Lucky the person whose childhood haunts remain unchanged. Country where the woodlands and pastures' fringes remain inviolate; where the sweep of a river is bordered still with bluebell glades and where burgeoning ferns now soften the water's edge. Such is the lower Dwyfor valley, where the river comes twisting down to Cardigan Bay west of Criccieth. After draining the great mountain hollow of Cwm Pennant, overlooked by the bulky flanks of Moel Hebog and its satellites, the Dwyfor twists modestly below the lovely woods that herald Llanystumdwy village.

Here, in the late 1860s and 70s, wandered David Lloyd George, carefree as he played upon Dwyfor's banks and climbed the oak trees and swung out over the crystal trout pools. Innocent of the cares ahead, he built strong foundations here, in sight of the wilderness of Eryri that is the eternal frontier behind this coastal lowland.

The green hollow of Pennant is quiet now, save for the calls of the white flocks and the first song of the cuckoo. No one strays from the narrow lane that curves this way and that, to follow the infant gurglings of the Dwyfor as far as Braich-y-Dinas. Where the public road ends, access is barred. The promised land of the high country beyond is forbidden territory now; but we can search the lofty watershed on clear days to catch a sighting of raven and buzzard that are still free to go as they please above this green vale.

The ill-drained pastures and boggy lower slopes of these encompassing heights are the summer haunt of the curlew, its piping call a perfect complement to those plentiful cries of the Welsh Mountain flocks. In its lower reaches, below Garn Dolbenmaen, the Dwyfor drains amore gentle countryside. It is edged with deciduous woods and more fertile fields. This was the landscape known best to Lloyd George as a child and in old age, when he returned as a permanent resident to Ty Newydd, a short step up the lane from Llanystumdwy and a mansion house in sharp contrast to the tiny terrace cottage which was his childhood home.

In those last years before his death in March 1945, the great Welshman often walked down the lane from Ty Newydd to sit and contemplate the satisfying prospect of river, trees and spreading fields beyond. And it is at this very spot that he lies buried, surrounded by a memorial enclosure created by Sir Clough Wlliams-Ellis, another giant of the Welsh nation.