if you still call it Snowdon/ Dali's hole, but it is very much appreciated if you do call it by the Welsh name as it helps normalise it for the kids. Chances are that even immersive Welsh folks beyond a certain generation will refer to it as Snowdon when speaking English, because of that compartmentalisation thing that goes with bilingualism. I'd be interested if that is the case with Eben's generation?

Well in the case of Cyrn Las, it's a combination of the options you mention - the 'grey cone' describes the ridge above and right of the cliff, Diffwys Ddu ('black precipice') being its eastern buttress. They are descriptive names, but one is a part of the other, so it's not entirely 'wrong'.

But who knows the exact provenance of a name or what is most 'authentic'? You can ask the oldest person locally or look at the oldest map, but there will always have been an earlier name. It's fascinating to me, but to go back to the context of the slate, that's a little different because those features didn't exist until they were quarried, so unusually you can trace directly to an original.

Whether being original should always be the final word in a name's primacy (Menstrual Discharge?) is another question I suppose.

I agree with much in this essay. However, as I am mentioned twice (once by the name of Readhead and once by the correct name of Redhead), I wish to offer some enlightenment. The prejudicial term 'shock jockey' marginalizes both me as an artist and a  climber. It fails to mention my deep, socio-cultural art interactions and books, 'Colonists Out' and a multi-media exposition called, 'Soft Explosive Hard Embrace' with its resident sonic painting of Dinorwig quarry...as shown and heard first at Llamff, Llanberis. https://www.john-redhead.com/films/ - This original work cannot be achieved without a serious and authentic amount of forensic research and interviews with those who worked the slate. Invited into their homes for their last jar of tales of life and times on this hill shows mutual respect. I have always embraced the original place names. As regards my own 'scratching' involvement on dancing on the rock left behind, for me, seen as a commemoration and life-joy balance to the realities of evisceration of the sacred mountain of Elidir...to a savage, historical chapter in which the landscape and its people suffered appallingly at the hands of a capitalist oppressive culture (ongoing), separate from a culture of destruction, poverty, avarice and greed, I stand totally by my route names as a joy and celebration of life. For those whose sensibilities are threatened, I suggest you brush away your inhibitions, sexual hang-ups, nationalism and proselytisation and give space to more wider issues facing us in the world and the spinning planet. If a culture cannot encourage a bit of 'side-stepping', of which the language of art can inform, then the abyss of censorship is its brittle outcome. It is of my opinion that the only 'house' that should be burned is the one owned by the dark forces of that capitalism, Penrhyn Castle - the National Trust, avarice, greed and brutality, built from slavery and sugar. I welcome my colourful route names to be translated into Welsh...no waving of 'slave' flags - poetry not division. Diolch. John Redhead (Catalunya) 

I work as a hydro engineer on some pretty big schemes around Wales, including some that have historically been extremely politically contentious, but not for First Hydro. It struck me today as I was tinkering with some spanners on a scheme that makes £1000s per day that this aspect of the conversation is strangely absent. Why are we discussing the language that climbers are using but not where the profits from Dinorwig are going?

I guess because this is principally a climbing (hence discussion of route/place names in relevant areas) and not a politics forum (discussing ownership, capitalism etc). 

There's nothing to stop you or anyone creating a thread perhaps in the 'pub' 'culture bunker' or 'off belay' areas. Those who are interested, and have a view they wish to express, may engage. There are lots of thread areas to keep us all educated, entertained and informed! 

Sure, that's why it's being discussed on this forum, but why hasn't it been mentioned by Tudur or Eryri Wen? Colonialism is, at its heart, an economic relationship - the coloniser extracts wealth from the colonised. That's been the relationship between England and Wales for centuries, be it slate, coal, gold, timber or the labour to extract them. Look at the main transport arteries - railways, roads and canals from England into the resource rich areas of the country. We're still living with the legacy of that - if I want to get to Caerdydd the quickest way is via England.

Culture wars being used to distract from underlying economic injustice is a common story, and this time we're the target of it.

