CURVESCOUT / MOTORCYCLE RIDE
Ordered leg totals agree within rounding. Stop distances are approximate sums of rounded legs. Stops, delays, approach and any separate return travel add time. Basis: producer-declared routed record.
Reading history stays on this device. My road watch requires a separate selection; opening it does not subscribe this ride.
Distance and riding time are measured on the routed road. Check local closures and conditions before you ride.
A 345 km round trip from Llanberis - roughly 5 h 33 in the saddle. On the way it passes Bryneglwys Slate Quarry, Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal and back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry. It was put together for the scenery rather than the shortest line.
Llanberis sits at the foot of Snowdon, Yr Wyddfa in Welsh, beside the lake of Llyn Padarn, and across the water a whole mountainside has been carved into giant terraces. This is the Dinorwic quarry, once one of the largest slate quarries in the world, where thousands of men worked until it closed in 1969, splitting slate for roofs across Britain and beyond. The galleries climb the mountain in steps, with inclines, ruined buildings and waste heaps everywhere, a landscape both scarred and strangely beautiful. In 2021, UNESCO inscribed the Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales, recognising the quarries, villages, railways and harbours that made this region the slate capital of the world.
Read the complete The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales is where the day begins. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Bryneglwys Slate Quarry comes up about 87 km into the recorded legs. Next is 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.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
about 173 km into the recorded legs you reach Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal. Next is back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete Bryneglwys Slate Quarry write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry, late in the day. Next is The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales.
Return visit. Read the place description above.
Read the complete The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales write-up.
May refer to an earlier itinerary; verify against your selected route before riding.
Back at The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales. That is the ride.
The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales → Bryneglwys Slate Quarry is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Bryneglwys Slate Quarry → Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal is 86 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
Pontcysyllte Aqueduct and Canal → back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry is 85 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.
back through Bryneglwys Slate Quarry → The Slate Landscape of Northwest Wales is 87 km of getting across. Ride it tidily and keep the enthusiasm for what comes after.