Holiday in Wales, day 3 Wednesday 6 may, (part 1)

Holiday in Wales, day 3, Wednesday 6^th May (part 1)

Wednesday was supposed to be the day when we rode the Llanberis railway and take in the views of Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales.

Web site for the railway here; complete with video of the train.

. http://www.lake-railway.co.uk/index.php/en/

Unfortunately Wednesday turned out to be the wettest, rainiest, dullest, greyest most overcast day of the whole holiday. We boarded the coach at 9.15 sharp. Dagmar was very precise about departure time, we had a train to catch, and as she informer us, in 18 years of driving these tours her passangers had NEVER missed a train and she didn’t intend for us to be the first. We headed off toward Snowdon and the Llabberis railway. The rain worsened with every mile, the sky was grey, the hills were grey, the road was grey; it was indeed a ‘grey day’. And what a shame because from what I could see, which admittedly was limited, we were driving through some of the most spectacular landscape in Wales. Our coach climbed and climbed, my ears popped, the rain persisted and the journey passed in a wet blur.  When visibility allowed, I realized we were climbing up through the mountains of Wales on what was little more than a single track, narrow, winding road. This road twisted and turned, sometimes going back on itself, but all the while climbing higher and higher up the hillside. We saw wonderful little waterfalls swollen by the rain gushing down the vertical side of hills before disappearing either under the road in conduit to re-emerge on the other side, or running along side the road in frothy torrents of white water. We saw hills of stark grey slate stretching above and before us, they were often covered in little white dots of sheep. There really are more sheep than people in that part of the world. Seeing all those sheep set me off on a thinking tangent about the qualities of wool. We all know waterlogged woolen garments are soggy, heavy and uncomfortable but somehow, before processing by us, this same wool has the most marvelous properties of being able to keep those hundreds of sheep, all exposed on a bleak hillside amid the worse weather imaginable, absolutely, totally warm and dry. So the sheep spend a lifetime enjoying the benefits of evolution and are kept warm and dry in a debilitating, hostile environment by their lanolin rich coat. Then we come along, shave it all off and use an industrial process involving lots of detergents and alkali to remove the lanolin from the wool. Unless of course the wool is destined to end up as a fisherman’s sweater, then the lanolin is either left in or re-added at a later stage to make the sweaters waterproof for the trawler going seafarer.  And then I thought of all the individual, innovative and creative items; bags, hats, gloves etc produced by many artisans back home working with Harris Tweed. I thought of all the textile art around at the moment made by artists who depend on wool, and then I began to realize how important these many little white dots on the hillside are.  

Anyway, I digress; There are no photos of this part of the journey because the coach didn’t stop and there was too much rain to take them through the window. This little picture is actually a post card I bought. We passed it along the way; it’s called the ugly house. Dagmar told us her story of the ugly house as told to her by locals  in previous visits to the area. Apparently sometime in the dim and distant past, a rich land owner told one of his workers he could own a small piece of land and a house if he was able to build a complete house on that land in one day. The house had to have four walls, a roof and a chimney to be considered complete. The man asked his friends to help and they all worked through the day and through night to produce this little house. Because they worked in such a hurry no time was spent matching stones or making the house attractive. They simply wanted the house finished as quickly a possible which is why this house ended up like this, full of lumps and bumps and made with a pile of miss matched and uneven stones. That’s Dagmar’s story of the ugly house, but here are a couple of other stories connected to it. Read them here.

http://www.theuglyhouse.co.uk/the-ugly-house/

At one point on this journey I looked out of the window (I was sat on the nearside not the roadside) to see, well nothing, literally nothing. The rain hammered the windows, the wind battered the coach and the land dropped away at the edge of this tiny, narrow, twisting road in a vertical drop down the mountainside. There was a shallow stone wall at the side of the road and beyond the wall….. nothing, that part of the journey was scary,  but we all survived to tell the tale.

A little further along our ascent into the clouds Dagmar braked rather suddenly and attempted to pull the coach over as far as space would allow, which wasn’t much, and then another coach inched its way along our side. I’ve no idea how either coach retained their wing mirrors, but happily all mirrors and other protruding accessories remained in situ. After that incident Dagmar informed us all coach drivers know you only take the narrow winding road UP the mountain, the descent is taken via another rout. She said it wasn’t exactly against the Law to travel down that road; it was more an unwritten law amongst coach drivers. Unfortunately no one had thought to tell this particular coach driver about the unwritten law.

Finally we reached our destination. We arrived at Llanberis railway station at the foot of Snowdon. Llanberis was originally a slate mining village and in more recent years, a tourist destination for those who wish to climb the mountain or relax and enjoy the view. 

