Snowdonia National Park
Snowdonia National Park, Parc Cenedlaethol Eryri in Welsh, covers approximately 2,130 square kilometres of northwest Wales and encompasses the highest mountains in England and Wales, the finest mountain scenery in the British Isles south of the Scottish Highlands, and a landscape of deep cultural and linguistic significance for the Welsh nation. The park contains fifteen peaks over 900 metres, seventeen natural lakes, a coastline of considerable beauty and the largest concentration of Welsh speakers in the country, making it simultaneously a landscape and a living cultural heritage site of exceptional importance.
The mountains of Snowdonia are formed from ancient volcanic and sedimentary rocks of Ordovician and Cambrian age, the most complex and varied mountain geology in Wales, and the glacial sculpting of the last Ice Age has produced the classic mountaineering terrain of arêtes, cwms, cliff faces and glacial lakes that gives the park its dramatic character. Snowdon itself, at 1,085 metres the highest peak, is surrounded by the great ridges and faces that attract walkers and climbers from across Britain, but the wider park contains many mountains of comparable quality and far fewer visitors, including the Glyderau and the Carneddau ranges that provide ridge walking of the highest standard.
The scenery of Snowdonia is varied far beyond its mountain core. The Ffestiniog valley, the LlÅ·n Peninsula coast on the western edge of the park, the Mawddach estuary and the Conwy valley all provide landscape character of a gentler but equally rewarding kind, and the market towns of Betws-y-Coed, Blaenau Ffestiniog and Dolgellau provide bases from which the different characters of the park can be explored.
The narrow gauge railways of the park, including the Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways, provide some of the finest heritage railway journeys in Britain through the mountain landscape.