Our second stop on our UK honeymoon adventure was a trip into Wales to Snowdonia. As the coronavirus pandemic was causing issues we had to limit any stops on the way to avoid the north of Wales, so we took a small detour to a very important food pit stop, Seasons Bakery in Carnforth. We had seen it mentioned on Naydia Bakes and I can confirm it is as good as it looks! Highly recommend a visit.
After a delicious snack stop we carried on down to Wales to our next stop. We planned to walk up Snowdon so had booked accommodation near by at Llechwedd Slate Caverns at Blaenau Ffestiniog. We were staying in a safari tent at the top of the hill, so we had a great view out over the working slate quarry. It is a bit of a steep walk up to the tents from the car park but luckily they are able to drive your bags up for you.
The tent had a great set up with a set of bunkbeds in the back (one with a king size bed), a shower room, a kitchenette and a log burning stove to keep us toasty. The walls of the tent are lined with timber, and the front is large double glazed windows so it is very study and warm. The kitchenette has a mircowave, fridge, kettle, sink and toaster, plus crockery, so we were well set up. We had ordered the breakfast pack too which came with cereal, croissants and bread – more than enough for us for 2 nights. I would say to come prepared as there is no shop or cafe on site and although there s a small shop in the local village it is around 40 mins drive to Porthmadog to find a supermarket or restaurants.
Sadly the weather was not playing ball and so we weren’t able to go on our walk up Snowdon the next day (we would have been blown off the mountain) so we planned some other things to do in the local area. We started off with a tour of the slate caverns. As it was a wet Tuesday morning it was quite quiet which meant we ended up getting our own private tour of the slate caverns. The small train was out of commission so we walked down into the mines, and visited various tunnels and halls which were very impressive.
After the caverns we visited Portmeirion which is a small village on the coast. Portmeirion was designed and built by Sir Clough Williams-Ellis between 1925 and 1975 in the style of an Italian village, and is now owned by a charitable trust. It is quite an unusual place to visit. After parking in a large car park (which feels like it is the entrance to a garden centre for some reason) we walked down to the entrance gate where we paid £10 each to enter. At this point if feels more like the entrance to Disneyland and we weren’t really sure what to expect beyond the gates. The village itself feels quite similar to a small village on the Amalfi coast, a collection of small colourful buildings hugging the cliffs. Overall the it is quite small, and with the covid restrictions there wasn’t much open apart from a couple of boutiques and tea shops. It is very pretty though, and I can imagine in the summer it is beautiful.
We spent an hour or two walking round the village and out through the woodland to the point. You can walk further out towards Porthmadog which would be great on a nice day. As there wasn’t much open (the hotel was only serving residents) we decided to head on and continue exploring further up the coast.
We headed up to Caernarfon which is around 40 minutes drive from Portmeirion. Richie had visited the town when he did the 3 Peaks Challenge so had a rough idea of where to go. After stopping for some lunch in a cafe we explored the town, admiring the very impressive castle which sits next to the sea.
As we had driven all the way up to Caernarfon we thought we should try to complete the loop by driving around Snowdon and back to our tent. Driving from Caernarfon up to Pen-y-Pass is very impressive – so much slate! When we got to Pen-y-Pass the weather had brightened up significantly so we thought we should at least go for a stroll up a bit of Snowdon, so paid our £10 (price for the day) and started up the miners track. The going was quite easy and we got up to Llyn Llydaw water reasonably quickly. We were sorely tempted to keep going but we didn’t bring our packs with us, plus we knew it would likely be dark by the time we descended to we decided to stop. Snowdon looked very impressive and I would definitely like to go back to try and climb it another time.
Planes, Trains... and Cake 