A short but excellent and varied walk on the 83 mile Snowdonia Slate Trail from Waunfawr to Y Fron.

Date walked: 20th September 2022

Distance walked: about 4 miles (I know, hardly counts as a walk does it?)

Map used: OS Explorer OL 17 -Snowdon/ Yr Wyddfa

Guide book: Snowdonia Slate Trail by Aled Jones – OK on route description and facilities, poor on maps

****************

Jessica Ann Hawes: 30th August 1927 – 8th October 2022

My Mum died on October 8th 2022; this is my first post since her death. I had visited her in Telford hospital’s stroke unit  on my way up to link up with Bob for this walk. These last visits to see her were very sad . She was unable to speak in sentences that I could understand and by her gestures and expressions it was obviously very hard and frustrating for her (and me) not to be able to communicate. Holding hands and having a hug was the best that we could do.

This pic from Ann Godfrey – and ex-girlfriend of mine who had stayed close friends with Mum after we parted; they had many walking holidays together.

Mum was a hugely keen walker and a committed reader of this blog. She didn’t post comments often but these posts were frequently the subject of our telephone conversations.  She had lived in Wales for the last 23 years of her life, had a Welsh mother, and is now buried in a green burial site not far from her home town of Montgomery. Going for walks together was something we had done on and off since childhood but in recent years I discovered that she had tackled several of the really  quite tough walks in north Wales that I have done and written up elsewhere in this blog when she was in her 60’s as I am now. So visits to her home quite often involved getting out her maps and swapping notes and stories about our adventures; she was even more prone to losing her path than I am.

*************

Coming across and exploring disused slate quarries has been one of the great pleasures of my north Wales walks so I was pleased to discover that the Cwm Community Action Group had established this well waymarked 83 mile circular Trail that starts and finishes in Bangor on the north Wales coast. Slate has been used in construction in Wales since at least Roman times but it was in the C18th century that it became a huge industry and by the end of the 1800s the Penrhyn quarry  was the largest in the world. In 1898, a work force of 17,000 men produced half a million tons of slate in Wales.

Bob and I were staying on the trail in Rhyd-Ddu – he is his camper van, me in the excellent Cwellyn Arms.

We had spent the morning at the fascinating National Slate Museum at Llanberis. It is also on the Trail and our plan had been to start our walk there but sorting out where to put one of our cars defeated us – Llanberis being the base for many peoples ascent of Snowdon and consequently hugely congested with very restricted and expensive parking. So we drove out to the hamlet of Y Fron, left Bobs van there and started from the car park of the Snowdonia Parc Inn (one of the least atmospheric pubs I had been in for a very long time but it is next to a camp site and a stop on the Welsh Highland railway).

A short climb up a narrow road….

… brought us to a prominent footpath sign and our first “staircase” stile of the day.

A steady but gentle climb through fields  already provided us with some fine views of the surrounding hills.

Entering a small woodland, a second stile was leant against  a wall constructed of large moss-covered boulders.

.

Shortly afterwards another staircase stile crossed a wall of dressed stone…..

… which Bob climbed effortlessly, almost Gazelle-like.

After this the path was tricky, strewn with angular boulders….

… requiring careful placing of feet to avoid getting tripped up.

It seemed that we were on a “two for one” path, a waymark sign showing that we were also following the North Wales Pilgrims Way.

The quality of wall continued to improve …..

….and just to the left of the path we passed the remains of a tiny shepherd’s cottage.

Such places are always a stark reminder of the hardship that people have had to endure who had to eke out a living from such remote terrain.

Simply the construction of such modest buildings from massive boulders would have been a massive task.

The map describes this hill as Moel Smytho and it was clearly the location of a small settlement.

Just a little further on a network of well preserved stone walls defined the field boundaries of  farmstead. The path would have had us go around these but I couldn’t resist following the  track to the farmhouse.

I was rewarded with a close up view of the most beautiful single story farmhouse (or pair of cottages), its woodwork painted sky-blue.

It was in such good condition that I suspect that it must still be in some use but certainly not as a farm. I skirted round the back where an outbuilding for sheep stood alongside. It must have been dark inside the cottage as there was only one tiny window in its entire rear elevation.

The walls surrounding the cottage were high and intact and I had a careful scramble to cross them to return to the path. A little further along another cottage – this one extended and done up stands starkly and to my eye unpleasingly on the hillside.

Our now wide stone track headed due south, ahead, huge mounds of slate spoil showing that we were approaching some quarrying site.

We passed the sorry and characteristically untidy and ramshackle buildings purporting to be Hafod Ruffydd farm.

At the head of its drive was one of the most incongruous gardens I have come across in my travels in Wales. It was so naff and generally awful that it really ought to be in a book of The Worst Gardens in Wales (but who would buy it?).

Leaving the track our route reverted to a narrow grass path….

… and for a brief mile or so we had that wonderful feeling of being in a wild and unpopulated country.

A clearly man-made channel colonised by heather and coarse reed led to inconclusive speculation as to its purpose. The guide suggests a trial excavation but I’m not convinced).

We passed some huge slabs of unworked stone…..

….the mounds of slate spoil making a dramatic horizon on one side of our view …..

…. and the even more dramatic mass of Mynydd Mawr on the other.

We paused for a while, watching a helicopter float over the ridge ; an exercise we thought rather than a mountain rescue.

This was fabulous countryside and yet  in the shadow of its hills the settlements of the old slate quarries began to emerge.

Our path veered west, approaching the spoil heaps below Moel Tryfan.

It wasn’t clear whether the rusty machinery scattered around was abandoned or still in use.

This snap makes it look as if Bob is trying to drag it away!

But it was clear that there is still use being made of this apparently wasted stone…..

… and in the distance we could see and hear signs of activity.

The workings were very extensive.

We passed a flooded quarry with a dangerously dilapidated stock fence that would not have prevented man nor sheep from falling in, but that too, evidenced by several buoys on the surface of its deep blue water, was being made use of.

From here the path was edged by an old and now ineffective slate fence as it approached the village of Y Fron.

As signs go I thought this one was fun.

Up ahead Bob’s van was thankfully in place and unmolested (its an expensive piece of kit).

The tyranny of bi-lingualism meant that there wasn’t much room for information on the village notice board. Maybe there wasn’t much going on.

A short walk but a great introduction to the Slate Trail and we were looking forward to carrying on the next day.