And so we came to the final day of the route. As it turned out, the shortest day of the walk, from Llanfairfechan to Conwy, totalling just over 11 miles.
It was a similar start to yesterday, climbing up via lanes, through a farm and then onto the moor, this time above Llanfairfechan. The route zigzagged up the hillside and then settled on its route north-east towards Conwy.
The terrain of hilly moorland too was similar to yesterday, although there seemed fewer difficulties with the path, remaining almost all relatively easy going. To our right we could see the final hills and mountains of Snowdonia, to the left the hills descended to the sea, but the shapes of the hills were varied. As we continued, the route often climbed briefly before descending again, but for much of the way was broadly level.
At one point we watched a shepherd and his dog round up his sheep. I’ve seen it a few times before, but it’s something I never tire seeing.
After lunch we entered an area signed as Pensychnant nature reserve, then left through a gateway to arrive at an unexpected alpine-like road climbing between two steep hills, and crossing our path. This spot, Synchnant Pass, made an interesting change to the moorland walk, and Climbing up the other side of the road, there were more people than we had seen all day, although it was still far from busy.
Finally the route led us on a long gradual descent to Conwy, with views across in the distance to Llandudno. We crossed an inauspicious road, passed a school, and then turned the corner to arrive at the river Conwy estuary with views across to Conwy Castle, which dates back to the 13th century, and the Conwy railway bridge, designed by Robert Stephenson.
A further turn of the corner led us through the town walls, past the smallest house in Britain (apparently) to the high street and the end of the Snowdonia Way at the statue of Llywelyn the Great.
So what do I think of the Snowdonia Way now that I’ve walked it?
I would say it scores highly on a number of measures, and compares very favourably with many of the more popular, well known, and well established routes. It gives the walker a good flavour of the Snowdonia national park, its variety and the quality of its landscape and walking. While not a ‘walk in the park’ nor a fully blown mountain route (unless you choose that, very different, option) it is probably on par in terms of difficulty with the Pennine way or Wainwright’s coast to coast walk. Certainly it’s less remote than some other routes, but during the day, it is easy to forget you are only a few miles away from a main road or popular town or village.
The walk has a huge amount to offer- wood and forest walking, moorland, coastal views, valleys carved out by glaciers, waterfalls, rocky paths, lakes and grand vistas. Despite all the hype attracted by Snowdon itself this year, the way (and I suspect much of Snowdonia) remained largely quiet and peaceful during our visit in early September 2021, where we were lucky enough to enjoy overwhelmingly dry weather. None of the individual climbs enroute are more than 400 metres and there are rarely more than two of these a day.
For anyone interested I would strongly urge you to pick up a copy of Alex Kendall’s book, the Snowdonia way, published by Cicerone Press. If you look on the ‘extra’ section on Cicerone’s website you will also find a podcast interview with Alex. There is also a website for the route. At the moment the only holiday company I have found offering self guided holidays with luggage transfer for the Snowdonia Way is Alpine Exploratory, but having experienced their arrangements on this trip, they come highly recommended too.
I would not be put off either by the fact that the route has yet to be signed on the ground or specifically marked on Ordnance survey maps. Route finding is not difficult, Cicerone have provided GPX files for your gps which we made use of, and Alpine Exploratory provided very detailed and very handy route cards detailing every step of the way.
So if you fancy Snowdonia, and want to avoid the crowds on Snowdon, why don’t you get out there and walk it? The route is recorded as 97 miles, we clocked up over a hundred. Eight days, the time we took, seemed about right, and I now feel I know Snowdonia a lot better. Lots of great memories, and I’m sure I’ll return here before long.
Across the Alps to the Adriatic 