SLATE COUNTRY
Don’t miss
The Countryfile team visits Snowdonia on Sunday 13 February, BBC One.
It is a wow moment. The walk here was impressive, with its views to Eryri (Snowdonia) summits – but now that I am peering into Moel Tryfan Quarry, I am stunned.
It is the colours that are beautifully shocking. The detergent-blue reservoir lying in a crushed ring of purple slate is encircled by green-gold grass and snow-powdered peaks roaring up to a bruised sky. I have walked here before – I remember being saluted by a passing scrambler-bike rider, and swirling cloud revealing waste tips and walls. I already knew the quarry had drama but I had not before seen its true colours.
Now cloud dissolves the hues, leaving only a memory – and slate waste underfoot that clatters or shatters, fragile yet resilient. There are slate pockets across north-west Wales, but particularly in three large diagonal veins. This Cambrian-Age purple-blue slate running through Llanberis is the
