Life is an ultramarathon

Following a few outings in North Wales recently, I started to be interested in the meaning of the Welsh location names. I used the English-Welsh dictionary provided by the Cardiff School of Computer Science and was surprised to realise that most summit names actually carry a meaning. For example, "Rhyd Ddu", where we finished our Paddy Buckley Round attempt, means "black ford". Even more interesting, Pen Llithrig y Wrach near Capel Curig means "Slippery Peak of the Witch" :) . Next time the navigation should be easier when we'll know straight away that "allt", "bryn", "foel" and "moel" are hills, but a "bwlch" is a pass.

I'm also working on the prononciation, which requires a bit of knowledge for places like that:


(which might mean something like: "pass of the awkward cirque").

I've compiled a couple of interesting findings in the following table (selected mountain-related meanings only):

Welsh English aber estuary, stream allt hill bach (fach) corner betws oratory, chapel bryn hill bwlch pass, gap capel chapel carnedd cairn cerrig stone clogwyn cliff coch(-ion) red coed tree, wood craig crag, rock crib(-au) ridge crwn (gron) round cwm cirque cyngor (cynghorion) advice Dafydd David dau (dwy) two ddu black drws door dysgl platter eilio second elor bier garn cairn glas blue

Welsh English gwyn (wen) white hebog hawk, falcon helgi hound hydd stag llan church, village llew lion llithrig slippery llyn(-nau) lake maen stone march (meirch) horse mawr (fawr) big, high moel (foel) hill mynydd mountain ogof cave pen top, peak perfedd gut rhyd ford trum ridge trwsgl awkward uchaf highest ugain twenty wrach witch ysgafell ledge ysgafn stack ysgol(-ion) ladder

Ultra translation