Porthmadog to Blaenau Ffestiniog (September 7, 2025)

There were two things Roz wanted to do while here. One was to visit Portmeirin, on Roz's scratch map, and the Mountain Spirit train ride. Where the Welsh Highland Railway ran from Porthmadog north east to Caernarfon, the Mountain Spirit runs the full length of the Ffestiniog Railway to Blaenau Ffestiniog once a slate mining centre.
The engines pull up the sleep slopes. The Ffestiniog Railway is the oldest narrow gage Railway in the world at over 200 years old. It is 13.5 miles long and climbs over 700 ft. above sea level. At one point there is a complete spiral.
Lots of oak and heather along the way.
Glacier fed lake.
Hidden villages tucked in the mountains.
Hiking paths everywhere.
I gather the house at the end of the lake used to be the mansion of the owners of the lake and several quarries in the area. It is now part of the UNESCO site.
Above the tree line. Lots of heather.
The large amount of rainfall in Wales supplies the hydro electric station.
Blaenau Ffestiniog. Even though there are piles of tailings on the surrounding hills most of the slate here was mined. There are over  100 km of levels and tunnels, and 100's of chambers. There is a story that there was so much tailings that one of the big quarries bought a village and a monastery and buried them in tailings.
Our engine on the way up.
Incredibly beautiful rocks surrounding the town. Blaenau Ffestiniog, once considered the slate capital of the world and the town that roofed the world, was a town of 12,000 during the peak of slate production. Now only about 4,500 people live there. The slate quarries are mostly closed and the town relies on tourism and outdoor activities. During WW II national art treasures were stored in some of the quarries here.
Slate left a unique legacy in Wales. One of the reasons the Welsh language survived is because slate quarring is described as the most Welsh of Welsh industries as it is the only major industry using the Welsh language.
My Size locomotive.
These are made of lots of pieces of slate.
Slate starts as silty sediment accumulated on the sea bed floor approximately 500 million years ago. It became compressed and hardened into mudstone. 400 million years ago extreme volcanic activity below the sea bed caused the mudstone to heat and lift and fold on itself. Called metamorphosis. This produced hard, tight, waterproof layers. These retained layers allowed it to be split.
Some good looking Canadians I found in Blaenau Ffestiniog.
Roz thought maybe she could go through the stone and find her Jamie. (reference to Outlander by Diana Gabaldon) but her Jamie (Wes) is here in this time period.

The spiral.
This is a nuclear power plant. Decommissioned now but still has people working there.
Because the train has to work so hard to climb, it has to stop to get water and coal at another stop. See the next section for our trip down the mountain.



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