A PROUD son of Trawsfynydd has embarked upon a 250-mile fund-raising challenge to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of Wales’ most famous war poet.

Carpenter Gwynedd Jones, originally from Trawsfynydd, wanted to do something to mark the centenary of the death of Ellis Evans, better known by his bardic name Hedd Wyn.

After much thought, Gwynedd decided he would walk in stages from London, where he now lives, to Trawsfynydd. He began his odyssey early in April and will complete the 267-mile challenge at Hedd Wyn’s Yr Ysgwrn farmhouse home on Saturday, 29 July.

The 54-year-old is completing legs of the journey on the weekends and has already walked from the Tower of London to Reading.

He is carrying with him a ceramic poppy dedicated to Hedd Wyn and aims to raise £8,882.46 for the British Red Cross, a target devised to mark the 888,246 Commonwealth soldiers who lost their lives during the First World War.

Red Cross nurses from around the world attended to the wounded during the 1914-1918 conflict and the organisation’s volunteers inspected prisoner of war camps, enabling prisoners to re-establish contact with their families at home.

Gwynedd, who now lives in Twickenham, left Trawsfynydd for Merseyside when he was 20 years old but he still has family in Gwynedd and visits regularly with his wife Lynda and children Adam, 23, Catherine, 16, and Nathan, 14.

The Welsh-speaker’s heart never left Trawsfynydd and he did not forget the story of Hedd Wyn he had learned as a child.

The poet was killed at Ypres on 31 July, 1917 but on 6 September was posthumously awarded the bardic chair at the National Eisteddfod in Birkenhead.

Gwynedd said: “Outside of Wales, Hedd Wyn isn’t very well known because he wrote his poetry in Welsh. A lot of people are interested in war poetry but haven’t heard about Hedd Wyn because of the language barrier.

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