The most important road-improvements actually carried out under Mr. Telford's immediate superintendence were those on the western side of the island, with the object of shortening the distance and facilitating the communication between London and Dublin by way of Holyhead, as well as between London and Liverpool. At the time of the Union, the mode of transit between the capital of Ireland and the metropolis of the United Kingdom was tedious, difficult, and full of peril. In crossing the Irish Sea to Liverpool, the packets were frequently tossed about for days together. On the Irish side, there was scarcely the pretence of a port, the landing-place being within the bar of the river Liffey, inconvenient at all times, and in rough weather extremely dangerous. To avoid the long voyage to Liverpool, the passage began to be made from Dublin to Holyhead, the nearest point of the Welsh coast. Arrived there, the passengers were landed upon rugged, unprotected rocks, without a pier or landing convenience of any kind.*[3] But the traveller's perils were not at an end,--comparatively speaking they had only begun. From Holyhead, across the island of Anglesea, there was no made road, but only a miserable track, circuitous and craggy, full of terrible jolts, round bogs and over rocks, for a distance of twenty-four miles. Having reached the Menai Strait, the passengers had again to take to an open ferry-boat before they could gain the mainland. The tide ran with great rapidity through the Strait, and, when the wind blew strong, the boat was liable to be driven far up or down the channel, and was sometimes swamped altogether. The perils of the Welsh roads had next to be encountered, and these were in as bad a condition at the beginning of the present century as those of the Highlands above described. Through North Wales they were rough, narrow, steep, and unprotected, mostly unfenced, and in winter almost impassable. The whole traffic on the road between Shrewsbury and Bangor was conveyed by a small cart, which passed between the two places once a week in summer. As an illustration of the state of the roads in South Wales, which were quite as bad as those in the North, we may state that, in 1803, when the late Lord Sudeley took home his bride from the neighbourhood of Welshpool to his residence only thirteen miles distant, the carriage in which the newly married pair rode stuck in a quagmire, and the occupants, having extricated themselves from their perilous situation, performed the rest of their journey on foot.