Enhance your language skills with Y Gudel

Unless you live locally to Solva or St Davids in West Wales you may never have come across the Welsh language term Y Gudel.

As you will see from the signage above a Gudel translates as a Narrow Passageway and in Solva that passageway led to the river, originally giving residents access to the water for drinking, clothes washing, slops disposal, etc. (note: no mention of drinking water in the sign, but in the days before mains water was piped in, drinking water was either pumped or collected in buckets).

These are two examples of Gudels in Solva... steep stepped and narrow, not much fun on an icy winter's morning I'd guess.

The river water wouldn't always look this dirty (heavy rain washing down a lot of silt), though it would still have been full of all kinds of nasty stuff...

Solva Pump

Drawing water from the village pump wouldn't have made it any cleaner unfortunately since the water came from the same source. Oh well... Another glass of cholera anyone?