‘Looming stone towers like Maya temples’: a hike through Snowdonia’s slate country

A new trail in the national park traces the legacy of Welsh industry, while offering some of the UK’s finest riverside and mountain walks The vital moment comes a couple of hours into the walk. I drop down from a tussocky hill towards the village of Y Fron.

There’s an abandoned slate-quarrying machine and a grassy track that suddenly emerges on the rim of a deep lake-filled crater. The water is the colour of an old bruise. Around the rim is a fence of lichen-crusty slates like gravestones. It’s a dark, brooding spectacle and totally unexpected. At that moment, I know that whoever designed this route knew what they were doing. This is the Llwybr Llechi Eryri (Snowdonia Slate Trail), an 83-mile hike that follows a great loop around the…