Hi everyone - thanks for all the interesting comments. I've been away working in the Gower over the weekend at the climbing festival with very patchy signal. I was tempted to answer using my phone when I had signal, but I decided to just read them and work my way through them when I got back, which I'm going to try and do at least for some.

In reply to john redhead:

Hey John - thanks so much for reading this and taking the time to reply. First of all, sorry about the 'shock jockey' comment - believe it or not I didn't really mean for that to come off as a pejorative and I should have phrased that differently. I've been a fan of your creative output ever since I watched you climb a cathedral on a grainy youtube video - you always captured and expressed something that thrilled me as I discovered climbing. I couldn't tell you how many times I've watched E96C or Margins of the Mind. I guess what I was trying to express is the lack of understanding between two communities and in my opinion that they are constantly raising your route names as an example of an english imposition when they are really nothing of the sort (not having displaced anything in the first place) shows that lack of understanding very clearly - but also I tried to explain why those route names raise heckles (which I'm positive you understood would happen beyond the Welsh speaking community and into the general climbing public etc. at the time). I had a few more lines on the subject in there which may have done it more justice but ultimately when I asked a couple of friends to test-read it they said the article was a little top heavy and they were cut.

As to whether they should or could be renamed - I have never personally found your route names to be offensive - I just can see how others would given the context. In South Wales there are dozens of worse examples which involve race, homophobia, sexual violence, which would be higher on my list of route names to worry about (they're also all in English). Interesting suggestion to change your route names to Welsh though - it would be quite funny to see the reaction of the main nationalist agitators to that idea... I think it might short circuit them!

I also just spotted the typo of your name (doh!). Apologies for that, I typed this late at night and it must have slipped through the proof read. I do know your name and will get that corrected.

Moltes gràcies!

Cystitis Trwy Ddirprwyaeth.

Hope you're well John. 

D, wow, that's a mouthful of cultured goodies! I think all my routes should be re-named in the culture they find themselves. Yer, bien ta - finished Hero Gone Bent - recreational savagery in the hills - no hostages - climbing 'bling' weaponised...and of course images from the margins. Write a review and come out here to plant some beans! BW, J

Can you please point out the prime ministers we had during the colonial era that hailed from India or Nigeria? You know, the equivalent of Lloyd George, men from the colonies that ended up running the country. 

This reminds me very much of some of tom-in-edinburgh's posts about the evils of the British Empire.  (In which the Scots apparently played no part whatsoever, were completely innocent at all times and at all time the victims of the perfidious English just as much as anyone in India.)

Colonialism is an economic relationship, and in that context I think you might be confusing "the English" and "the rich" to an extent.  Plenty of wealthy industrialists were born and bred in Wales and from the point of view of someone dying from a terrible lung disease after a lifetime of being used as labour to extract the wealth from a dangerous but profitable coal mine I doubt the experience would have been all that much different in Gwynedd to how it was in Yorkshire.

Great Britain is a relatively small island and the number of our ancestors increases exponentially with each generation we're going back.  If we're talking about a couple of centuries or more, it's easy and convenient for a certain kind of Welsh nationalist to 'other' the evils of colonialism and talk about 'the English' of some past era like they were all of my ancestors (me being English now), and 'the Welsh' like they were all of his.

But the truth is we both have plenty of ancestors who were both the victims and the perpetrators of colonialism.  Both at the same time, if we're talking about those who worked to build and maintain the British Empire in order to feed their families.

Quick word on colonialism and Wales...

I agree with you to a large extent and this is why I'm always really uncomfortable when people start bringing in colonial language into the debate around the Welsh-English relationship. First of all because economically what we suffered even compared to the enclosures and clearances in Scotland and the plantations and genuine attempts at genocide in Ireland pale in comparison. I've been asked to answer questions on the 'colonial' nature of the Welsh-English relationship in the past but my response has been that I think there is better language to more accurately describe this 1000 year old relationship.

