Portmeirion News

Car gets stuck on narrow footpath at Portmeirion

by Hywel Trewyn, DPW West Nov 26 2012

A car got stuck on a path at Portmeirion

    A CAR had to be rescued after it ended up stuck precariously on a narrow coastal footpath at the Italianate village of Portmeirion. The driver had dropped somebody off at the hotel for dinner and mistakenly taken the wrong turning in the village which led him through a part of the resort called Y Gwyllt woodland before becoming well and truly stuck.The embarrassed driver was an elderly local gentleman – said the resort’s managers yesterday.
    The car was a Vauxhall Astra and photographs taken by staff at Portmeirion show it stuck on the quayside on the coastal path overlooking the Dwyryd estuary.
    The driver had gone up the back of the Town Hall, past the lake, up to the bottom of 49 steps to Battery Ridge, then back down past the lighthouse, and over to White Horses - one of the cottages in the resort.
   He couldn't go any further, so he tried to reverse back up the quayside where its rear wheels had gone over the edge.
    Portmeirion operations manager Dylan Hughes said: “The gentleman took the wrong turning in the village and drove into Y Gwyllt. He just lost his way. A few of us tried to get the car out and we had to use a tractor to pull it out. The area was quite wet.
    “We have quite a number of paths which are wide enough for cars. We maintain a total of 19 miles of paths and roads and its possible to drive around most of them but there are some places where you can’t drive a car and this was one.
    “It was a misunderstanding, an unfortunate incident. There was no malicious intent. We’ve never had anything like this happen before in the last 80 years or so and we don’t believe there’s any need for more signs.”

BCNU