Please see comments for latest sighting
Bala Lake, in Wales,
is a protected wildlife site. It is 4 miles long and is said to be 125
feet (42 metres)deep. The Welsh name is Llyn Tegid. One of it’s
residents is the unique gwyniad fish, believed to have been restricted
to Lake Bala
from the end of the last Ice Age. The fish spends most of its life in
the deep cold parts of the lake and only comes up to shallower water at
night to spawn. It is not found anywhere else in the UK. The lake is also home to a creature nicknamed Teggie, said to be a dinosaur or crocodilian type aquatic animal.
It has been reported since the 1920’s but the first documented report I found was in 1975.
Dowie
Bowen, the former lake warden, saw something strange. "I was looking
out at the lake and saw this thing coming towards the shore," he says.
"It was at least 8ft long, similar to a crocodile, with its front and
rear ends about 4ins above the water." He rushed to the shore but found
nothing.
Then
in 1979 I found two reports. One in the The Sunday Express. Anne Jones
was gazing out on peaceful water when the surface began to foam and
bubble. For a few seconds she saw what looked like a huge hump-backed
beast. "I shall never forget it," said Mrs Jones. "All I saw was its
huge back, and froth boiling around it."
Then
in the same year John Melville Rowlands, a local businessman, was
fishing in the lake with his cousin. The pair saw something they
described as having a large head like a football, big eyes, nearly 8
feet(2.2metres) long. It swam towards them and then disappeared within a
few yards of the boat. Mr Rowlands said he wouldn’t describe it as a
monster, just something very large unlike the large pike normally seen.
Then I found this on the internet :
My
encounter with the monster took place when I was 14 in the summer of
1992. It was twilight and I was on the shingle beach of the lake, in
front of the Catamaran Club, looking for flat stones to skim on the
lake's calm surface. Without thinking, I suddenly turned a full 180
degrees and looked straight at the monster. The reason for my sudden
turnaround was because it was looking right at me. It was about twenty
metres away, it's black head and neck clear above the surface of the
water. The instant I saw it, it ducked under. My first thought was that a
diver was playing a hoax, swimming under the surface with a Loch
ness monster head. I immediately disregarded this for two reasons. The
head had ducked under the water extremely quickly - only an animal with
fins or paddles could have ducked under the surface that fast.
Furthermore, there were no tell-tale bubbles indicating the presence of
an artificial underwater breathing system. It looked to me like a
plesiosaur and I would estimate its length to be approximately twelve
feet (3.66 metres). B Vickers BSc (Hons),
In March 1995 Paul and Andrew Delaney, were fishing from a small boat on the lake They were visiting from London
and unaware of Teggie reports. They were surprised to see a small head
that appeared at the lake's surface only 80 yards( 26 metes) or so
away, which then proceeded to raise itself on a long slender neck until
it was about 10 feet ( 3.1 metres) above the surface before disappearing
under the water. The same year by Japanese TV crew, investigated the
lake and obtained a sonar trace of a very large, unidentified object
moving swiftly under the water, but failed to film anything.
.
One windsurfer recently reported being strangely "lifted out of the
water". And many boating accidents have been attributed to the beast.
Some
of the explanations put forward include one from the First World War.
Secret military experiments were said to have been carried out with
seals, which were trained to place limpet mines on their targets. Some
escaped and Teggie was born. Others believe that Teggie is actually the
'Pontrhydfendigaid witch, Mari Berllan Biter' who can transform herself
into all kinds of shapes and forms. Could it be some sort of seal? It
certainly is the size for one and a seal can have the look of a long
neck if it stretches itself to see something. The crocodilian type
creature described could not be a seal though. I also would have thought
a seal would have been seen more often and on the shore, they don’t
live permanently in the water. Maybe there is more than one creature
from the Ice Age still living in the lake, only further investigation
can tell.
3 comments:
