The Snowdonia Slate Trail / Llwybr Llechi Eryri, is a newish 134k trail that loops around the ex-industrial edges of Snowdonia. A good time to do it, the website is fresh and up-to-date, there’s a new guidebook. Bangor to Llan Ffestiniog, I could do in daytrips from Porthmadog using the bus and the Traveline app. The remainder over two and a bit days, with overnights in Penmachno and Idwal Cottage YHA.
This was about personal geography, connecting places up, passing through places I hadn’t been to for years, a nice walk… in 4 posts, photos and trail notes.
Snowdonia Slate Trail post 1 > Bangor – Llanberis
Trail notes
Day 1 – half day Bangor > Bethesda
Got a bit lost but wouldn’t have if had the notes as well as the map / os map. Reasonable way of getting out > nice to go via the top villages after the halfway bridge > but better signage would help. Like Rachub. Came down through the steps and ginnels – better than the route. Bethesda village still scruffy in a loving sort of way along the A5, but posher behind. Ex-council estates and sports halls in all these villages, at one time someone cared. Bus stops, all looks comfortable, as well as the bought up cottages.
Day 2 – Bethesda > Llanberis
Out along the river and round the quarry railway – tarted up / trailed up. Very pretty colonised around and behind, and Mynydd Llandegai is transformed – most of the row houses expanded and built around, like the railway carriages on the cliff from Aberporth (on the Coast Path). Riding horses in the field. Nice moorland path waymarked with streams, phone lines, big boulders – across the top of Llanberis, back down through uber-gentrified and lush May pretty, into the ‘country park’. Llanberis village high street is still small and nice, all the Electric Mountain – lakeside – slate museum, happens round the edges. Pete’s Eats is about the only eats, a strange paint job but nice. Bus back to Bangor half an hour late.
Llwybr Llechi Eryri / Snowdonia Slate Trail
www.snowdoniaslatetrail.org
The book: Aled Owen, Snowdonia Slate Trail, Rucksack Readers.