Cil-y-Bont, Llanrug, Gwynned

After such a long drive yesterday, it was only fitting that we should limit our exploration to Llanberis just five miles down the road. This small settlement on the edge of Llyn Padern is the one town name that comes to mind when considering the mountains of  Snowdonia, if only because it is this that sits at the foot of Wales’ highest mountain and it is from here that the Snowden Mountain Railway leaves to climb the almost hour long ride to the top. 

I have already mentioned that we touched base with the operator on our first day here, and were then informed that they were fully booked for the weekend. It had been our hope to travel up the 1,085 metre mountain on the rail and then walk back down, the easier option for less serious walkers; however there was no point in forking out for the fare if the peak was to be enveloped in cloud which it is more often than not. In the days since that initial push, we have both come to accept that the chances of a clear view from the top is unlikely and we have given up; there are plenty of other adventures to be had, even if less challenging.

So today’s trip to Llanberis was a much pared down version of the original; the slate museum, the castle, the town, the lake and maybe to check out the hydro-electricity operation. Within this modest brief, we succeeded well and The Chauffeur was surprised that we managed to fill a day in Llanberis; he had a Plan B drive in reserve.

We left Cil-y-Bont with the promise of good weather after a much needed day’s wet weather and after settling up our host for the six days’ tariff and learning more about his personal circumstances. He was contemplating a very busy day with five hogs to roast for customers but never too busy to tell us the tales of his family and heritage. John is a wonderful host, but then so many of our CL or CS hosts are.

But just one mile from LLanberis, rain met us and we arrived in the car park at the eastern end of the lake adjacent to the museum, with the windscreen wipers fully engaged.

The National Slate Museum, as all the National Museums, offers free entry to all. There are always cafes and shops to spend money in if one feels driven to leave with an emptier pocket, but the reality is, one leaves these institutions feeling so good about the place, one is encouraged to splash out elsewhere, perhaps in greater style than they would if there was an entry fee.

The museum is here because Llanberis was the site of one of the ninety six slate quarries in the region, and more particularly this was the second largest in operation during the peak production years.

The glory days of the slate industry were during the Victorian age, when the growth of industrial cities created a huge and sudden demand for roofing slates. Wales produced more of these than the rest of the world put together. The quarry here, Dinorwig, yielded up to 1,700 tons of slate a week in its heyday between 1850 and 1910; in 1872 a total of 87,000 tons. The quarry in its day employed 3,000 men.

However the production of slate was not entirely limited to this era; there is evidence of slate having been quarried here for over two thousand years.  Slate was used at Segontium, the Roman Fort near Caernarfon which we probably won’t manage to fit into our itinerary. This is only one of such earlier finds.

The slates of Wales were prized as more durable, more easily split and more aesthetically pleasing than any other in the world. By the end of the 19^th century, Wales was producing up to half a million tons of slate a year.  By the early 20^th century, the biggest quarries, Penryn and Dinorwig, had their own fleets of steamers, sailing from Porthmadog and Y Felinheli to Europe, Australia and the United States of America. Hundreds of thousands of tons were shipped each year to major ports of Britain and Ireland, or lighter vessels carried their load to small creeks and beaches, wherever a boat could land safely.

In the museum there are films, workshops and machinery of yesteryears as well as a relocated row of quarryman’s houses, moved block by block, slate by slate, from the village of Tanygrisiau, near Blaenau Ffestiniog. These were opened for tourists in the museum just before the turn of the last century and are presented to represent several different periods; a slate worker’s family of 1861 exploiting the boom years of slate, another during the bleak Penrhyn  strike and lockout of 1900 – 03. A third is set in 1969 when the Dinorwig Quarry had closed, and the future was uncertain although by then there was always welfare to pick up the pieces. The fourth contains another film and is both educational and entertaining, for the many tourists and an equal number of school children of varying ages who visited today.

We spent just over two hours here, and were glad to find better weather when we emerged from the covered areas. We dined en voiture before setting out to the other places on offer, leaving the car in the car park for the “all day” fee of £4.

The museum is set on the edge of the 800 acre Padern Country Park which was established in 1969 and was Wales’ first designated Country Park. The Park covers much of the abandoned quarry encompassing woodlands and the Padern Lake.

Padern is the sixth deepest lake in Wales and is two miles long, and at its maximum, over thirty metres deep. Immediately to the east is Llyn Peris, once joined to its sister lake, but now over time, the rivers have washed down sediment creating a natural land bridge. A small tourist railway  runs around part of the lake and was doing great trade today. 

There is a network of trails over the park however I was interested only in checking out the lake at the bottom of the Vivian Quarry near the museum. Here one can scuba dive in depths ranging from six to eighteen metres, or alternatively try abseiling and rock climbing about the terraced galleries of the quarry. We watched various parties enjoying their adventures both above and below us. While I have always harboured a desire to try abseiling, I was not tempted to try it here with such long drops down into the lake waters.

 
The Dolbadarn Castle sits high on a rock between the two lakes, and has been here for a very long time, although there is little but the remains of a tower left today. It was built in the 13^th century most likely by Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, later taken by Edward I, then back to the Welsh princes again. There are stories about one of these princes keeping his brother prisoner in the tower of decades, to keep his hold on power. Like so much of medieval history hereabouts, some is fact and some is vague and must instead be the basis of legend. 

These days it provides a splendid view point back across Llyn Peris to that part of the hydro station above ground and across to the great expanse of quarry scars, the extent of which is simply mind boggling.

We walked on into the town and wandered along the shore, calling into the visitor centre for the Dinorwic Power Station and the tourist arm of this named “Electric Mountain”. There were enough groups of tourists to suggest they would not miss our lack of patronage, but we did mozzie around to see what we could learn in this lakeside centre.

Marchlyn Mawr is a lake up in the mountain across the twin llyns from Mount Snowdon and it is water from this and Llyn Peris that generate the power in the power station, this Europe’s largest pumped storage power station, hidden deep inside Elidir mountain. Started in 1976, it took over six years to build and has sixteen kilometres of underground tunnels and the high pressure tunnel built within the mountain is taller than New York’s Empire State building. 

Here in the visitor centre is an excellent three dimensional raised relief map, the kind that we love to see; they do help get one’s head around the lay of the land. But the rest of the centre is very dated and about to be replaced by a state of the art centre; it seems that the staff cannot be too bothered in the interim with the displays.

Wandering along the lakeshore, we enjoyed the birdlife and the quirks of our fellow tourists, before heading up into the town’s High Street. There we were disappointed at the shops and services; given that Llanberis has been a tourist destination since about the late 1880s, and included in the Snowdonia National Park since 1951, we felt the place was decidedly nonchalant about the opportunity outside funds could generate and jazz up the place. “Vibrant” was not a word that came to mind.

By now the sun was out and the temperatures were approaching those we have enjoyed over the past few weeks. It was time to head home and put our feet up; back in the caravan, we reclined with coffee and the day’s newspaper, both agreeing we had passed yet another wonderful day.