Town gets ready to welcome visitors to Eisteddfod

With just under a month to go until the National Eisteddfod comes to the area, the residents of the town of Criccieth have been busy beautifying the town to give a warm welcome to visitors to the Eisteddfod.

This year’s Eisteddfod runs from 5 to 12 August. For those travelling to the site, at Boduan near Pwllheli, Criccieth can be the last town on the road to stop for supplies, and the people of Criccieth are eager to give visitors a warm welcome.

A lot of work has been done by a group of business and shop owners, the town council, members of Creative Criccieth, school children, students and Criccieth in Bloom to beautify the town. Thanks to financial support from Magnox, Croeso Dolig Criccieth group and the town council, it has been possible to decorate the town and promote awareness of the arrival of the Eisteddfod in the area.

Delyth Lloyd, chair of Criccieth Town Council and co-ordinator of Croeso Criccieth volunteers, said: “As well as an abundance of bunting and pom poms, months of work have gone into creating banners on the High Street representing the different societies and communities in the town - and these have all been elaborately created by members who contribute to Creative Criccieth’s work – local people who enjoy creating items from embroidery, knitting and crochet.

“The group, which includes people from the town who were not already familiar with the Eisteddfod, have worked together to decorate and raise awareness of the Eisteddfod in the town.”

Catrin Jones, on behalf of Creative Criccieth, said: “We’ve had a lot of fun meeting to plan and create in weekly sessions that have been available to everyone in the community at Criccieth Library since January. The children of Ysgol Treferthyr have been busy creating pom poms to contribute to the multicoloured arch in front of the Memorial Hall, which is guarded by Dilys the big red dragon. It was great to reach out to the London Welsh School who have been busy creating multilingual driftwood signs. In addition, Coleg Meirion-Dwyfor art students and a group of Bangor University learners have renovated and created a friendship bench on the library site.

“The colourful bench bridges the Bro Dwyfor Eisteddfod of 1975 – held in the town – and this year’s Eisteddfod. The flowers planted by Criccieth in Bloom are also a sight to see.”

In addition, there are knitted and crochet post box post tops yet to be put in their place in the town, large CROESO (welcome) letters in a field on the outskirts of the town at the bottom of Caerdyni hill, and ‘face’ boards with the characters of the Gorsedd and the Eisteddfod, on the Maes in the town for people to have their photos taken.

Delyth added: “At the heart of this are boards displaying information about the Eisteddfod and especially the memories of when the eisteddfod came to Bro Dwyfor back in 1975. A number of businesses and shops in the town have agreed to take display these boards and artefacts and I really look forward to seeing these in the windows.”