As you have noted - we can't wash our hands of the empire, we were a big part of it. Cardiff is has loads of monuments to imperial war heroes.

Enclosure as an economic shift over hundreds of years was an endeavour which was driven by and in turn drove the colonial expansion of Britain over the centuries, and Wales even experienced that very differently to the rest of the UK (we've often been described as a nation which enclosed itself which is why we've so many small farms compared to the rest of the UK).

To conclude - simple terms like labelling English language names for climbs is a gross oversimplification which at best doesn't do the thing justice and at worst tends to portray us Welsh as innocent bystanders in the greater and much worse evils of British colonialism. There's a good book on the subject of 'Wales as a colony' which I've not actually read all of yet: https://martinjohnes.com/wales-englands-colony/ for anybody interested in this dynamic.

The guy who has been the prime antagonist this last week in all of this uses loaded words like 'traitor', 'spiteful', 'colonial', 'racist' and talks about 'banishing the authors which have created such deep offence' and I just think it's such a thin and useless way to speak about an issue which is full of nuance. Yes to class analysis in the quarries! But no to weaponising the language of class and colonial history to create a strawman by which to dodge actual critical thinking and progressive analysis.

It doesn't matter what your politics are, the geography stays the same. Good transport links follow the easy geography,  so running a motorway N-S across Wales has always been impractical from a financing perspective - it will always be cheaper to move goods on the flat, through England.

I live for the days when I read sentences like these on UKC!

<fist in the air!>

Bearing my previous comment in mind I do think the argument of mismanagement is really strong! What you say about moving goods on the flat is valid, but equally the state of Welsh transport links is very very poor and not helped by decisions such as HS2 by which Wales is well documented to have lost out on several billion pounds of Barnett consequentials... As someone who has cause to travel the A470 often I feel that any self respecting nation should really have a better linkage (it's still the fastest way North for me, just). If we were better off economically, big tunnels would make a lot of sense!

We can talk about self determination and mismanagement (also valid in the north and southwest no doubt) through the prism of Welsh devolution and the additional factor of the Welsh language (always a major extra factor here).

☺

I'm not confusing the English with the rich - it'd be pretty weird if I did so because I am English (from Yorkshire no less) and not rich. You're right that there's parts of England, particularly in the North, that have been exploited for labour and resources like Wales, but that doesn't contradict the point that wealth generally leaves here and doesn't come back. Yes, the same happens in deprived parts of England too - we should all be angry about that as well. But this thread is about North Wales.

Through working in the industry that I do I see it happening first hand. To give you an example: the vast majority of the medium scale hydro schemes in Wales, including a couple you've probably walked past in the vicinity of Llanberis without realising they were there, are owned by investors from outside the region. There are a few jobs but the bulk of the money generated leaves the area and doesn't circulate in the local economy. Same goes for large scale wind.

Second homes are obviously a big and emotive issue but something that we've noticed round here (I live quite a lot further south) is that the Airbnb revolution has quietly shifted the second homes to being profitable businesses for their owners - again, the money leaves the area.

Unless of course the investors include pension funds, in which case anyone with a private pension in Wales is getting some of that money. 

It’s also worth pointing out that in terms of government spending, everywhere except London and the south east is a net recipient, rather than a net contributor. So money from the state is flowing into the area rather than out of it. 

The point of colonialism is that it’s also about political power and involvement as much as economic power. Welsh voters have been returning MPs to Westminster since 1535. Whereas the actual colonies were run essentially as an autocratic state either by British officials or local elites backed by British force of arms. Colonies also included delightful practices such as slavery or, later, indentured labour which wasn’t too far off. To compare a country with a degree of political representation with, say, the Raj or the slave plantations of the Caribbean is inaccurate and really a little distasteful. 

The name Eryri Wen is most probably taken from the traditional Welsh folk song - "Eryri Wen, frenhines bur" by Ceiriog (1832 - 87). It's often mistranslated as "White Eryri" but the correct translation is "Blessed Eryri".

