It was a Pennal during March 1406 that prince Owain Glyndwr reached the summit of his reign as the leader of an independent Wales. It is here that we see that soldier and gorilla fighter as statesman and visionary. For centuries it was to the mouth of the river Dyfi that Welsh Pendragons had come to try and unite the tribes of Wales under one banner. Llywellyn Fawr (the Great) came here in 1216, holding court in the estuary. Leaving the safety of Harlech Castle, Glyndwr called the noble and princess of his race to Pennal to hold that only House of Lords of his reign in his Chapel Royal of St Peer Ad Vinacula; by coincidence a chapel that shared the same dedication as that of his rival Henry IV in the tower of London. This political assembly or senate was also a great synod of the Welsh church because leading churchmen of the day decided to change their religious allegiance from the Pope in Rome to the French Pope in Avignon. The Pennal Policy was the fruit of their deliberations, eventually preserved as the now famous Pennal letter of March 31, 1406 out of that great treasure of Welsh history. Sent to the French king Charles VI it is housed in the archives Nationales Paris, a facsimile can be seen in the Pennal church.

It was at Pennal at the start of the fifteenth century that the Welsh began to forge a new identity, it as in this small Merionethshire village, nestling at the foothills of southern Snowdonia mountain range t the modern Welsh nation of the 21st century was conceived six hundred years after he shared his vision for Wales and its people, Glyndwr’s legacy lives on.

“Chapel Royal”, “Senate House”, “Court of Pendragon”, Pennal church is all of these and more, the ideal historic location to celebrate the life and times of the pivotal figure, not only in Welsh, but also in the annals of British and European princely lore. High on “the scale of romantic places “, where better to come on pilgrimage to honour and remember the last Welsh pendragon. That son of prophecy. The Glyndwr of history as well as the Glyndwr of myth and magic. Glyndwr of yesterday and the Glyndwr of tomorrow.