The Snowdonia Way is a new long distance walking route, 97 miles long, traversing the Snowdonia national park from Machynlleth in the south to Conwy in the north, devised by a guy called Alex Kendall, a mountain leader who lived in Snowdonia for over ten years. It’s actually two routes, a lower level route (which my friend Keith and I will be following) and a higher level mountain route (for the fit, young and ambitious).
We’re going to be walking the route over eight days, the first of which we have just completed, as I sit here in Dolgellau.
So what are my first impressions?
Well the first day was quite long, with 16 miles becoming an inevitable 17 after one small wrong turn up a hill about half way through the day.
But most of it was along lanes or good tracks, making it easy going. More importantly the scenery as you would expect was beautiful, helped by the exceptional September weather reaching about 25 C.
The starting point, Machynlleth, was easily reached by train via Birmingham. ( the most difficult bit being how to pronounce it!). The town has a small selection of shops, including two bookshops and a couple of places to stock up with food.
As you might expect, the area is dominated by the local industry, slate, with the area recently a recipient of UNESCO world heritage site status. We passed through areas of slate mining, slate heaps, slate fences, and houses built and roofed of slate. Being a local material it seems very much part of the landscape and adds character to the surroundings.
The route started with some gentle climbs, followed by level walking before the first significant climb of about 300 metres- steep but not long, and then a descent the other side of the hill.
All the way though there were magnificent panoramas of hills and forest. Finally, nine hours after leaving Machynlleth we arrived in Dolgellau, a bigger town where we were ready to end a first days walking. A great start to eight days of walking, where we hope to see best of Snowdonia as we make our way north.
Across the Alps to the Adriatic 