That may be, but it's incredibly naiive not to recognise what the optics of that name choice may be to those not well versed with Ceiriog's work! The Eryr Wen has connotations far beyond that poem and the swastika-esque imagery of the Eryr Wen symbol is alarming to lots of people. I grew up seeing it painted around the place - it feels like part of the landscape to me nearly, but to others it feels threatening. That is the intention of the symbol (attached).

That symbol has also recently been adopted by a new nationalist group calling themselves 'Eryr Wen', claiming to be a political vanguard (quick to throw their support behind the campaign to ban the names of climbs). At their founding their 10 principles included the protection of the motherland for the ethno-linguistic group of 'Cymry'. They edited this out of their website when I published screenshots of them, pointing out that this is the language of jingoistic fascism. I don't really want to give oxygen to groups seeking to draw Welshness along racial lines - and people like Eilian should know better.

He is currently all over the internet calling guidebook authors and climbers from the 70s racist and colonial - given some of the islamophobia on his personal facebook feed I find this quite astonishing. As I said in the article - the wish for a 'monolingual Eryri' is the same wish as English language supremacists have - the eradication of one culture in favour of another. There is richness to Wales' bilingual past, present and future and advocating for linguistic purity should be beneath us. 

I've stayed out of this so far but found the article to balanced and thought provoking. I've not much to add, other than I have been saddened and quite alarmed by Eryri Wen's Eilian Williams' unreasonable and, at times, hysterical tone.

It appears (as you're not doubt aware) that he has written to the BMC and contained within the letter/email is a veiled threat to apply pressure on the relevent authorities to get climbing banned in Dinorwig Quarry.

As an Englishman who has lived in Eryri for over a decade and has embraced the language and culture of my home, I feel very uncomfortable with Eilian's militant stance.

After reading several threads on the Dinorwig Quarry FB page he appears completely unable to engage in a reasonable discussion and comes across as a fanatic.

BMC hat back on...

He has written to us in that he posted on his facebook page to say that he has written to us... No such formal contact has been received.

We are working with the locals, the historic environment service CADW and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales on a progressive plan. UKC have been supportive too. We will not be responding to intimidating language or threats, and we will not be coerced.

(still Eben here but this time with a BMC hat on).

I'm very pleased to hear that the BMC won't allow itself to be bullied by a minority of ideological nutters.

Great stuff

As we're discussing names, I'm going to stand on the small-pedantic-hill-that-I-will-die-on:

It's just 'Gower', or 'the Gower Peninsula'; it shouldn't be 'the Gower'. Yn y Gymraeg, 'Penrhyn Gŵyr' neu 'Gŵyr', byth 'y Gŵyr'. 

This can be verified on all maps - indeed when I corrected Gordon Stainforth on the matter in a thread several years ago, he kindly went and dug up some very old maps to show that I was correct

Of course, many many locals refer to it incorrectly as "the Gower", and one could argue that language is a living thing, so perhaps the maps should be updated!

What surprises is me is that I've not heard the Llŷn peninsula abbreviated to "the Llŷn"!

Either way, fel brodor o Gŵyr, I'll always be pushing for the original name!

Fair cop, digon teg! Thanks for sharing. My friend Matt who works as an instructor often on Gower (correct?) actually corrected a sign I'd written for the BMC stand but I admit I had had quite a few tins by that time in the evening so I didn't properly ingest his correction.

Cywir! A diolch eto am yr erthygl. Dwi'n hedfan yfory am wythnos o ddringo yn Ngogledd Cymru; os a i i'r llechen wna i drio ddysgu enwau gwreiddiol y chwarelau - os ddo i o hyd iddyn nhw!

I love a good bit of pedantry, but overall your post has only convinced me that "The Gower" seems pretty justified! If you accept that "The Gower Peninsula" is legitimate, then surely chopping "Peninsula" off that is a pretty natural shortening? Backed up by your admission that it's regularly used by locals.

I’d buy the argument if people were to refer to Wales’ other major peninsula as the ‘the Llŷn‘ - but they don’t!

