We’d camped at the Riverside Camping near Blaenau Ffestiniog, ready for a visit to the Llechwedd Slate Caverns. We’ve been to coal mines, salt mines and other caves, but the slate mine was something completely different. The mountain has been hollowed out into 15 levels of massive chambers, mostly 80 feet high, which were carved out by by candle light, using hand tools and gun powder. The mine goes down 1500 feet below ground and you can go down to level 7, approximately 480′ below the summit. The tours were interesting, but could have been more informative and they were geared to fast throughput of visitors, so you didn’t get much of a chance to ask questions. Still a fascinating place though.

Blaenau Ffestiniog is dominated by the slate mining, which is now done open cast and all the surrounding hills are covered with slate debris, giving the town a fairly unique look. There’s not much to do and see around the town and although we hoped to do some walks round the slate quarries, the weather, which had been very co-operative so far, turned worse. The rain started to fall in earnest, and I’m not a big fan of walking in the rain. We thought the weather might be better on the south side of Snowdonia and headed for Dollgelau, but it was equally drizzly there, so we headed home.

My parents called in on their way to Ireland in the evening, so we had a nice catch-up over the dinner of cheese and wine they kindly brought from France.

See photos of today.

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