Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape and Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal

Waypoint introductions and full write-ups

1. 1. Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape

   Look at the Nantlle valley from the road and you see a green bowl with a ragged grey edge, as if someone had bitten the mountain. It is a place where the quarrying went down instead of along. The pits here are enormous, cut deep below the level of the lakes, with sheer sides, and the biggest of them, the Dorothea, became a flooded hole of cold green water. On the skyline, tips of waste slate lean against each other like broken plates. This is part of the slate landscape of north-west Wales that UNESCO listed in 2021, and the quarries here are among the oldest in the area, producing roofing slate from the eighteenth century and earlier.

   Read the complete Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape is where the day begins. Next is Bryneglwys Slate Quarry.

2. 2. Bryneglwys Slate Quarry

   High above the village of Abergynolwyn, in a side valley where the sheep outnumber everyone, the spoil heaps of Bryneglwys tell you that this quiet corner of southern Snowdonia was once an industrial place. Slate was cut here through the second half of the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and the whole reason the little Talyllyn Railway exists is to carry it down the valley to the coast at Tywyn. The quarry finally closed just after the Second World War, and the railway, which should have died with it, was taken over by volunteers in 1951 and became the first preserved railway in the world. You can still walk up from the old incline at Nant Gwernol into the quarry workings, past roofless barracks and wheel pits, with streams running through all of it.

   Read the complete Bryneglwys Slate Quarry write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Bryneglwys Slate Quarry comes up about 81 km into the recorded legs. Next is Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal.

3. 3. Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal

   You hear it before you understand it: water running in an iron trough thirty-eight metres above the River Dee, on stone piers so slender they look drawn rather than built. Thomas Telford and William Jessop finished the Pontcysyllte Aqueduct in 1805 to carry what is now the Llangollen Canal across the valley, and more than two centuries later narrowboats still glide over it, steered by people trying very hard not to look down. There is a towpath on one side with railings; on the other side there is only the edge of the trough and air. Walk across if you have a head for heights. It is one of the strangest and best ten minutes in Wales.

   Read the complete Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   about 167 km into the recorded legs you reach Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal. Next is back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry.

4. 4. back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Bryneglwys Slate Quarry write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry, late in the day. Next is Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape.

5. 5. Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape

   Return visit. Read the place description above.

   Read the complete Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape write-up.

   Recorded stop-planning note

   May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.

   Planning note

   Back at Nantlle Valley Slate Quarry Landscape. That is the ride.