Snowdonia Slate Trail, day 2: Llanberis to Y Fron
Today’s a rare day: no waterproofs needed, and sun forecast for the afternoon. We set off from Llanberis and climb up the lane towards Waunfawr. On average, each day of the Trail crosses two watersheds, and this is the first of today’s two ascents. Sheep outnumber people by some margin, as usual. Their fleeces are Daz white, as if they’d been through a washing machine (Eryri rain has much the same effect). The higher we climb, the more often we stop and look back, to the giant Dinorwig Quarry opposite, and, to our right, the Pass of Llanberis leading up to Pen-y-Pass.
Conversation has moved on from yesterday’s mind-body problem to cultural differences in northern Europe, specifically how Scandinavians were amazed to discover that Latvians, after the collapse of the Soviet system, expected to pay no taxes for public services. As we plod on, we’re overtaken by women runners, no doubt practising for Ras yr Wyddfa or a similar challenge.
Higher still, the lane’s turned into a track, passing ruined stone buildings and more slate tips. One of the lessons of the Slate Trail is to learn how many small quarries were mined in the slate region, well away from the monster quarries of Dinorwig, Penrhyn and Blaenau Ffestiniog. As we cross the watershed a completely different vista opens: the land slopes gently away towards the Menai Strait and Anglesey, and we can make out Holyhead Mountain in the far distance. Further on again, the distinctive shape of Yr Eifl comes into view, scene of our wanderings eight years ago on the Wales Coast Path, and, further north, the silhouette of Caernarfon Castle.
We walk between a large wood on our left and a tall, revetted wall of slate waste on the right. By now, discussion has turned to walking books, and inevitably we pass judgement on The salt path, the less-than-frank account by ‘Raynor Wynn’ about walking the south-west England coast path with her not-long-to-live husband. We wonder whether the confessional walking book has passed its peak. Yet more ruined stone buildings are scattered about, and, across banks of bright heather, yet more slate tips. The terrain looks bleak and uninhabitable. A few vehicles are on the track: a local farmer’s car, and then another that struggles up the hill towards us, stalls and fails. The driver winds down his window and asks us whether we’ve passed a car park. He and his partner are from the Netherlands – which might explain the stalling on the hill – and they’re desperate to do some challenging walking nearby. We do our best to help them, and discuss the curious size and excellence of outdoors and mountaineering shops in the Netherlands.
We leave the lane and descend gradually to Waunfawr. When we get there, we’re surprised by how many large modern houses there are at the east end of the village. The café run by Antur Waunfawr is now closed, but we spot several houses built by the social enterprise. There’s almost no one around, except for two small children sitting side by side on the kerb, the boy dressed in a Spiderman costume. Two centuries ago, travellers like us would have termed them ‘urchins’. They’re still in the same position when we pass again after circling the village.
We join the main road for a while, pass the house with a plaque commemorating the poet David Thomas, ‘Dafydd Ddu Eryri’, and arrive at Waunfawr Station on the Welsh Highland Railway. It’s beautifully maintained, and we award full marks to its excellent toilets.
Next, it’s uphill along a lane to start crossing the second watershed. We’re startled to find a large dragon painted on rock outcrops in rough land to the left – the invention, it seems, of the landowner, Karen Jones, a few years ago. In a wood the climbing gets much steeper, as the path twists and turns through oak trees. Rowan berries are as red and luxurious as they can be. Now we’re on high, open ground again, in the sunshine, skirting Moel Smytho on our left. For the only time on this trip we can see the top of Yr Wyddfa and the slopes of Clogwyn Du’r Arddu. More ruined stone buildings line the path, which we share with pilgrims on the North Wales Pilgrim’s Way.
For some reason the conversation now concerns our several failing memories, and we wonder if it would help, since we remember and forget different things, if there was some way of uniting our three brains. C2 (or is it C1?) then asks how we know that we don’t already share a single brain.
To our left is a strip of dark coniferous forest, and beyond it looms the scooped-out wall of the Nantlle Ridge, which I walked with friends in September 2005. This isn’t a place where we’d expect to see others, but suddenly a group of DOEs (Duke of Edinburgh Award youngsters) come into sight, their backs bent with heavy packs. They pass us muttering the usual DOE questions: are we on the right route? are we nearly there yet?
Towards the end of the path we’re back in slate country, and the tips begin once again. Below one of them, a huge erratic boulder blocks the way. Below is the hamlet of Y Fron – it used to be called Cesarea, after its chapel – but before we reach it the path takes us on an industrial archaeological mystery tour of the quarries below Moel Tryfan. We climb up one of the tips, and at the top are the remains of two large machines for moving slate. One has its track intact, for lifting slates to be dropped into lorries or elsewhere. The other, coloured red, looks like some giant armoured, winged insect. We really need an expert like Dafydd Roberts or Peter Wakelin with us to interpret these enigmatic remains.
Further below, we pass a large quarried-out hole full of dark water, complete with signs warning passers-by not to approach it. Then we’re in the village, with its low cottages and terraces that so attracted the brush and pen of Kyffin Williams, and wait outside the old school, now a shop, café and community centre, for our taxi to arrive.
In the shop window are adverts for two forthcoming local events, in Rhosgadfan and Caernarfon, to celebrate the centenary of the publication of Kate Roberts’s first collection of stories, O gors y bryniau. That book – I’m lucky enough to have a first edition – is probably the only other essential guide book you need on this Trail, besides Aled Owen’s walkers’ guide. Kate Roberts, born in Rhosgadfan in 1891, was by far the finest chronicler of the life of the slate communities, and reading her stories enriches what your eyes tell you of the experiences of the quarry workers and their families.
The taxi driver arrives and we clamber into his car. He moves at speeds that we wouldn’t attempt, and his highly colloquial Welsh conversation is equally hard to keep up with.
This time we’re taken to Beddgelert, our home for the next three nights. When I drove through the village two days earlier, the place was flooded with tourists and walkers, but the poor weather has now driven them away, and we can wander the narrow streets easily. We take a look at the church, and in the churchyard come across the grave of T.H. Parry-Williams and his wife Amy. The slate plaque – it’s in need of some restoration – is a small and modest one for such a great poet, bearing the short quotation ‘annwyl iawn yw hyn o lwch’. It sits at the foot of the more assertive and stylish memorial to the poet’s father, Henry, the schoolmaster of Rhyd-ddu, and his mother Ann.
