Wales Oct 2022

John Hickey led a group from Tyndall to the lovely national park of Snowdonia Wales, an auld haunt for Tyndall in years gone by.

Day 1

John had 3 walks lined up and he wasted no time for our first walk, hot of the boat and straight to do part of the “Snowdonia Slate Trail” (83 miles full trail) in Llanberis.  We started the walk from our accommodation and had our first glimpse of the famous scarred mountains of the past Slate Mining Industry and the Snowdon Mountain Railway.  We passed the National Slate Museum and Llanberis Lake Railway, after this we started climbing up to the miners hospital and had lovely views of the glacial lake, Llyn Padarn.  

We went to the Miners Cottages in the disused slate quarry where the miners were based each week.  They left their homes on Monday morning & returned home on Saturday afternoons.  Each barracks housed 4 men in a two roomed building with no amenities, closed 1948. 

Day 2

Snowdon

Early rise to catch the bus to Pen y Pass car park.  We took the Pyg Track with signs to Crib Goch (which is a steep ascent to Snowdon, we didn’t take that route!).  There is a track all the way to the top, so we met various levels of walkers on the trail.  On the lower part of the walk, we had lovely views of Llanberis and the other side Llyn Llydaw lake & the towering cliffs of Y Lliwedd.  We traversed under Crib Goch passing the stone marker for the Miners track which we would take on our return.  The summit was masked in cloud, but it didn’t take from the experience and joy of reaching the highest point in the UK outside of Scotland, 1085 meters.