Snowdonia3 August 2001In August, we took a long weekend in Snowdonia, staying at the Fairy Glen Hotel on the banks of the Afon Conwy, just outside Betws-y-Coed.
We set off from Enfield at about 10.30pm on Thursday evening, making good time and staying at a Travelodge just north of Birmingham. On Friday we stopped briefly at the Round House at Gailey. This is a delightful old toll house on the Staffordshire & Worcestershire Canal, next to a lock where the canal descends under Telford's A5. As it is only two minutes west of junction 12 of the M6, and just over two hours from London, it is an ideal place to stop to break a journey to the north.
The Aqueduct was built between 1795 and 1805 by the Ellesmere Canal Company as part of an ambitious (and ultimately ill-fated) route from what later became known as Ellesmere Port on the Mersey to Shrewsbury on the Severn. There are 18 piers made of local stone, the central ones over the Dee being 126' high up to the ironwork. The canal runs through an iron trough 1007' long 11'10" wide and 5'3" deep. It remains the highest and longest aqueduct in Britain, and is known as one of the "Seven Wonders of the Waterways".
The line between Bala and Dolgellau was built by the Bala & Dolgelley Railway Company and was opened in 1868. The railway joined the Corwen & Bala Railway at Bala, and with the Cambrian Railways line at Dolgellau. The line was operated by the Great Western which absorbed the B&DR in 1877. Services through Bala ceased on 15 January 1965 and the line was then closed between Llangollen and Barmouth. Then a rebirth came in 1971 when a local engineer, George Barnes saw a potential of the lakeside section for both local and tourist traffic. Track laying began on Whit Monday in 1972, with a one and a quarter mile track was opened on 13 August 1972. In 1976 the railway reached its current terminus at the old Bala Halt site, around half a mile from the town centre.
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