North Wales Pilgrims Way (Stage 8 - Waunfawr to Clynnog Fawr)

Any more fares please?

In London the buses are red, in Cardiff the buses are orange and but in Waunfawr the local bus company, Whiteways, painted their buses white of course! Here's a Whiteways double decker in Caernarfon some years ago. It must be some years ago because the Hepworths shop in the background would have disappeared over twenty years ago (because the clothing chain changed its name to Next) and Waenfawr (see the destination indicator on the front of the bus) changed its name to Waunfawr in the 1990's (thanks to the insistence of the Welsh Language Society.)

It was a fine bright morning for the next leg of our pilgrimage, Skip and I tootled past the Welsh Highland Railway station at Waunfawr, climbed up by Moel Smytho, and headed on mountain footpaths across the broad hillside under the shadow of Mynydd Mawr and on towards Y Fron.

The blue lagoon!

As we then left the wild upland spaces we began to encounter a landscape defined by the slate quarrying industry of the Nantlle valley. Virtually all of the quarries are now closed; however to get a real sense of the enormous extent of the industry requires a walk (or run in our case) through the vast area covered in spoil tips and ruins of pump houses and workshops heading down to Talysarn and Penygroes. Here's one of the flooded quarries above Y Fron, in this case coloured a brilliant blue thanks to mineral salts in the water, the fence between us and the cliff edge didn't seem very robust! There's a white buoy on the surface of the water (the Prisoner comes to mind!) and I think that's a crow flying overhead - the beak looks a bit small for a Raven. Or maybe it was a drone shaped like a bird, I couldn't hang around to find out because we were on a mission.

The UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites makes for interesting reading, included as might be expected are the Taj Mahal, Stonehenge and Venice and its lagoons, there are National Parks and archaeological sites aplenty and some sites have been delisted for various reasons (e.g. Liverpool). But there are less obvious choices on the list such as the Bikini Atoll Nuclear Test Site, the Fray Bentos Industrial Landscape in Uruguay and our current whereabouts, the Slate Landscape of North West Wales! This action photo is from the huge Dorothea Quarry in its heyday, the buildings are all gone apart from the Cornish Beam Engine House at the fore front of the picture, a solitary reminder of the thriving industry that once provided abundant employment.

It would take days to thoroughly explore this area and the map below shows the vast area covered by the quarry workings which are criss crossed by footpaths and old railway lines. We jogged down from the top right of the map skirting the northern edge of the biggest flooded pit shown and by the entrance to Tal y Sarn Hall into the village itself where huge quantities of slate were loaded onto the main freight line to Caernarfon to be shipped around the world.

Fancy a drop?

Nowadays Talysarn seems quite a sleepy place, on a warm May afternoon I spotted little traffic and just a couple of pedestrians,  surely a contrast to a century ago when it was a hive of industry. The old train station is the site of a bus terminal and the railway line out of town has been replaced with a by-pass. However new industries are springing up - look at this - a Welsh vineyard between Talysarn and Penygroes! Thousands of vines and apple trees have recently been planted for the production of wine, cider and apple juice - this includes 700 trees bearing the rare Bardsey Apple a rediscovered variety probably the survivor of trees planted by monks on Bardsey Island a thousand years ago.  Alas we had no time to stop and sip and stare and we carried on the remainder of our jaunt from Penygroes to Clynnog Fawr which was, by contrast, through rolling farmland. Two consecutive days of long running had tired us out and we needed to rest and recuperate.

North Wales Pilgrims' Way (Stage 7 Bangor to Waunfawr)

Cathedrals usually come a bit bigger than this!

Well isn't it funny how time slips away!    After a few weeks of cross country, half marathoning and Borders Leagueing I finally got back to getting moving again running along the Pilgrims' way. And guess what? There are now leaves on the trees and I'm wearing shorts. Vicky dropped me off where I left off previously and I shuffled into Bangor - here's the comparatively modest cathedral. This is dedicated to St Deiniol. Deiniol is a name that I was already familiar with as there was a young footballer named Deiniol Graham who was one of Alex Ferguson's rising stars at Manchester United. He was going well until he broke his arm and never played again for United. I suspect he lives somewhere round here (in the Prestatyn area) as he recently got a mention in the local newspaper in relation to a motoring offence! Apparently the reason that the cathedral has such a short stubby tower is that the locals didn't want it to be visible from the sea - at the time Viking raiders were on the prowl looking for booty and it didn't pay to advertise your presence! Just after I took this photo I was hailed unexpectedly in the middle of Bangor by our friend Lynne plus daughter and friend who had also come over from Prestatyn to walk a section of the Pilgrims Way. 

We'll walk down the avenue till we're there!

They'd selected a fairly gentle start to their day as in the early stages out of Bangor, after an initial climb, the trail then follows Lon Las Ogwen which is a lovely cycle route built on the old Penrhyn Quarry railway line. For about 4 miles Skip and I followed this fine avenue of maturing trees feeling strong on this pleasant morning.

This was a great opportunity for me and Skip to get well ahead of the girls and we galloped along at a brisk pace. Leaving the old railway line we found ourselves at Pandy Farm, a large circular enclosure with farmhouse. This aerial photo shows what it looked like at one stage but it's rather overgrown now. If you imagine this as a clockface, Skip and I were having a breather in the stream by the trees at about twenty past; refreshed we carried on but made a serious error. About a mile further on I realised I'd left his lead by the stream. We trudged back to be met by Lynne and Co who'd caught us up! So retracing our steps we went up and up through the forest, onto the open moorland and over into the valley where sit Llyn Padarn and the busy town of Llanberis.

All the villages we've been coming through possess at least one chapel, churches though are thin on the ground which is very much a reflection of the former strength of non-conformist religion in this part of Wales. Nevertheless just before we reached Llanberis we found a rather grand church rather by accident. Here's Christ Church in the small village of Deiniolen (pop. 2,000) overlooking the lake. Coming off the mountain trail I'd lost my bearings for a minute or two, Deiniolen is riddled with public footpaths, a legacy of the slate industry, so it's easy to take the wrong route. A lofty church spire beckoned us however and we ran down a narrow path at the back of the cemetery and took this snapshot. Looks a bit more imposing than Bangor Cathedral I think,  although it's not an old church, it was built in 1857. In other words it doesn't have much in the way of pilgrimage connections! 

And so we continued down to Llanberis, past the railway station where a nice looking steam train puffed to a halt disgorging its load of tourists and round the bottom of the lake into town. A familiar  voice from behind us announced the arrival of Matthew on his bike. Matthew is an old running friend who lives not too far away and it was a nice surprise to bump into him and have a brief chat. Glad of the few minutes respite we set off on the final tough leg of the day's journey up and over to Waunfawr. That final track seemed to go on forever - 32K of yomping had certainly taken it's toll on our legs