Snowdon 4 x 4 Man to be Burnt as a Witch

The man who left his Fronterra 4 x 4 near the summit of Snowdon is to be burnt at the stake as a witch, local elders have announced.

Prankster Craig Williams, 39, from Gloucestershire is to be burnt alive at dawn tomorrow, having been convicted of using "sorcery and magicke" to get his off-roader more than 3,000 feet up the highest peak in Englandandwales.

"There is no other explanation for it," quoth Geraint Cadwaladr, local councillor and chapel deacon of 60 years. "He's obviously in connivance with Satan. How else could he have got the car up there? He claims to have driven it, but that's just ridiculous."

Retired cakemaker and respected village elder Gwendolyn Roberts added, "Levitation is banned as a form of the Dark Arts. Such things may be acceptable in parts of England, but this is Wales, a hobbit-free country of sound Christian values. Enemies of God are not welcome, nor the practice of witchery and sorcecraft, for which we have severe penalties."

The story of Craig Williams' prank broke yesterday and has astounded many locals, some of whom are not even Christians. Many have also questioned how a wizard was allowed to arrive in their midst unchallenged and without stringent security counter-measures being deployed.

Chip shop proprietor Justin Batter pointed an outraged finger at complacency among the Elders themselves. "They're too busy being sanctimonious and self-righteous, too concerned with appearance and image. Meanwhile, the community is left undefended, at the mercy of the Forces of Evil. What if this demon had other things on its mind? A creature of this sort could easily have possessed a teenage girl, or even destroyed the whole village just for the hell of it. These things happen. We know. We remember Tryweryn, where a whole community was wiped off the face of the earth by the Beatles."

But Geraint Cadwaladr refutes the allegation, citing the probable use of a cloaking device as the "sorcerer's" possible mode of entry. "I have heard such things exist and are even openly sold at carboot sales and markets in lands beyond the mountains. A cloaking device would certainly avoid capture on CCTV. It would also hide the electro-magnetic signature of the sorcerer, thus rendering our state-of-the-art Electromagnetic Signature Recognition System useless. It's largely down to funding. Lottery money has dried up. I blame the Olympics."

News of the sentence has raised more than a couple of eyebrows among liberal minded circles in mainland Englandandwales. But locals agree that the punishment is justified. "Sorcery is the biggest threat to humanity as we know it," Gwen Roberts mused. "Those riots in England - were they the acts of decent God-fearing, chapel folk? No, they were the frenzied acts of those who were weak enough to succumb to a talking goat's sexual advances and copulated with it."

But not all people accept village elders' view that witchcraft was involved in Mr Williams' '50 Things to Do Before I Die' prank. Some argue it was all a publicity stunt arranged by Fronterra manufacturers, Vauxhall. Others, like local shepherd Jacob Jones, believe the jeep is an inflateable replica. "Either that or a hovercraft."

Rumours also abound of extra-terrestial involvement. A local window cleaner and amateur astronomer, who did not want to be named, informed us that strange lights had been seen in the sky for three consecutive nights prior to the Fronterra being found abandonded at Bwlch Glas, 400 meters from the mountain's summit.

"When you think about it, all that stuff about wizards and witchcraft is just a little bit too far-fetched. Every one knows alien life forms have been visiting Earth for centuries. A twenty second operation with a tractor beam could easily transport a six thousand tonne ship up Snowdon, let alone a 4 x 4. There's also the possibility of teleporting it - which makes me suspect the vehicle itself may not be of this planet, but was brought here by the same beings who kidnapped me in 1976 and beamed down to the mountainside. Mr Williams may not be a wizard at all, but a being from the outer reaches of the Andromeda system."

North Wales Police have refused to comment on the matter but have issued a warning to any wizard or witch that may consider a copycat prank that the full force of Good will be deployed against them. Asked about the severity of the sentence and the speed at which it was handed down, the spokesman referred all matters of administrative justice to the religious authorities in Nant Peris.

There was no one in the office when we called, but in a press release delivered by a hooded horserider the Llanberis Pass Administrative Justice's Witchfinding Department confirmed that, "The sorcerer and servant of Lucifer, Craig Williams, was handed a fixed penalty notice of £60 for parking illegally, then detained and found to be a witch, before being taken to a place from where he would be taken to a place where he would await being taken to another place, from which he would await being taken to yet another place, where he would be tied to a stake, consumed by fire and his soul cleansed of all evil."

It is not clear if Mr Williams can appeal, though it is claimed on his behalf that he is not a wizard or a witch at all, but just a bloke who had a list of 50 things to do before he died, and that driving up Snowdon was the first on that list. It appears that, failing a reprieve, the other 49 will remain unachieved.