From the old toll-house at Llanfairpwllgwyngyll to Holyhead it is only twenty-one miles, but there are no fewer than five toll-houses on the way, all in as good and sufficient repair as though they had only retired from business yesterday. And indeed it is not so long since the gates were swept out of existence, and this remote corner of the country freed from these irritating taxes on the farmers and villagers. It is a curious fact that to the Holyhead Road belongs the distinction of having been under the control of turnpike trusts for a longer period than any road in the kingdom. That portion of it lying in Bedfordshire and Bucks was the first road placed in the care of trustees, instead of in the hands of the parish surveyors, and is described in the Act of 1706, handing it over to the new jurisdiction, as “now and for many years past the common post-road towards Ireland.” The greater number of the gates were swept away from 1860 to 1870, but Shropshire was not rid of them until November 1st, 1883, nor Denbighshire and Merioneth until a year later; while, under the Annual Turnpike Continuance Act of 1884, the Carnarvonshire gates levied toll until November 1st, 1890, and by the Act of that year the Anglesey gates were continued until November 1st, 1895. [Illustration: NEAR MONA INN.] [Illustration: LLANGRISTIOLUS.] At Gaerwen village the road descends to Pentre Berw, the “Holland Arms,” and the snipe-haunted Malldraeth Marsh; rising again to where the church and isolated cottages of Llangristiolus stand overlooking a vast expanse of mountains, marsh, and sea, from a curious rocky bluff, cleft by a huge fissure; the effect, perhaps, of some prehistoric earthquake. The name of Llangristiolus, grotesque though it sounds, means the “church of the most worshipful Christ.” “Mona,” two miles beyond, the place mentioned on all the Anglesey milestones, is—or was when such things were—the half-way house between Bangor and Holyhead. The inn, for such it was, is referred to by Telford in his reports to the Holyhead Road Commissioners as having been a part of the work undertaken, and the cost of building it is included in the estimates. Never anything but ugly, it is a melancholy enough place in these days of railway travel: remote in the middle of Anglesey, and now a farmhouse, encircled with trees. Gwalchmai, by comparison with Mona, is a veritable metropolis, with inns, aye, and shops, and a post-office. Between this and Bryngwran, a stone-walled enclosure in midst of hillside fields marks the spot where some one has chosen to be buried. Why that solitary place was selected is hid from the Saxon by the Welsh inscription on the tombstone.