Attraction in Gwynedd

Bodnant Garden in the Conwy Valley in North Wales is one of the finest gardens in Britain, an 80-acre National Trust garden on the slopes above the River Conwy with views across the valley to the peaks of Snowdonia that provides a garden experience of exceptional beauty and horticultural richness across every season of the year. The garden was laid out from 1875 onward by the McLaren family, later Lords Aberconwy, who possessed both the horticultural knowledge and the resources to create a garden of truly ambitious scope, and the result is a place that combines formal Italianate terraces with wild woodland gardens in a seamless and entirely satisfying composition. The formal terraces near the house, constructed in the early twentieth century by the second Lord Aberconwy, are among the finest pieces of formal garden design in Wales. The series of five terraces descend from the house to the stream below in a progression of architectural garden spaces including the Canal Terrace, the Croquet Terrace, the Rose Terrace and the Italian Terrace, each with its own character and planting scheme and all linked by steps, balustrades and pools in a composition that manages the steep slope with both practicality and elegance. Bodnant is particularly celebrated for two seasonal spectacles. The laburnum arch, a tunnel approximately fifty metres long formed by trained laburnum trees, flowers in late May and early June in a cascade of yellow that is one of the most photographed garden features in Britain. The rhododendron and camellia plantings in the Dell, the wooded valley below the formal terraces, provide a sequence of flowering from January through June that makes Bodnant worth visiting throughout the spring season. The Dell itself, a wild garden in a steep wooded valley through which the Hiraethlyn stream runs, contains mature specimen trees of exceptional size and quality and provides a romantic and informal counterpoint to the formal terraces above.

Coed y Brenin, meaning the Forest of the King in Welsh, is a large forest park in the Mawddach Valley near Dolgellau in southern Snowdonia that has developed over the past two decades into one of the most important mountain biking centres in Britain, a network of purpose-built trails through the forest and the surrounding upland terrain that provides an exceptional range of cycling experiences from gentle family routes to some of the most technically challenging trails available in Wales. The visitor centre at the heart of the forest provides the facilities hub for the mountain biking community. The forest covers approximately 9,000 acres of the Mawddach and Eden valleys and the trail network extends through a landscape of considerable variety, the forest tracks providing sheltered riding through mature conifer and mixed woodland while the higher trails above the tree line provide mountain scenery of the southern Snowdonia uplands. The Gold Trail, the most celebrated and most challenging trail in the network, was the first purpose-built mountain bike trail in Wales and established Coed y Brenin as a pioneer of the trail centre model that has since been developed across the country. The river gorges and waterfalls of the Mawddach tributaries provide additional scenic interest within the forest, and the walking trails that complement the cycling network provide access to the same landscape for those on foot. The Mawddach Estuary below the forest, one of the most beautiful estuaries in Wales, provides an excellent complementary destination.

The Ffestiniog Railway is the oldest surviving independent narrow-gauge railway in the world, a 13.5-mile line running from Porthmadog on the Cardigan Bay coast through the mountains of southern Snowdonia to Blaenau Ffestiniog at the heart of the Welsh slate quarrying industry, whose combination of the extraordinary mountain scenery traversed, the Victorian and Edwardian carriages and steam locomotives maintained in working order and the industrial heritage of the slate trade that created the line provides one of the finest heritage railway experiences in Britain. The railway was built between 1832 and 1836 to carry slate from the quarries of Blaenau Ffestiniog to the harbour at Porthmadog for export to the world. The slate of Blaenau Ffestiniog roofed much of the Victorian world, and the railway that carried it to the coast was one of the most important industrial transport links in Wales. The closure of the railway in 1946 and its subsequent reopening by volunteer enthusiasts from 1955 onward is one of the defining stories of the heritage railway movement in Britain. The mountain section of the line between Tanygrisiau and Blaenau Ffestiniog traverses the most dramatically scenic section, the railway hugging the hillside above the reservoir with views across the mountains in a sequence of spectacular vistas. The combination of the Ffestiniog and the Welsh Highland Railway, which connects Caernarfon to Porthmadog through the heart of Snowdonia, creates one of the finest narrow-gauge railway experiences available anywhere in the world.

