Holiday in Wales day 2 (part 2)
Yesterday I stopped writing when I reached the bit where we left
the Maritime Museum
at Porthmadog Harbour. We headed out of the Harbour,
over the little bridge where the trains cross the road, past the grey slate
house and back to Porthmadog
Harbour railway station. Here
we boarded our first steam train. I think I’ve already said the holiday was
actually called ‘the great little train journeys of Wales’. The major attraction of the
holiday was the train journeys and the fantastic scenery along the way. So here we were, about to embark on the first
train journey of the week.
We boarded the Ffestiniog railway and traveled the whole length of
the track from Porthmadog to Blaenau where our coach driver Dagmar was waiting
for us.
(the technical/ history bit)
The Ffestiniog Railway is a 2Ft (597 mm) narrow gauge heritage
railway, located in Gwynedd, Wales.
It’s located within the Snowdonia
National Park. The railway
is roughly 13 1⁄2 miles long and runs from the Harbour at Porthmadog to the
slate mining town of Blaenau
Ffestiniog. The journey travels through the most
amazing forests, mountains and rivers. The line was constructed between 1833
and 1836 to transport slate from the quarries around the inland town of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the coastal town of Porthmadog where it was loaded onto ships.
Originally long heavy trains full of slate rolled downhill under the power of gravity.
Once the slate was removed from the train and loaded onto waiting ships horses
pulled the empty trains back up the track to the slate mines. In 1863 steam engines
replaced the horses. Two of the original steam engines; the Palmerston and The
Prince are both still in use today. The train climbs over 700 feet up into the
Welsh mountains with views (on a clear day) out to sea and across Snowdonia. The final destination of the train is the
town of Blaenau
which used to be known as; ‘The town that roofed the world’, on account of the
amount of slate it exported to far flung corners of the world.
By the time the train chugged out of the station, the rain was
getting heavier. At one point we had to close the windows because it was so
cold and once the windows were closed, we could see virtually nothing, except
the raindrops on the glass. It wasn’t like that all the time, there were times
along the way when we could have the windows open and look out at the mountains.
The views were utterly breathtaking, beautiful, I’m so glad I took that holiday
because I don’t thing there would be another way to see the sights we saw that
day. I can only imagine what it would be like with better visibility. When we reached the end of the line we were
instructed to make our way to the coach park and re-board the coach. On the way
to the coach we noticed a row of pillars, some sort of statues or sculptures
made out of local slate; they just stood there shining in the rain with a look
of stoic majesty.
And that’s all I’m going to write for now. In this part of the
journey I think the pictures tell the story better than words, and there are lots of pictures here, who needs more words ?
Tomorrow I'll do a tiny village with a sculpture of a gorilla ( no idea why) and another fantastic sunset over rhyl beach.