But I do buy the argument that it is widely used. Albeit incorrectly! 😛

Just n=1 anecdotal evidence but I hear that quite often among sea kayakers, "the Llŷn" being the main alternative to Anglesey for mildly exciting N Wales paddling in tidal waters. 
(I'm unqualified to have an opinion on whether it's correct or not.)

Dani'n gweithio ar hyn o bryd ar fath o adnodd i helpu pobl yn union fel ti! Mwynha! 

We're working right now on a resource to help people just like you! Enjoy!

Do they not? I'm not 100% sure if you mean "local people" here, but as a non local I would...

Why is that I wonder? (Not a criticism, just a question). Maybe it’s because it’s ‘the X peninsula’, and thus easy to abbreviate. I get it.

It’s still wrong though, and I’m staying on my hill! 😝

Yeah, that's about the size of it. The Gower, the peak, the pass, the llyn, the ben, the cove, I'm guilty of them all

I’m no expert but I’ve always said ‘the Llŷn’ and ‘the Gower’. No particular reason for that though. May be we should try Russian - there are no articles. 

Just calling it "Llŷn" (or "Lleyn") without the "the" does feel a little bit awkward somehow, just habit probably.  Perhaps the new guidebook will popularise "Pen Llŷn" instead, at least among climbers.

So whose sensibilities are being threatened now? You should take your own advice or maybe acknowledge that words/names can have an impact on others, including your route names.

I don’t personally have an issue with the majority of your route names but appreciate how others can. However, I fail to see how “Raped by Affection” or “Menopausal Discharge” are “poetry not division”. Please explain how they are poetic and I will be happy to be proven wrong.

‘As Welsh speakers we mustn't allow the progressive goals of the Welsh language movement to be co-opted in pursuit of ugly ethno-nationalism.’

Socrates said that we should admire artists from the walks of our cities, but not let them in as they will corrupt our youth.

Art is meant to challenge you. You may not like John Redhead's work, but I guarantee that in the long run, the consequences of suppressing it are unpleasant.

I would say from my interactions with Eilian he really doesn't know much about climbing.  Got a lot of basic facts wrong when I was talking to him.  Seemed to think that talking to one climbing club meant they'd magically talk to the BMC.  I suspect that the letter is a similar thing.

I was trying to steer him to talking to you on that facebook thread (and to the climbers club as I hope they'd be respective to having a bit more history in their guidebooks) when you turned up.  Can't wait to see the full plan and I suspect it'll be great.

Excellent article and I agree with it wholeheartedly.  I'd love to see more Welsh language in guidebooks personally.  So if this means that there's going to be some ponc names in new guidebooks that's amazing.

The more militant stuff is a bit disappointing.  I've lived in Cymru for 24 years and absolutely love it here.  Wouldn't move for anything and I'd love to see more people speaking the language (I'm terrible, keep trying to learn and failing). 

For me as an English speaker with no knowledge of the Welsh language, the biggest barrier to embracing Welsh names is my inability to pronounce them, and I think an awful lot of progress could be made simply by routinely providing transliterations of Welsh placenames or feature names so that most English speakers can get close to pronouncing them correctly.

Absolutely, I agree with both you and him that censorship would not be ideal, I wouldn’t want that either. What I fail to see is the presumed poetry.

To take some more examples, how is "Womb Bits" any more than a childish pun on Joe Brown’s "Woubits" at the same crag? What are the meanings behind "Cockblock" or “Sexual Salami” apart from being great solutions up a wall?

I can’t seriously name a route “Redhead Shock Jockey” or John Verybiglongwords (E1 5a) (too slow) and claim poetry since the obvious intent would be to poke fun at someone.

As much as I admire his climbing, I find it disingenuous to use the excuse of poetry to ‘dress up’ childishness or crassness. Call it what it is, because to me Emperor Redhead is ‘walking our streets’, to take your Socrates quote, bollock naked.

Again, I accept I can be wrong, I just need to be shown the poetry.

