Rheilffordd Ffestiniog

I think I confused a couple of people. When I say 'I'm still in North Wales', I should really say that my blog is still in North Wales; term has not yet ended here and I'm firmly stuck at home & work for another 4 weeks. The current pics are from last year. I began by telling a story about Yr Wyddfa and then just continued in Wales, which is a place I love!

My blog (and me in my head) is still firmly on the Blaenau Ffestiniog Railway which, after crossing the Cob and passing the engineering works at Boston Lodge, turns away from the sea and follows the line of the Afon Goedol, climbing steadily as it goes.

In total, the track climbs over 700 feet along its thirteen and a half mile length, including turning a complete spiral at Dduallt, purely in order to gain height. For a lot of its distance, the railway clings to the edge of the mountainside but towards the top, it passes through a number of short tunnels.

The railway is mainly single track, but the stations at Minffordd, Tan-y-Bwlch and Tan-y-grisiau allow up and down trains to pass. Tan-y-Bwych is also a water stop for up trains.

Just before the terminus at Blaenau Ffestiniog is the village of Tan y grisiau, with the hydro-electric power station fed by the waters of Llyn Ystradau. This was constructed in 1957 by the Central Electricity Generating Board and the creation of the lake caused the flooding of part of the railway track.

When the Ffestiniog Railway Company restored and re-opened the line, a deviation had to be built to skirt the shores of the lake. The line of the old trackbed is still visible, disappearing into the water and re-emerging to approach the mouth of the now plugged Old Moelwyn Tunnel.

'Tan y grisiau', is Welsh for "below the steps"; the steps being the stepped slate mine workings up the side of the mountain. On Christmas day 1918, the mine workings collapsed. Disaster was avoided only because all of the village were in chapel. An hour earlier, there would have been many hundreds of miners crushed under the fall of rocks.  

Approaching Blaenau, slate built Welsh cottages crowd the line, their gardens adding a little splash of colour to a very grey, slate dominated landscape...

and waterfalls tumble down the steep hillsides within a few feet of the carriages...

until the train reaches the top of the line.

If you are particularly interested in steam railways, especially the narrow gauge variety, you may like to look at the Rheilffordd Ffestiniog website.

And if you ever visit Wales, I would strongly recommend a ride; though you my prefer to park in Bleanau and travel downhill first. There's more to do during a stop off in Porthmadog.

The Cob

And this is the view from the window of the Ffestiniog railway carriage as it crosses the Cob.

Firstly, looking inland over the 7000 acres of reclaimed Traeth Mawr, with its flocks of wandering sheep, to the rising mountains of the Snowdonia National Park.

The road can be seen running alongside the railway track, but at a lower level. Until March 2003, vehicles were required to pay a toll to cross the Cob. The price of one shilling was fixed in 1807 and it's decimal equivalent of 5p continued to be paid until the newly formed Welsh Assembly bought the Cob and scrapped the toll. The stone built toll booth can still be seen at the Boston Lodge end of the Cob.

Now looking on the seaward side at the mouth of the Afon Glaslyn which forms the entrance to the harbour, here seen at low tide.

The estuary is a haven for waterbirds, and twitchers come here to see such species as wigeons, curlews, and the rare grebe. At times the merlin can be seen hunting here in the Winter and a flock of whooper swans overwinters nearby. There are also plenty of the more common sea birds, like sandpipers and oystercatchers.

Porthmadog

I'm still in North Wales, and this is Porthmadog.

Porthmadog is a small coastal town with a population of around 4,200; a figure which increases significantly on a typical holiday season day as the town is flooded by visitors who trawl the craft and souvenir shops, eat in the cafes, go active at the local leisure centre, walk around the harbour or drool over all things steam train.

The town itself is not very old. It came into being after 1811, when William Madocks built the Cob. The Cob is a sea wall which successfully reclaimed a large area of Traeth Mawr for agricultural use. Traeth Mawr (Big Sands) was the tidal estuary of Afon Glaslyn (River Glaslyn), an area riddled with quicksands into which travellers were rather too regularly known to have sunk! Parts of Traeth Mawr had already been reclaimed piecemeal, including a chunk by Madocks on which the village of Tremadog now stands, but the Cob was on a much bigger scale and diverted the course of the river, which then proceded to carve out a new deep channel, creating a seaworthy natural harbour.

The Cob now holds the main road into Porthmadog from the south (A487), the track of the Blaenau Ffestiniog Railway and a cycle path which forms part of the Lôn Las Cymru, national cycle route.

The town itself grew up on the reclaimed land near the harbour, meeting the workforce needs of the wharfs built to ship the local slate being carried down from the quarries and mines of Ffestinniog and Llanfrothen; to the extent that, in 1873, over 116,000 tons were exported through Porthmadog in more than a thousand ships! The end of this trade effectively occured with the first world war, when the lucrative German slate market was lost, and the mainstay of the town today is the tourist industry.

Personally, I have a bit of a love hate relationship with Porthmadog. The town is in a beautiful setting, it has some great memories, the harbour is attractive, the smell and sound of the steam trains lure me in... but, it is just SO BUSY! The high street is like a slow crawling caterpillar of noisy, smelly vehicles and walking down the pavement is like being in Derby city centre on a Saturday morning.

In summary, Porthmadog is wonderful - in small doses!