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Tours > Wales > Snowdonia National Park
Snowdonia National Park
 There are many roads that can take us to Snowdonia National Park in Northwest Wales. One of these is the new highway that travels high above the Dee Estuary, bypassing industrial Deeside, historic Flint and Holywell, skirting the holiday resorts of "the Welsh Riviera," and tunnelling under Conwy and Penmaenmawr before reaching Bangor. Here we leave the main London to Holyhead road and enter the mountains. The change in scenery is startling and dramatic.
Though minor by world standards, the precipitous heights found in many areas of the park helped train the British team that conquered Mt. Everest in 1953. The highest point is Yr Wyddfa (3,560 ft), named after Rhita Gawr, a giant killed by King Arthur said to be buried in a cairn (Gwyddfa Rhita) on top of the mountain. Into one of its lakes, Llyn Llydaw, the mighty Excaliber, (Caledfwlch) was thrown by Arthur, mortally wounded nearby. Other heights on the same mountain massif are Crib-y-Ddysgyl, Crib Goch, Lliwedd, and Yr Aran.
Snowdon gets its English name from the Saxon Snow Dun, the snow hill or fortress; it is but one mountain inside the largest of the three national parks of Wales (845 sq. miles). Within the park (Parc Genedlaethol Eryri) are several mountain ranges, with 15 peaks over 3,000 feet. For many US visitors, the park, whose Welsh name Eryri means "home of eagles," resembles a miniature Western Colorado because of its extremely steep and rugged slopes.
Mt. Snowdon is climbed by approximately half a million people each year, on foot, in wheelchairs, on crutches, roller-skates, on horseback, bicycle, piggy-back, and by men and women on stilts. At no time of the day or season of the year are they absent from its slopes. Heavy erosion from the sheer mass of people is quickly taking its toll of the footpaths and ridges of this, the most magnificent yet most abused wonder of Wales.
In 1896, the Snowdon Mountain Railway was completed from its starting point at Llanberis. Some of the little steam engines date from that year. The railway replaced the local guides with their sturdy mountain ponies which for decades had been taking Victorian tourists to the summit to watch the sunrise. The engines run for about five miles on a narrow gauge rack-and-pinion line, the only one in the British Isles.
The journey, covering a maximum gradient of 1 in 5.5, is completed in about two and a half hours, with half an hour allowed for refreshments at the little wind-swept cafe just below the cairn on the summit. When the weather allows, for Snowdon is notorious for its sudden mists and complete lack of visibility, the views are as spectacular as any in the whole British Isles. The trains do not operate in high winds or in severe weather during its season between Easter and the end of October.
There is more to the National Park than Mt. Snowdon, for its 850 square miles runs from Conwy on the north coast right up to the doorstep of Machynlleth in the south. And from the west coast inland as far as Bala. Apart from rock climbing, there are all kinds of activities offered by this most magnificent of parks, including mountain climbing, walking, water-skiing, pony trekking, fishing, canoeing, white water rafting, sailing, and so on. Winter sports include climbing on snow and ice.
The Park also contains within its boundaries the Talyllyn Railway, the first of the Welsh narrow-gauge lines to be saved for posterity and the enjoyment of visitors. The line runs from Abergynolwyn (Aber Gun Olwyn), where it first was used to carry slate mined in the surrounding hills to Tywyn (Tow Win) on the coast.
Next Stop: Blaenau Ffestiniog
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