By the same token purported art is meant to be challenged and critiqued. John is an artist but that doesn't mean all is output should be considered art. He's a great climber who's left us with some bad route names IMO.

I saw a FB post in which he said that the BMC themselves were responsible for "Lake Australia" by popularising that name in a book published in 1905.

If he's right you would have to admit that it does seem incredibly disrespectful of the BMC to somehow travel back in time and do that decades before they even existed.

Very well Gaia  I will. My sensibilities are not threatened...merely in mirth. 'Shock jockey' is not an insult to me..it is just incorrect terminology. As route names were merely an extension to my work as an artist, gleaned from life's rich tapestry, insights, visions, conversations, observations...are all ingredients that inform...and maybe, ask yourself, am I not equally impacted and provoked for a response... no point in complaining, another realm is waiting, just allow yourself to be 'free' and luminously creative. Just as the 'original' place names in the quarry show significance and connection, my route names also show significance, inspiration and connection to the life and times of their creation and culture. I suggest you adjust your moral compass from 'magnolia wallpaper' to a wider more worldly perception. Flexing of biceps on 80's slate, wearing torn lycra tights, the anarchy of climbing came head to head with the corporate machine. We pranced on what was left of a mountain after greed and avarice had done their thing. Can we talk of the rape of the mountain? Can we talk of women's experience of a certain age? The lady holding my ropes on Menopausal discharge would argue that we will and should! The lady who entered my studio in search of 'love' would say we must. Words are indeed meaningful, but quite harmless in relation to the deaths and decapitations, illnesses and misery that shadow your soul for an ascent on slate. 

Welsh spelling is very regular though, so even to someone who doesn't speak the language at all most of the spellings are already more or less phonetic.  If you just learn a few (genuinely) simple rules that really aren't that hard to get your head around you probably stand a better chance of pronouncing Welsh placenames more or less correctly than an awful lot of English ones.

Ynysybwl and Amlwch for example - pronounced exactly the way they're written. 
(As long as you know that the "y" and the "w" are both vowels and the "ch" is soft.)

Maybe one of the Welsh speakers will correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there are any Welsh placenames equivalent to Cholmondeley, Quernmore or Woolfardisworthy (where you either know how it's pronounced or you don't because the spelling makes no sense!)

And there's none of that looking at "-hough" and not having a scooby whether it's "how", "haw", "huff" or something else entirely.  (As part of a placename or otherwise.)

I lived in Sheffield for the best part of a decade before I found out that Beauchief does not sound French, and tbh if I head out through Chatsworth towards Bakewell, I'm still not sure about Edensor and Rowsley.

Also most of us looking at placenames written down are looking at them on a screen on a multi-media device most of the time these days, and not on a printed page.  So if you're going to do anything there, it might as well be a link to an audio file where you can actually hear it pronounced correctly.

Spot on! I'm not going to say it's easy to pronounce them - the truth is that languages are different and if you're used to one, another will be hard. I find that competency in Welsh does put you in good stead for other languages with a similar array of consonants.

We do have the benefit of a mostly phonetically written language though so once you know the rules you can go far. No cholomolomeley here. A 'How to pronounce Welsh mountain names!' video that's more comprehensive than the 'Yr Wyddfa' one I made is one of those things that we will probably do if we get a little more capacity between all the other work going on in Wales that's directly in my job description.

Good guide here for those with an interest:

https://www.cyclingwales.co.uk/welsh.html

It's the 'y' that sometimes makes me scratch my head - 'uh' or 'i'... And the diphthongs that sometimes vary. And the differences from parish to parish! 😂 And let's not start on the 'u' sound in NW - only Romanian has the same vowel sound. Still, it's a gorgeous language, and I keep trying! 

You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

Certainly, especially when it’s lead to a mirage - the illusion of substance where there is none.

I don't doubt that, but fundamentally you're still expecting people to have a grasp of the pronunciation rules of a different language in order to read a guidebook written in English for English readers.

