Of mountains and seashells

The valleys and mountains of the Eryri National Park (formerly known as Snowdonia) is an area that holds many memories for both of us. Revisiting it with more time to explore and soak up the surroundings has been a real treat.

As Scout Leader’s daughter, I spent many summers playing in the rivers and woodlands on summer camps in North Wales. Ian visited them as a Scout and on family holidays, and we also have joint experiences and memories as Venture Scouts doing various walks and backpacking expeditions.
One of these involved traversing Crib Goch, with full backpacks. It’s a very sharp shoulder ridge on the east side of Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) with drops of hundreds of feet on either side. Not a hike for the faint hearted and not one that either of us ever intend to do again (I still have nightmares from the first time). Ian was keen to get to the summit again, but this time he chose the easier route of the Miner’s Track, a good idea given the variable weather conditions and having a daft dog on a short lead with a death wish!

We spent some time camped near to a village called Cwm-y-glo, near Llanberis. Just on the edge of this village, there’s a rather unassuming plaque on a rockface by the road. It commemorates the site where, on a hot June day in 1869, six people and horses were tragically killed when two carts, each carrying a ton of liquid nitro-glycerine, suddenly exploded. The canisters had been packed in straw and travelled all the way from an Alfred Nobel factory in Germany. The carts were within a couple of miles of the slate quarries at Llanberis when they blew up, the explosion was felt in Holyhead, on Anglesey (23 miles away) and created two craters about 10ft deep (3.3m). There’s a X marked on a stone wall, over half a mile (800 metres) away, where a wheel and the harness of one of the carts were found.

As a result of this terrible incident, an Act of Parliament was written prohibiting the import of nitro-glycerine and regulating its carriage. Quarries and other industries replaced it with dynamite, a more stable material manufactured for the first time by Alfred Nobel in 1866. When Nobel died in 1895, he left instructions in his Will to fund the annual awards of the Nobel Prize in five categories to “those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind.” Over the last 122 years the Nobel Prize has been awarded 615 times to 954 individuals and 27 organisations.

That awful event certainly changed the law relating to the transportation of explosive materials and perhaps incidents like this may have prompted Nobel to establish his Prize. Whatever you believe,  I do find it quite bizarre that in the most obscure and unassuming places you can suddenly find something that has had such far reaching repercussions.

After all this drama, we headed to Shell Island, near to Harlech, to hunker down for a few days of stormy weather. We were very glad to have our motorhome to shelter in as the wind gusted towards 50mph with driving rain. Unfortunately, as this weather lasted for a few days, this was too much for many of the tents and many campers left with the site skips being filled with their canvas and broken poles. During a few hours of calm, we did manage some walks along the coast and swimming in the sea. The last day was picture perfect sunshine and after a final dip in the water, we headed home with its warmth on our skin.