The Pontcysyllte Aqueduct carrying the Llangollen Canal across the River Dee valley near Llangollen in north Wales is one of the supreme masterpieces of the Industrial Revolution and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, a cast-iron trough nearly 300 metres long supported on nineteen hollow masonry pillars at a maximum height of 38 metres above the Dee that was described at its completion in 1805 as the greatest work of art in the British Isles and remains one of the most impressive engineering achievements of any period. Designed by Thomas Telford and William Jessop, the aqueduct carries narrowboats and canal water across the valley in a structure of audacious elegance. The construction challenge that Telford and Jessop faced was how to carry the canal across a wide and deep river valley at a point where no practical deviation in the canal's route was possible. The solution, a slender cast-iron trough clamped to stone piers rising to unprecedented height, represented a technical leap that departed entirely from the massive masonry aqueducts of the classical tradition and exploited the properties of cast iron, still a relatively new structural material in 1795 when construction began. The result is a structure that appears almost impossibly light for the weight of water and boats it carries. The experience of crossing the aqueduct on a narrowboat, the canal water held in the iron trough without any towpath rail on the valley side, is one of the most dramatically vertiginous experiences available on the British waterway network. Boats can be hired in Llangollen and the crossing, which takes only a few minutes at walking pace, provides a brief but unforgettable perspective on the valley below. The Llangollen Canal, extending through the beautiful Dee Valley and the wider landscape of north Wales, provides excellent walking on the towpath in both directions from the aqueduct.

Valle Crucis Abbey near Llangollen in the Dee Valley is the finest Cistercian abbey ruin in Wales, a thirteenth-century monastery set in a green valley below the Llantysilio Mountains whose combination of the substantial surviving fabric, the beautiful setting and the medieval fish pond still filled with water creates one of the most atmospheric monastic ruins in the country. Cadw manages the abbey and the combination of the architectural quality of the ruins and the pastoral valley setting provides an experience of considerable beauty and historical depth. The abbey was founded in 1201 by Madog ap Gruffudd Maelor, Prince of Powys Fadog, as a Cistercian house in the tradition of remote valley monasteries that the Cistercians favoured across their European expansion. The west front of the abbey church, surviving to considerable height and retaining the remains of the great rose window in its gable, is the finest single feature of the ruins and one of the most impressive pieces of medieval architecture in north Wales. The monks' dormitory, the only building surviving with its original roof, provides the most complete interior space of the abbey complex and is used as a small museum of finds from the site. The abbot's lodging adjacent to the church contains the tomb slabs of several abbots of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in a well-preserved condition. The Pillar of Eliseg, an early ninth-century stone monument with a carved Latin inscription, stands in a field above the abbey and provides a further dimension of historical interest in this exceptionally rich valley.

Zip World Velocity at the Penrhyn Quarry near Bethesda in north Wales operates the longest and fastest zip line in Europe, a 1.5-kilometre line descending from the quarry rim to the quarry floor at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour in a flight above one of the largest slate quarries in the world. The combination of the engineering achievement, the extraordinary quarry landscape of the Penrhyn Quarry and the sheer speed of the descent creates one of the most dramatic outdoor experiences available in Wales. The Penrhyn Quarry, from whose working terraces the zip line departs, is one of the largest open-cast slate quarries in the world and an extraordinary industrial landscape of enormous scale. The quarry walls, stretching hundreds of metres in height and visible from a wide area of Snowdonia, provide the physical context for the zip line experience and the views from the launch platform over the quarry and toward the Snowdonia mountains create an introduction to the flight of considerable drama. The participant rides in a prone position, face down above the quarry floor, at speeds that exceed those of the fastest conventional ziplines by a considerable margin. The combination of the altitude, the speed and the industrial landscape below creates an experience that is genuinely unlike anything available elsewhere in Britain. The Zip World brand operates several other adventure activities across north Wales, including the underground zip lines and adventure playground at Zip World Caverns in the Llechwedd slate caverns at Blaenau Ffestiniog, creating an adventure tourism offer of considerable variety throughout Snowdonia.