A fabulous 7 mile hike through one of the wildest sections of the Cambrian Way, crossing Moelwyn Mawr, but taking in railways, power stations and quarries!

Date walked:  Sunday, 18th April 2021

Distance: About 7 miles

Maps used:  OS Explorer OL 18- Harlech, Porthmadog and Y Bala and OL 17 Snowdon (or Yr Wyddfa as a new campaign would have us exclusively name it)

Guide used: Walking the Cambrian Way by George Todd and Richard Tyler (Cicerone Press)

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After yesterday’s gentle walk Paul and I were up for this rather more demanding section – which by my plan for the day would only be about half of what our Guide book described as the next section. Each to their own.

Having had a leisurely breakfast and deposited Paul’s car at the Cnicht car park at Croesor, we set off at about 12.

The driveway to our accommodation

Technically we were a little south of the “official” path but it looked as if we might regain the route by taking a track by a stream that ran into the Afon Dwyrd near our driveway. Paul thought so anyway….

Some days it takes no time at all to find the wrong path

…. but he was wrong; we quickly found ourselves on what was a private drive. We might have taken a clue by their being no footpath sign. So we retraced our steps and passed by the Big House on the little road by the river.

There are some very sweet cottages in this part of the world and we were very taken by this tiny place that was set back from the road.

After half a mile we found a footpath sign that directed us up the side of the steep little valley, arriving at an improbably sited gate that seemed to have no path behind it.

Scrambling through and mounting the rocky outcrop we arrived at a substantial property that had a bit of a castle thing going on architecturally.

Keen Eyed Paul spotted our first Cambrian Way sign of the day….

Huzzah!

…. so we continued our climb up the hill, finding another view to Trawsfynydd power station.

At the top of the hill we crossed the narrow railway line of the Festiniog Railway.

Built to transport slate from the Festiniog quarries to Porthmadog, at first it used gravity to get the laden trucks down to the port and ponies to drag the empty waggons back. Steam trains were introduced in 1863, which led to its use for passengers but in the face of mainline railway alternatives and road transport, the lines closed in 1946. The revival of the line makes a good read if you click the link above.

We followed the line to Dduallt station, Paul fancying himself as a modern day station master/artist in residence in the little cottage that sits by the railway line.

This section of the line, which runs through a tunnel and then by Tanygrisiau Reservoir, is relatively new, only having been constructed since 1971 to replace a section which had been flooded when the reservoir was created.

The Cambrian Way leaves the railway line here and climbs on a track directly above the tunnel…..

…. arriving above the reservoir to give a good view to the hydroelectric power station that sits on its shore.

The UK’s first major pumped-storage power station. It opened in 1963.

At this point we turned away from the railway line route and, crossing a waymarked stile…..

….. began to climb quite steeply towards Llyn Stwlan  about 1000 feet above us.  Time for a tea break and a bite to eat.

We passed a ruined store or barn about half way up the climb, bewildered, as ever, at how it had seem necessary to build such a place in such a remote spot.

Llyn Stwlan was created to feed the hydro station below. The severe concrete walls of the dam have had considerable repairs in recent years.

Our path approached the dam walls…

… and then climbed up at its rocky side to come out by the reservoir’s edge.

Paul looking quite epic

Together with the plant by the lake below this is known as the Festiniog Power Station. According to wikipedia, it can generate  360 megawatts of electricity within 60 seconds of the need arising and the capacity to power the whole of North Wales for several hours (the reservoir is refilled at such times by pumping the water back up from the lower one).

It had been quite a slog to get to this point and we still had several hundred more feet of climbing to reach Moelwyn Mawr. Unfortunately  rather than make our way up to that checkpoint summit we managed instead to climb its little sister, Moelwyn Bach!

Paul went on strike at this point

This only became obvious when we had reached the top and, checking the map, wondered what the rather bigger hill was opposite us with an obvious Trig Point. We laughed.

Thanks to Paul – I am laughing

And enjoyed the view of the reservoir.

And then we made our way back down and picked our way up the rather more challenging route up Moelwyn Mawr.

Moelwyn Mawr, 2527 feet and Checkpoint 30 of the Cambrian Way

So that’s 30 checkpoints completed in 30 days of walking, which would mean 11 more days to go at this rate.

Clutching the Guide, we followed the precise directions off Moelwyn Mawr, pondering the summit of Snowdon, sorry, I mean Yr Wyddfa,  in the distance.

The Guide would have had us  continue to cross the mountain and climb the summit of Cnicht but we had already decided that that would be a summit too far (and anyway, we had done an extra already), so, passing a mysterious double walled track…

… we turned West, passing the little Lyn Croesor…..

… to arrive above above Croesor quarry.

Wales’s remote landscapes are often peppered with the remains of heavy industry. Whenever I come across them I find them totally fascinating and would love to time travel back to see how these places looked when they were operating.

Mostly, all that remains are collapsed walls and outlines of their foundations on the ground. Drakes original guide to the Cambrian Way refers to this area being riddled with underground mines. The wikipedia entry that I just linked to describes Croesor as an underground slate mine, started in 1846, closing in 1878 due to poor returns but then re-opening in 1895 as a much modernised plant using hydro created electricity and innovative mechanical drills.   You really must read it. Paul and I were fascinated by this perfectly round steel frame set into a slate wall. It seems that this was what held a huge fan which ventilated the mine.

It was called a Guibal fan.

This space inspired the artist in Paul who mounted a rusty grate onto a pedestal that was clearly put there for walking artists to exhibit.

On the far side of the site stood a tall square building.

On closer inspection it was obvious that this was the wheel house for a funicular tram to cart the slate down to a lower tramway in the valley bottom. Metal cables are still visible lower down the steep slope. As we left the site and looked back it was extraordinary to see how this building had been  erected  on a huge pile of slate .

Apparently the quarry closed in 1930, its underground chambers used after the war to store explosives until fears that these might explode and destroy the Festiniog reservoirs led to the explosives removal in the early 1970’s. A planning application to re-open as a slate quarry was refused around the same time.

From the quarry we took the wide track that was clearly an access route for vehicles to the quarry.

In beautiful early evening light we descended into Cwm Croesor, the summit of Cnicht still lit on the other side of the valley.

Denuded of all but short grass, Paul was lamenting the impoverishment of the ecology of this landscape through the grazing of sheep but I disagreed; I wouldn’t change a thing and love the sheep shorn hillsides.

I only discovered this when writing the next blog post but that building in the valley (which Paul and I thought looked  like a school house) is in fact Kellows Blaencwm (hydro) power station, once again generating power after a period as an outdoor pursuits centre

In the valley bottom were a few houses and cottages, their woodwork painted in the turquoise of the Brondanw estate, which extends over 3,000 acres from here to the village on Llanfrothen.

We passed another sweet cottage that I imagine would be a holiday home rather than a permanent letting.

I’ve only seen slate fencing in Wales and even then not as much as you might expect so it was good to see it here.

It had been a fabulous walk and just to round it off, what could be more perfect than some sheep.

Giving Paul the Evil Eye, obvs.

Many of these images are available at Getty images. Here’s a link. The prices quoted are a fantasy – mostly I get about a dollar an image through big picture buyers having what’s called Premium Access.