Snowdonia Slate Trail
Eighty-three miles round the old slate country of northern Eryri, a loop from Bangor through the quarry towns
Indicative — sampled from open terrain data along the simplified route.
The Snowdonia Slate Trail is an 83-mile (134 km) circular route through the northern part of Eryri, beginning and ending near Bangor. It was established in 2017 and is a demanding walk, with something over 4,400 metres of ascent spread across its length, usually broken into around a dozen day stages. It is not a high-mountain route, keeping mostly to the valleys, tracks and passes below the summits, but the ground is rough and the weather in these hills can turn quickly.
The trail exists to link the places where slate was quarried. From Bangor it heads inland to Bethesda and the vast Penrhyn Quarry, then works south past Llanberis and the Dinorwig Quarry cut into the flank of Elidir Fawr. It goes on through Nantlle, past Beddgelert, over to Blaenau Ffestiniog and round by Penmachno before returning north. Between the towns the path runs through worked ground — spoil heaps, inclines, ruined mills and the huge stepped faces of the quarries themselves.
In the late 19th century this corner of Wales produced the greater part of the world’s roofing slate, and the industry shaped everything here: the towns, the railways, the chapels and the language. The slate landscape of north-west Wales was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021, and the trail is a way of reading that history on the ground. Bangor sits on the North Wales coast railway, and Blaenau Ffestiniog and Llanberis give further points to join or leave the route.
