Snowdonia National Park is located in northern Wales, a country roughly the size of New Jersey and has literally more sheep than people (that's 3 million people and 11 million sheep, to be precise). As our final train chugged into Llandudno Junction, it was clear that this place was truly something special. Mountains rose in the hazy distance, forests blanketed the landscape, and sheep fields divided by crumbling stone walls followed the contours of the foothills for miles.
We were dropped off in the tiny town of Betws-y-Coed (pronounced BET-oos-uh-COYD, f.y.i.) by bus, which had about 2 main roads, and only one stop light that I could see. I had a blurry map I'd printed out and walking directions from Google Maps, both of which quickly proved useless. We started out walking the wrong direction, so we stopped in at a hotel for help. The lady at reception hadn't heard of the Swallow Falls Youth Hostel, but she said Swallow Falls was about 2.5 miles up the road in the opposite direction. Google Maps had lied -- according to my print-out, it should have been .5 miles away. Oh well...
We walked and we walked and we walked some more. Figuring we had to have gone more than 2 miles, I was beginning to grow alarmed that the town was now far behind us and the road was weaving futher up into the mountains and forest, and the only remaining roadside buildings were B&Bs and farmhouses. I called the hostel for directions, and they said it was another 2 miles away. How could that possibly be? We must have walked 10 miles already! So we walked and we walked and we walked.
It felt like it had been hours and I didn't know what else to do. It was getting towards sunset, and, afraid of having to sleep in a sheep field for the night, I finally went up to a B&B and rang the doorbell. No one answered. I went next door and did the same thing. Thank goodness for the kindness of strangers, because a very nice woman answered and informed us that we were about a 20 minute uphill walk away. She said we looked very tired, but this was good for us because, as she said, "You're in walking country now."
And indeed we were. We continued up the mountain road and were relieved about 30 minutes later to see a sign indicating the hostel was about 200 yards ahead. We had made it. We powered up the last few hundred feet past another sheep field and finally checked into the hotel/hostel complex. It was a decent room (pictured above), made for 6 people but fortunately we were the only ones there.
The next day, after a £1 breakfast at the hostel, we rode the one and only bus into town and explored some of the trails and side streets. We found our way to a little suspension bridge, which led to a dead-end trail between two sheep fields.
The scenery was drop-dead gorgeous, everywhere we looked. It's just mindboggling to see that places as serene as Betws-y-Coed still exist, seemingly unchanged in the last 100 years but for a few refurbished buildings and new cars.
Above is the graveyard at St. Michael's church, an abandoned chapel on the river.
This was the train we rode into town... Just kidding! This is the actual rail station though, with a little kiddy train that runs around the adjacent railway museum.
Around mid-day we found the Pont-y-Pair Bridge, which crosses over a beautiful waterfall that cuts through the town. I couldn't help but think in the US this sort of thing would be fenced off and plastered with warning and liability signs and they'd be charging admission to see it, but here it was opened to whoever felt like clambering down amongst the boulders and cascading waters.
Another nice thing about Betws-y-Coed was that it only has a population of about 500 people and few tourists, so we pretty much had the whole place to ourselves. The only other visitors seemed to be either retirees from the nearby trailer park, locals, or serious backpackers, hikers and climbers.
We ended up following a forest trail for a mile or 2 along the river and through various sheep fields. Eventually we came back to town, had a late lunch/early dinner by the waterfall and took a leisurely 2 mile walk back to the hostel.
Thus ended my first day of spring break. Wales was already shaping up to be one heck of an adventure, and certainly one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.
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