"Rhyd Ddu, Gwynedd: In a local legend, a fairy woman agrees to marry a mortal on one condition - that he never touch her with iron"
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The road from Dyffryn Nantlle slants across a hillside pocked with 19th-century copper-mine workings, waste from which still mars the valley floor. A wide, marshy col above – Bwlch Gylfin (Pig Pass) – has a dramatic, quartz-seamed rocky knoll, Clogwyn y Garreg. Welsh folklore identifies this as a portal to fairyland. Beyond it are Cwellyn and the Gwyrfai valley, which abound in associations with those identified in Welsh by the propitiatory name Tylwyth Teg – (Fair Folk)