COUNTRY FILE · EUROPE
Cryptids of Wales
What cryptids are in Wales? The best-known are Afanc and Teggie.
Wales is a land of lakes and legends, where almost every llyn seems to hide a drowned town, a fairy bride or a monster. The greatest of its water beasts is the afanc, a creature known from medieval literature: in the romance of Peredur, preserved in the 14th-century White Book of Rhydderch, the hero slays an invisible “addanc of the lake,” and the 15th-century poet Lewys Glyn Cothi placed an afanc in Llangorse Lake. The best-loved version comes from the Conwy valley, where villagers chained the flood-causing beast and had Hu Gadarn’s oxen drag it over the mountains to Glaslyn, high on Snowdon.
Cryptids reported in Wales
LAKE & SEA MONSTER · c. 1350
Afanc
Llyn yr Afanc on the River Conwy and Glaslyn, Snowdonia
Wales’s legendary lake monster, a flood-causing beast dragged out of a River Conwy pool by oxen and exiled to a lake high on Snowdon.
FOLKLORE
LAKE & SEA MONSTER · 1920s
Teggie
Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake), Gwynedd
The crocodile-like monster of Bala Lake, Wales’s largest natural lake – a modern legend that once drew a Japanese film crew with a mini-submarine.
LOCAL LEGENDThe legends of Wales
Modern Wales has its own Nessie, too. Since the 1920s, people have reported a large, crocodile-like animal in Llyn Tegid (Bala Lake), the country’s largest natural lake, and nicknamed it Teggie. A Japanese film crew searched the lake with divers and a small submarine in the 1990s and found nothing but old boots – but the lake really does hold a living relic, the gwyniad, a whitefish found nowhere else and trapped there since the last Ice Age.
Like the rest of Britain, Wales also has its share of “alien big cat” reports, part of the phenomenon made famous by the Beast of Exmoor across the Bristol Channel. For visitors, the classic monster walk follows the Miners’ Track past Glaslyn in Eryri (Snowdonia) National Park, followed by a lazy afternoon on the shores of Bala Lake.
Hotspots
The deep mountain lake below Snowdon’s summit where the Conwy afanc is said to have been exiled, passed by the Miners’ Track.
The pool on the River Conwy named after the afanc, where the flood-making beast was said to live.
Wales’s largest natural lake and home of Teggie – and of the unique gwyniad fish.
Sightings timeline
- c. 1350The addanc in <em>Peredur</em> Afanc
The romance of Peredur, copied into the White Book of Rhydderch in the mid-14th century, includes the hero’s fight with the “addanc of the lake” in its cave.
- 15th centuryLewys Glyn Cothi’s afanc Afanc
The poet Lewys Glyn Cothi referred to an afanc living in Llangorse Lake, one of the earliest links between the creature and a real body of water.
- 1838–1849Lady Charlotte Guest’s <em>Mabinogion</em> Afanc
Guest’s English translation of medieval Welsh tales, including Peredur, introduced the addanc to readers far beyond Wales.
- 1909Marie Trevelyan’s dragon Teggie
In her collection of Welsh folklore, Marie Trevelyan recorded a local tale of a coiled, dragon-like creature said to have lived in the lake in earlier centuries.
- 1979The angler’s hump Teggie
A visiting fisherman reported a large hump-backed animal at the surface, following the lake manager Dewi Bowen’s description of a crocodile-like creature emerging from the water.
- 1990sThe Japanese submarine search Teggie
A Japanese film crew brought divers and a small submarine to search the lake for Teggie. They found nothing beyond old boots and murky footage of the peaty water.