By this time of year the evening sun can swing round far enough to the north-west to fully illuminate the broad, undulating northern flanks of the Carneddau. Standing on The Green at Beaumaris recently the afternoon clouds broke up to leave a jewel of an evening. The tide was out and revealed the huge, shining flats of Traeth Lafan (the Lavan Sands), once the hazardous crossing point to this island before either Telford or Robert Stephenson wove their magic to bridge the narrowest parts of the Menai Strait, further to the west.
Far away across this silver strand the scattered blocks of woodland and slanting pastures of the Penrhyn estate were picked out in the golden light and lengthening shade by that low sun as a civilising fringe along the mainland coast, below the wild rising of mountain wilderness behind.
All these northern summits of Carneddau dominate a great, shadowy wall through the day when viewed from south-eastern Anglesey. Only now, towards day's ending in summer, do they come alive; each cwm and deep valley now separate from one another, punctuated by golden light and shadows that make it much easier to pick out familiar landmarks. Over there to the south-east, for instance, is the lonely top of Drum with its giant summit burial mound of Carnedd Penyborth-goch and the long, undulating ridge that curves down towards the coast above Llanfairfechan, a spur now quite conspicuous in the late sunshine.
From our low viewpoint on The Green at Beaumaris it is not possible to see the relic stones of Llys Helig which lie as long lines, seaweed covered, offshore a mile from Pernnaemnawr. But they do exist. They used to excite the imagination of antiquarians, who proclaimed them the remains of the palace of Helig ap Glannog, which was inundated by the sea at some time between the fourth and ninth centuries AD. Similar stories exist concerning Cantref-y-Gwaelod, a "lost land" in Cardigan Bay, but 20th-century research suggests that rather than the remains of palace walls, these lines of stones here at Llys Helig are actually glacial moraines that have been eroded by wave action as this north coastal lowland became slightly submerged.
On that recent evening we saw the very last cloud dissipate just as the rays of the dipping sun caught the highest domes of Carneddau and painted them pale violet.
