Harlech
| Harlech | |||
|---|---|---|---|
 |
|||
| Coordinates | 52 ° 52 ′ N , 4 ° 6 ′ W | ||
| OS National Grid | SH581312 | ||
|
|||
| Residents | 1447 (as of 2011) | ||
| administration | |||
| Post town | HARLECH | ||
| ZIP code section | LL46 | ||
| prefix | 01766 | ||
| Part of the country | Wales | ||
| Preserved County | Gwynedd | ||
| Unitary authority | Gwynedd | ||
| British Parliament | Dwyfor Meirionnydd | ||
| Welsh Parliament | Dwyfor Meirionnydd | ||
Harlech is a small town in Gwynedd in northwest Wales .
location
The city is located on Cardigan Bay on the edge of the Snowdonia National Park , which merges with the rock massif of the Harlech Dome into a wide coastal plain. In the Middle Ages, the cliff bordered Cardigan Bay, but the sea has retreated over 1.5 km to the west due to siltation. The upper part of the city lies on a steeply sloping cliff, which is connected to the lower part of the city by a steep, winding road.
The tourist town is located on the A496, which runs south of Snowdonia from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Llanelltyd . It also owns a station on the Cambrian Coast Railway . In the coastal plain near Harlech lies the 356-hectare dune area Morfa Harlech , an extensive area with up to 10 m high sand dunes, which extend between the mouth of the Mawddach in the south to the Black Rock Sands in the northwest. The dune area expands further to the west by sand drifts. It is strictly protected by several nature reserves, but also allows access to wide sandy beaches. The Royal St David's Golf Club is also located on the coastal plain .
history
The city is known for Harlech Castle , a castle built by King Edward I after the conquest of Wales , which is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The city emerged as a settlement under the protection of the castle.
From 1878 to 1886, the Harlech Tramway horse-drawn tram ran west to the beach.
Until 1974 the city belonged to Merionethshire . After the territorial reform of 1974 it belonged to Gwynedd, which was converted into a unitary authority in 1996 . 63% of the population speak Welsh .
Trivia
Ffordd Pen Llech Street in Harlech was the steepest street in the world according to the Guinness Book of Records in 2019. In one section its gradient is 37.45 percent. The road was thus steeper in 2019 than the previous record holder, Baldwin Street with a 35% gradient in the New Zealand town of Dunedin .
Since the measurement was contested, it was determined that the measurement should take place in the middle of the street. That was a 34.8% incline for Baldwin Street and 28.6% for Ffordd Pen Llech. The title is therefore back on Baldwin Street.
Web links
- Visit Snowdonia: Harlech (English)
- Extract from "A Topographical Dictionary of Wales" by Samuel Lewis, 1833 (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Countryside Council for Wales - Landscape & wildlife: Morfa Harlech. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 10, 2015 ; accessed on November 23, 2014 .
- ↑ Visit Snowdonia: Sense of place: Harlech. (PDF; 825 kB) (No longer available online.) In: visitsnowdonia.info. 2009, archived from the original on May 23, 2015 ; accessed on July 16, 2019 .
- ^ Steepest road in the world in Wales. In: orf.at . July 16, 2019, accessed July 16, 2019.
- ↑ Steven Morris: Welsh street loses world's steepest title after New Zealand rival's appeal . In: The Guardian . April 8, 2020, ISSN 0261-3077 ( theguardian.com [accessed May 22, 2020]).