Thomas,
I do have a few more Aberdovey thoughts, twelfth green and otherwise.
Regarding wind direction, my subjective experience was that the wind picked up from the merest zephyr when we teed off to about a full one-club breeze while at the same time shifting direction gradually. But now I realize that apparent directional shift was almost certainly the nearly imperceptible curvature of the routing.
On holes six and and seven it was behind us and slightly off the left. Then from the left on #9. The tenth through twelfth holes were straight into the breeze (by then a definite "one more club" proposition) but by the time we reached 16-18 it was more of a crosswind.
Until seeing your comment I was thinking we had just gotten lucky that right as the wind picked up to 10+ mph over those last few holes it quit being in our face. That wasn't a lucky shift but simply that the direction of play changed without us noticing. It's subtle enough to pass unnoticed by the player on the ground.
About putting from off the green, that shot was in play at both Aberdovey and Harlech but at Aberdovey much easier to judge beyond the usual 10 feet or so. I putted from 10 yards short of the green once and about 15 yards another time. After lunch one of the members was being congratulated on his birdie on the seventeenth which he accomplished by putting from (by his reckoning) about 50 feet short of the green and into the hole.
I had two encounters with the ditches. An absolutely awful tee shot on #11 flew directly into the quite obvious ditch on the right of the fairway (only about 170 yards off the tee). And a very well struck one on #17 cut off a bit too much of the left corner. It was pushed further left by that crossing breeze, took one hop in the rough and then into the ditch. Both were marked as lateral hazards. I still made 6 on the eleventh but managed two putts for 5 on the seventeenth (which I considered actually my finest hole of the day due to the miraculous long third shot after taking my penalty drop).
I can think of easily three other well struck shots that, if they had curved appreciably otherwise than I intended, would likely have found those hidden ditches. There are some places where you just have to play your desired tee shot even though a mishit brings the ditches into play. That is also true several places at Harlech by the way. But most of the holes at Harlech with ditches seem to leave a bit more room than at Aberdovey for giving them a safe margin without having to simply lay up. Some spots at Aberdovey if you wanted to take the ditches out of play on the tee shot you'd simply be bringing them into play with the second shot from too far back and so forth.
Now on to the twelfth hole. Your photos posted in a thread from earlier this summer do a better job than my snapshots from Monday of capturing the temporary fencing, temporary forward tees and the likely site of the to-be-built replacement green. We had people playing immediately behind us and I could not stop to achieve a suitable angle. My snaps are pretty much useless, looking through them now. The local rule for the temporary fencing is that it is "through the green". No free drop. If your tee shot (or second shot, god forbid) ends up against the fence you either play it as it lies or take an unplayable lie penalty.
The temporary yellow/white tee mat was by my reckoning about 110 yards from the center of the green with a forward mat more like 95-100 yards. I made a lucky guess playing a 9-iron which landed short of the green and stayed a foot or two short of the putting surface. If I had clubbed up with the 8-iron I suspect the ball would have landed well up into the green and bounced into severe trouble. I putted way too firmly and ran my second shot all the way off the back of the green (
) entailing a bogey after using the putter two more times to hole out. I think even from a 110 yard tee the over/under score on that hole would be at least bogey 4 as the green is teeny-tiny and was hard as any putting surface I've seen in quite a while. If I played there again tomorrow I might even opt to hit a pitching wedge several yards short of the green rather than risk landing on and bouncing who-knows-where. My playing companion for the day accidentally mishit his shot a good 15 yards short of the green on the upslope but made his eight-footer for par anyway.
P.S. I guess this is as good a place as any to brag about my birdie for the round. It was on the famous "Cader" blind Par 3. With a breath of a helping breeze I hit a 6-iron that must have landed on the very front of the green. The hole location was all the way back and I made my putt from pin-high and about eight feet left of the hole. My playing companion hit his tee shot pin-high right but missed his 10-footer. I would gather from those two shots that a back pin position is probably considered easier than front as there was nothing either of us high handicappers could have possibly done to keep our ball near the front of that green!