Bala Accommodation

More About Bala

Two miles north-west at Frongoch is the National White Water Centre. Controlled releases from the Llyn Celyn dam give the Tryweryn dependable whitewater when rivers elsewhere have dropped. A narrow-gauge steam railway works the far shore of the lake, and the hills behind the town carry some of the emptiest walking in Eryri.

For its size Bala has held on to a remarkable range of everyday shops, which counts for more than it sounds if you are catering for yourselves. The high street keeps a butcher, a bakery and a chemist, and the head of the lake is at the end of the road.

In 1800 a girl of fifteen called Mary Jones walked to Bala to buy a Bible. She had been born at Ty’n-y-ddôl, a weaver’s cottage at Llanfihangel-y-Pennant under Cadair Idris, and the man she came to see was Thomas Charles, who had Welsh Bibles to sell. It is about twenty-five miles over the hills. The story goes that she walked it barefoot, having saved for six years.

Four years later, in March 1804, the British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in London, and it went on to put scripture into hundreds of languages. Mary Jones is usually given the credit for starting it.

The honest version is slightly different, and better. What is documented is that Charles put the case for cheap Welsh Bibles to London in 1802, and told Mary’s story to make the argument land. So she did not found the Bible Society. She was the example that persuaded the men who did, which is a smaller claim and a truer one.

Both ends of the walk can still be visited. The ruin of her cottage stands at Llanfihangel-y-Pennant, and a waymarked path, the Mary Jones Walk, follows its own twenty-eight-mile route from there to Bala. At the Bala end, the church at Llanycil where Charles is buried is now the Mary Jones Pilgrim Centre, open Wednesday to Sunday, ten till four, free to go into.

Do not be caught out by the old name: it was called Mary Jones World until March 2024 and a good many websites still use it. The churchyard and the grave cost nothing and are open whenever you care to walk round.