There's a sliding scale. At one end you have Chinese or Arabic, which need transliterations even to suggest any word sound at all. Then in the middle you'll have Russian and Slavic languages, which English readers might have a stab at but which really need transliterations for many or most names. Then at the other end you have other European languages, of which some of the phonetic ones such as Spanish or German have so few departures from English readers' presumed pronunciations as to make transliterations largely unnecessary.

Slightly more awkward is French, though most French names are fairly straightforward. Where they're notably not so I think it's good to point that out, such as for  Baychon, where I thought it best to add a pronunciation guide. I think Welsh names are a little harder again, in general, and as such I think pronunciation guides would help a lot of English readers a lot of the time.

In order to be able to read the names of mountains, geographical features, counties, towns and villages in the country in which they live!  (ie: the UK)  It's a different language but not a foreign language, and it's really not at all difficult - I'm not talking about learning the language at all, just the alphabet and not even all of that.

From the link above.. ( https://www.cyclingwales.co.uk/welsh.html )

"Welsh has a slightly different alphabet from English:-

• C - pronounced as a K, as in English 'kick' eg: Caernarfon (kyre-nar-von).
• CH - pronounced as in the Scottish 'loch' and the composer Bach.
• DD - pronounced TH, as in English 'breathe' eg: Beddgelert (beth-gell-airt).
• G - pronounced as a hard G, as in English 'get' eg: Beddgelert (beth-gell-airt).
• LL - roughly pronounced THL eg: Llanberis (thlan-ber-ris). To get closer to the correct sound, place your tongue firmly at the top of the mouth behind your teeth and blow.
• F - pronounced as a V, as in English 'of' eg: Felindre (veh-lin-dray).
• FF - pronounced as an F, as in English 'off' eg: FFestiniog (fest-in-yog).
• W - pronounced as an OO, as in English 'swoon' eg: Llanrwst (thlan-roost).
• Y - has two different pronunciations. In all but the last syllable of a word it's pronounced as a 'U' - as in English 'fun'. When it is in the last syllable of a word it is pronounced as an 'i' - as in English 'is'. For example, the Welsh for mountain is mynydd (mun-ith); the Welsh for mountains is mynyddoedd (mun-uth-oith). Because it no longer occurs in the last syllable, the sound of the second y changes from 'i' to 'u' (also, notice the emphasis moves along to the new penultimate syllable). In single syllable words, the Y is unpredictable!"

That's it - less than a page in the front somewhere and that'll get you near enough to any of the place names throughout the rest of the book with no need for any clunky transliterations in the text.

Agreed that would be another option. Thus far I don't recall seeing much evidence of either, so plenty of room for improvement either way.

Damn that corporate machine for - checks notes - making roofs for people’s homes. 

No doubt climbing hard slate routes is very much like making love to a beautiful woman, eh, Swiss Toni?

And routes on which to prance 

Pronounciation is hard in any language I find.  My wife for example still struggles with Towcester.  I still struggle with Rhayader.  Most people struggle with the double Ll cause it's such an unusual noise, which doesn't exist in English at all.  However as Eben points out, Welsh isn't too bad once you've got a few rules down.  No one will mind you trying I'm quite sure.

Absolutely. It’s this kind of knowledge that will help us adjust our moral compasses from 'magnolia wallpaper' to a wider more worldly perception. Another realm beckons. 

As you know, but might be worth pointing out to others, The Climber's Club has just spent >£400k on refurbishing Ynys Ettws. Most of this money went to a local architect and local builders, with materials bought locally, so a not trivial contribution to the North Wales economy. 

Another realm is all well and good but torn Lycra is not a great look on me

Not always convinced with what John has to say and went looking for more to be unconvinced by, but then found this lovely pic 

https://x.com/johnredhead/status/1691488706887135247/photo/1

I hope that the lady outside the artist’s studio looking for love was aware that bananas might be stuffed down Lycra. Sounds like the protagonist was too poor to afford to stuff his pants with a true piece of “sexual salami”.

It's hard enough just spelling it! 😉