Clean slate for a Welsh steam train

Once the slate capital of the western world, the challengingly named Blaenau Ffestiniog now offers a strangely beautiful setting for a Welsh weekend, writes Heather Payton.

It was going to be a lovely evening - a rare thing, we'd been led to believe, in this wild north west of Wales. Just half-an-hour earlier, we'd arrived in the dark, and walked the 50 yards to the hotel. Now the sky was dappled above us, the clouds luminous in the moonlight as we enjoyed our pre-dinner stroll, much better than the southern English fog we'd left behind. Wales 1, England nil.

"Hang on," said my husband, who is a Welshman, so he's allowed to cast doubt. "It's a bloody great cliff."

It was. A 200-ft vertical mountain of slate, glinting wetly, towered over a small parade of shops. This was Blaenau Ffestiniog, former slate capital of the western world.

It had all started on a perfect summer's day as we watched a tiny train scoot along, apparently inches from the sea from our vantage point half- way up a Welsh hill. Trains could be nice, after all. So here we were on a damp November evening, six trains and nine-and-a-half journey hours into a marathon three-day anticlockwise circuit of Wales. Just the birthday present for the Welshman who has everything. Paddington, Cardiff, Crewe, Chester, Llandudno Junction, Betws-y-Coed. Tomorrow and the day after, the Ffestiniog narrow gauge to Porthmadog, glottal-twisting Machynlleth, Llanwrtyd, Llandeilo and Llanelli, before Swansea and home. Phew.

Before the war, Blaenau sent its slate, via the little railway, to the four corners of the earth, roofing the world from what feels like the roof of the world. Conditions for the underground workers were appalling, but the English mine-owners made profits until eventually cheaper Spanish slate overwhelmed them. By the Fifties many of the mines had closed; the last time the remainder made money was in the Sixties. Now, apart from two remaining mines, Blaenau's slate stays in the ground, the population has shrunk from 15,000 to 5,000, and the Welsh-speaking local kids hang out by the bus shelter to the occasional sound of breaking glass.

But it does have an extraordinary sort of beauty, in a decaying industrial sort of way. The High Street is fighting back with a cluster of smart fascias and the newly renovated (and pricey) Queen's Hotel. Eighteen months ago it was derelict. The new owners hope that its rebirth, at a cost of pounds 450,000, is one symbol for the town. Another is its newly-rediscovered role as the film-makers' darling. White Knight, with Richard Gere, was shot nearby, 60 years after its debut as the site of the first-ever Welsh language movie, and the area is currently providing the backdrop for a television re-make of Merlin. Don't feel too sorry for Blaenau.

In daylight, the dominance of the shiny slate is more obvious. What on earth does it do to the psyche, to grow up under towering, dripping monuments to industrial failure? Or to play rugby in the shadow of a gigantic slag heap?

We opted for a morning walk up the hill to the last remaining slate mine to run tours for the visitors. The other has just been bought by McAlpine, and will concentrate on producing slate.

But although Llechwydd does tours all year, there was nothing that would give two damp trampers the time to surface and walk back in time for their train, so we had to content ourselves with a free wander through the reconstructed Victorian miners' village. Here we heard the tale of Dafydd Francis, the blind harpist who, as an old man, told his daughter: "When the third string breaks, my time will have come." One string went, then another, and another. The harpist was soon dead. Perhaps Blaenau's three strings, having broken, are gingerly being rejoined.

As we walked back down to Blaenau, the sun struggled out, bouncing off the slate and the smoke of the little town far below.

Most of the tourists who visit Blaenau do so for the trains. The Conwy Valley line from the north follows the river, wide and silver to start with, against golden trees. The train, carrying its mixture of backpackers and flat-capped Welsh-speaking farmers, rumbles through forests past the oddly Germanic Betws-y-Coed. The mountains are all around; as everyone knows, Wales would be far bigger than England, if only it could be ironed out.

Yet it's the steam-drawn Ffestiniog Railway that really brings them in. In its early days after 1836, it carried its wagons full of slate down the 13-mile 670-ft drop to Porthmadog by gravity. The horses got a free lift down, but had to haul it back up. In later years came steam, and human passengers, but when war was declared, it came to a halt, the engines abandoned where they stood. By the Fifties, its tracks had disappeared and bits of its engines were gracing the living-rooms of souvenir hunters. It was to be another 30 years before, lovingly restored by volunteers, it would reopen.

The train arrives at Blaenau in a cloud of steam, and the driver and his mates, hats pulled down, relish their glory as they busy themselves with what all little boys want to do. The hour-long trip is stunning. The train rocks urgently past lakes, squeezes through fern-studded rock cuttings, sidles precariously along the sides of mountains, its track built up with stones, before bursting into a sunlit valley of golden trees with golden apples and golden light. You don't get this view from any road.

As we trundle through the forests we pass red-socked walkers; if you get your timing right, you can get off at one of the tiny halts with challenging names and meet the next train further down: Tanygrisiau where a new tunnel had to be blasted through the mountain, or Dduallt and Tan-y-Bwlch, where the track loops around on itself as it spirals down the valley. Or from Minffordd there's a 15-minute walk to the Italianate village of Portmeirion, scene of the cult TV series, The Prisoner.

Eventually there are views through the mountains, growing ever larger, of the estuary where the Llyn Peninsula meets the Cambrian Coast, before a right turn takes us over a causeway to Porthmadog with Snowdonia rearing up behind it. A museum at the station's tea rooms tells of the railway's reincarnation, but for us it was the 10-minute walk to the mainline station, and on with the journey south.

Remarkably, it all fitted together. Eleven different trains, nearly all on time, 18 hours of travel. The planning took nearly as long. It would probably have been quicker by road, but not nearly as pretty. Would I do it again? Well ... the Ffestiniog Railway breaks its winter slumber between Christmas and New Year, so if I have a few days off I'll be on my way. It is bound to look completely different clockwise.

For more details of the Ffestiniog Railway, call 01766 512340 or go to www.festrail.co.uk on the Internet. For train timetables, call 0345 484950 or consult railtrack.co.uk. The Freedom of Wales Flexi Pass offers eight days' rail travel over 15 days for pounds 57 until 4 January.

Heather Payton paid pounds 70 for a huge double room at the Queen's Hotel, Blaenau Ffestiniog (01766 830055). Llechwedd Slate Caverns: 01766 830306.