Snowdonia's Slate & Copper Mines

Here's the Llechwedd Slate Caverns visitor centre and the mist-shrouded hills behind, rising to 457m (1,500 ft), was where we were headed for the...

...Quarry Explorer tour (since rebranded Slate Mountain Adventure tour), courtesy of this rugged 4x4 military type truck.  After getting the lowdown...

...from our driver and guide we were off to see some of Llechwedd's 2,000 acre quarrying sites.  The truck often stopped and our guide jumped out to vividly describe how slate has been quarried...

...at Blaenau Ffestiniog for some 300 years, demand driven by the Industrial Revolution.  It sure was a bumpy ride up to the man-made quarry summit to what seemed like an abandoned village in the...

...middle of nowhere - the remains of the 1861 steam processing mill at Diffwys Casson.  Unfortunately we didn't manage to see the amazing view across North Wales due to the adverse weather, but were able to walk among the disused buildings at this eerie Victorian mining settlement.  Miners did the...

...1¼ hour walk up to Diffwys every day in all weathers.  Our guide described how the tops were blasted off 100-year-old caverns, creating massive craters that turned old mines into quarries and enabling even more slate to be extracted.  As the Quarry Explorer...

...truck descended through the Llechwedd slate quarries we passed some of the current workings.  The enlightening Quarry Explorer tour lasted...

about 1½ hours.  After lunch in Llechwedd's visitor centre café we made for Britain’s steepest cable railway and the Deep Mine tour, first...

...getting kitted up in a fetching safety helmet.  In the waiting area we learnt that Blaenau Ffestiniog is described as 'the town that roofed the world'.  Soon...

...we boarded the cosy rail car and descended deep into the slate mine which extends down 16 floors and almost 400m (1400 ft) to sea level.  The...

...caverns were enormous!  The Deep Mine...

...tour was very hands-on and the guides invited us to experience the hard work of Victorian era miners and have go at drilling out some slate.

Now the geology bit: Slate was formed 500 million years ago when mud and clay deposits on an ancient seabed were compacted at high temperature during continental shifts.  We...

...carefully made our way through the impressive hand-cut tunnel systems that run for over 20 miles; we walked only a fraction of that before...

...emerging into a spectacular underground lake for some amazing sound and light sequences depicting Victorian mining conditions.  The...

...final part was, of course, a fascinating slate splitting demonstration.  From its Victorian heyday slate production declined after WW2 and in 1975 Llechwedd Slate Caverns tourist attraction was launched - and we can heartedly recommend a visit!

North-west Wales' slate landscape has been chosen as the UK's next preferred nomination for World Heritage Site status in 2019.  Before...

...we left we took a look across the vast heaps of slate spoil towers, created by 90% of the rock extracted from the mines and quarries being discarded - shocking!  Today, slate is also used for ground moisture retention, in cosmetics and housewares.

The Quarry Explorer and Deep Mine tours combined cost us £30 each on our 2018 visit to Llechwedd Slate Caverns at Blaenau Ffestiniog in Snowdonia.

On another day in the beautiful Snowdonia National Park we travelled to the pretty village of Beddgelert on the steam train.  A popular tourist village straddling the River Glaslyn, just outside is...

...Sygun Copper Mine, nicely situated overlooking the Gwynant valley.  Apart from slate, copper ore was the other main mineral mined in this part of North Wales.  The walking mine tour...

...is self-paced and safety helmets are provided to protect denting one's head from contact with the low tunnel roofs.  Don't we look lovely?  Off into..

...the mine then, with three levels of old workings and a year-round temperature of around 9°C - brrr.  In the first cavern...

...we admired these Stalactites and Stalagmites, formed by water trickling through the old tunnels after the copper mine was abandoned in 1903.  Pressing...

...that green button down there fired up the audio-visual presentation, bringing to life that Sygun copper miner and his tails of a miner's life.  We...

...made our way through the mine, learning that tunnels were dug lower to get to deeper copper rich veins in the mountain as demand increased during the Industrial Revolution.  Presently we...

...hit the third level at Sygun Copper Mine ... and saw daylight at the end of the tunnel!  Our mine tour took around 40 mins and cost £8.95 on our 2018 visit.  So we soon emerged...

...at the mine's Victoria Level, and another button for a final audio-visual - and, erm, wonderful mountain view down the Gwynant valley...

...before following the short mountain path back to the Sygun Copper Mine visitor centre.  On the way there's a gold panning activity place.  Back at the...

...visitor centre we ditched the hard hats and took a look around the interesting museum of antiquities, detailing the copper mining history at Sygun.

Facilities at Sygun Copper Mine include a picnic area, coffee and gift shop and kids activities.

We also visited the National Slate Museum in Llanberis to learn more about Snowdonia's slate mining heritage.

For more on the places we visited in Snowdonia check out our UK tourism resources.

Now, see how we got to Beddgelert on the Welsh Highland Railway and our ride on the Ffestiniog Railway >>>