The Llanberis railway is a 2ft narrow gauge heritage railway that runs the 2.5 miles along the northern shore of Llyn Padarn in  the Snowdonia National Park. The return journey takes about an hour. The railway uses three steam engines; “Elidir“, “Dolbadarn” and “Thomas Bach”. The original Llanberis railway was used for transporting slate and for taking the work men to and from the quarry.

When we arrived we were ushered outside to the waiting train, our carriage was reserved and as soon as we were all onboard the train left the station. This journey was supposed to be one of the highlights of the holiday but by the time the train pulled out of the station, the rain was at its peak. The windows would not open and there was so much rain outside we saw very little. 

Such a shame but the weather does what the weather does, absolutely nothing any one can do about it so we sat back and soaked up the atmosphere. I took several photos through the carriage windows; I knew I would get very little but somehow I’m quite pleased with the results; these photos reflect exactly our experience on that journey. 

 There is a third heritage railway that we didn’t go on during the holiday but; I actually took one of my daughters there about 20 years ago, if I can sort out the old photos and scan them into the computer I may even do a post holiday blog about that 20 year old journey. Back to present day; when we boarded the train at Llanberis it initially rolled back down the mountain a couple of hundred yards to the start of the Snowdon Mountain railway (the one I went on about 20 years ago), and for any one interested in that railway there's more info here.

http://www.snowdonrailway.co.uk/fabulous-trains

The Snowdon Mountain railway is a narrow gauge rack and pinion mountain railway in Gwynedd. It is a tourist railway that travels for almost 5 miles from the station to the summit of Snowdon, the highest peak in England and Wales. And with all this talk of the highest mountain in England and Wales I just have to say, it’s no where near as high as our own highest peak, the much more famous Ben Nevis back home in Scotland.  Snowdon is 1085m and Ben Nevis is 1344m.

After picking up a couple more passengers we chugged back up hill to our original starting point, from there we began our lakeside journey. We travelled the whole length of the lakeside track, past the sodden picnic area, past more sheep gently grazing by the lakeside, (all totally oblivious to the downpour),  past a couple of equally wet and deserted railway stations and then, under the steam of another engine, we returned via the same track. Finally, after an hour of wet, wet, wet, we arrived back at the beginning. We were told we had a couple of hours to visit the café, visit the shop, and most importantly for us, visit the National Slate Museum opposite Llanberis Station.

 And this is The National Slate Museum

http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/slate/

I loved that museum. It is housed in  Victorian workshops built in the shadow of Elidir mountain, the site of the vast Dinorwig quarry.

The Workshops and Buildings are designed as though quarrymen and engineers have just put down their tools and left the courtyard at the end of a hard shift. Inside the museum runs a video of one of the past workers. 

His name was Mr Hugh Richard Jones and he began his working life in 1926 at the age of 14 as an apprentice fitter. In the video he recalls how the little train took him and his fellow workmates up the mountain to their place of work. He recalled a harsh 12 hour day, getting up at 5 to board the train up the mountain, younger boys and apprentices were chaperoned on the train by older more mature men to ensure there was no trouble along the way. They began work at 7and by the time they were back down the mountain, exhausted, often wet and cold, and heading home, more than 12 hours had passed. Can you imagine todays 15 year olds coping with life doing hard manual labour up a wet Welsh mountain?

The one thing I will say about the Rain is that it gave a stark reality to the lives of these tough, hard working men. The rain we experienced isn’t unusual there, the persistent cold and damp was just something else the workmen faced on analmost daily basis. I took as many photos as I could in and around the museum and now that I’ve had the chance to see them, I’m quite grateful to the rain. The rain has given me an authentic set of photos depicting the Welsh mountains as they usually are and daily lives of men from a bygone age. If it had been a bright and sunny day, I don’t think we would have had the same insight or understanding.

The buildings once housed the industrial engineering workshops of the former Dinorwig slate quarry which at its height employed over 3,000 men. The quarry and workshops closed in 1969 and the building became the museum in 1972. The buildings included a foundry a slate workshop, a machine shop, and a blacksmith forge. These beautiful cathedral like windows were made onsite. It’s odd to think of such heavy industry going on behind windows that look as if they belong in a place of quiet reflection. I could have spent the whole day in this museum, but time was limited.

I enjoyed the museum, it was a pleasure and a privilege and if I could have spent longer there, I would. But Dagmars timetable is one that has to be obeyed. From the Museum, we headed off the mountain and onward toward town and castle of Caernarfon. Caernarfon Castle is enormous, its staggerlingly huge, it’s also a World Heritage Site and a story for the next post.