Tuesday 21st September

Following the previous day’s scramble around the Snowdon Horseshoe, we treated ourselves to a lie in and a cooked breakfast in the van before a day of easy-ish sport climbing at Dinorwic Quarry, near Llanberis. We left the Tyn y Coed pub car park in no particular rush and drove along the scenic road that took us past Capel Curig, through the Dyffryn Mymbyr Valley and down the wild, rugged Llanberis Pass. At Llanberis we followed the road along the west side of Llyn Peris and Llyn Padarn, whose murky waters rippled beneath the  strikingly grey walls of the huge slate quarries behind them.

We turned right at the end of Llyn Padarn and found ourselves coming back along the other side of the lake on a narrow, bumpy road. After a couple of miles we came to the roadside parking described in our climbing guide.  We were trying to fathom how to get to “The Sidings” area of the “Australia” sport crag when a very friendly man who’d just parked behind us saw our van and started talking to us about Mazda Bongos. It turned out that he and his friend (I think their names were Pete and Mike) had come to climb very near Australia, so they offered to show us where it was.

We’re very lucky to have bumped into them because as well as being a short walk from where we parked,  we’d have struggled to match up the pictures in the guide with the corresponding bits of crag. We were blown away by the scale of the huge, grey crater, whose hulking back towered high above a deep, wide bowl of greyer-than-grey slate vertical walls and what must have been millions of tons of rubble.  Occasional stone huts, miscellaneous bits of steel apparatus and rusty old cables hinted at the quarry’s history as a hive of activity and noise, but it seemed to have become quite a serene place in its abandonment.  Looking over to the Llanberis Valley, Llyn Padarn and Llyn Peris took on a kind of cloudy blue colour when viewed from above, and the rugged ridges of the Snowdon mountain range reached towards the sky under a gentle sun that reflected off the land in a blueish haze.

Our new friends pointed the way to The Sidings, which was a steep-ish hike up a long, scree-covered ramp. In places the towering quarry walls were divided into several stepped levels, separated by flat platforms which were perfect for belaying. We set up on the second or third level up the  north-western side of the quarry, about halfway between the bottom and the top of the crater. Looking over the slatey bowl I saw that tons of loose rock lingered on the nearly sheer slopes, waiting to be released as a hard, grey avalanche. Several huge vertical slabs refused to hold onto any scree and towered  over the bowl, looking appealing – if imposing – as multi-pitch trad climbing routes.

The Sidings is a platform about 80 metres long that runs below a near-vertical wall 10 metres high. As we were out of the habit of regular outdoor climbing due to lockdown, we chose this area due to the low grade of its 18 routes, which range from 4 to 6a+. I started off by leading “N Gauge” (6a), which was my first ever climb on slate.

I was pleasantly surprised how solid the rock felt. As expected of a slate wall, much of the surface was smooth and bare, but where small edges and cracks did appear they were angular, hard and “trustworthy” – if rock can bear such a characteristic – although I’d later revise this conclusion, as I’ll explain shortly. I enjoyed the mix of fingery, balancey moves, some of which were quite technical, and the lack of large ledges reassured us that we could fall without hitting anything.

We worked from left to right, ticking off N Gauge (6a), Side Line (4+), Derailed (4), Thomas the Tank (4), Not Known (6a), Rack and Pin (5+), Sodor (6a), Being a Bob (5a), “Those who climb clearly marked projects are the kind of people who would steal the chocolate bar from a kid’s lunch box – selfish tossers – who owe the bolt fund cash” (5+, well named) and Choo Choo (5+).

Not Known wasn’t marked in our guide book but  was clearly bolted and looked interesting, if tricky, so I led it with trepidation and was secretly very pleased with myself when I made it over the crux move, which involved a very high leg (which defied Ryan on his attempt), a good hip flexor stretch and a lucky high left hand hold. It probably helped that Pete and Mike had joined us at The Sidings, so I had the additional incentive of being watched. Pete suggested that the climb might be graded 7a, so I was quite disappointed to read on the UKClimbing website that it’s only 6a. Regardless, it was good to climb something blind to the grade.

Rack and Pin and Sodor felt quite exposed, but climbing next to a group of 3 or 4 beginners being coached by a guide – again, people to watch us – gave us a reason to ignore any nervousness. Having previously noted the “trustworthiness” of the rock, I was given a shock near the bottom of Rack and Pin when, having only clipped into the first bolt, a tiny handhold broke off suddenly under the pressure of three of my left fingers as I pulled down. I’d climbed above the bolt and was sent sprawling off the rock and swinging awkwardly to the right, but Ryan caught me quickly and I landed against the wall before I’d even processed what had happened. This reminded me that in general, falling isn’t so bad after all.

Once we were satisfied with our day’s climbing, we packed up and walked down into the belly of the quarry for a poke around. We entered through a deep archway cut into a huge slab and stared up at the impossible quantities of slate. Grass, heather and lichen softened the greyness, and we noticed several alluring black openings that suggested that there was plenty of exploring to be done behind the quarry walls.

We entered a ground-level shaft about 8 foot high and 6 foot wide, and walked the length of it up a gradual slope along an old railway track. It was about 100 metres long, damp and very dark, and near the end it forked into two openings. They both came out at the side of the quarry and dropped down steeply.  We decided that climbing aside, we could spend a day just exploring the quarry; Pete had told us about “Snakes and Ladders”, which is a popular excursion on rainy days that involves climbing – preferably with a rope – up rusty old ladders and shafts inside the quarry walls. In short Dinorwic quarry is an excellent, if perilous, playground.

We left the quarry and walked across to the viewpoint that overlooks Llyn Padarn, Llyn Peris and the bottom of the Llanberis Pass, over which the rugged Snowdon peaks provided a lovely backdrop in the afternoon sun. We marvelled at the amount of loose slate and joked that we could find ourselves a lovely set of tablemats and coasters for our new house – and all our friends’ and families’ houses – without making a dent, then wandered back to the van. We drove to the bus terminal at the end of the road to turn around and were amazed to spot Johnny Dawes, the eccentrically-dressed 50-something year old rock climber famous for his bold ascents and ability to climb hands-free, pulling a rope out of a nondescript car ready to take himself off for a climb. I’m embarrassed to say that we gawped like fangirls.

Keen to find somewhere for food and a drink, we drove back into Llanberis and found ourselves at a pub in the middle of town, “The Heights”, which was big and cheap and cheerful enough, if a little dated.  We sat on a bench outside and shared a large, very satisfying plate of nachos, then agreed to go back up Llanberis Pass to try the Vaynol Arms. On arrival I was quite disappointed to find that since I’d last been in a couple of years before, its lovely old tartan-patterned ceiling had been painted white and the fascinating old mountaineering paraphernalia that was hung above the cosy fireplace has been dissipated around the now much colder looking pub.

We considered eating in the pub but being mid-week, there wasn’t much of an atmosphere so we had a drink and left. We drove back up the Llanberis Pass, turned left and dipped into the wild Dyffryn Mymbyr valley. We parked in the overnight spot we’d stayed in on Sunday, I cooked a surprisingly tasty improvised dinner of bulgur wheat, tinned soup and whatever-else-I-could-find-in-the-cupboard stew, and we drifted into the blissful kind of sleep that can only be achieved in the wildest places.