The gate was heavy with black paint chipped off in places and clanked loudly as I let go and it dropped into the latch. The noise echoed off the surrounding crags and startled a flock of nearby crows. Cwmorthin lay ahead and looked like a scene from Lord Of The Rings, high mountain ridges and jagged cliffs. It was a grim September day in North Wales and the black clouds overhead threatened.
A classic hanging valley in the south of Snowdonia, this cwm, as it's known in Welsh, is a steep-sided hollow, carved out by glaciers millions of years ago, but more recently quarried by man. Slate was stacked high on either side of the walk-in, neatly placed like bricks on a castle wall. Piles of unsuitable material in all sizes: shards, dinner plates to coffins, all ready to slide given the slightest provocation.
Despite these scars of industry, nature was finding a way. Growing amongst the detritus I spotted bracken, foxglove, various lichen and moss. All are adaptable, tough and used to the conditions.
Sally had taken the lead but stopped and looked up, “I think it's gonna rain, I can smell it in the air”. She had profiled the forecast and years of training and experience as a mountain leader had sharpened her instincts.
“Oh aye, I have no doubt. Let's get as far into the cwm as we can, see how it goes” I’d seen the same forecasts and knew to expect something dramatic.
We followed the wide track further, passed abandoned quarry equipment, sepia rust picking at the edges, and thick pipes, half-buried and running down the side of the path for drainage.
As Sally walked ahead I stopped to look up and trace the ridgeline to my left. I spotted a lone hawthorn tree growing out of a cluster of rocks. The tree had been sculptured from countless years of weather and left it bent over, gnarly and twisted by the wind.
Then I noticed movement from amongst the branches. A black spectre was watching, hopping from limb to limb. It pulled its hood back, chattered and then let out a deep raspy croak. It was a raven, haunting the crags like some black phantom living in the shadows. It took off, following an invisible line, and glided slowly to the opposite crag. In some cultures, the raven is seen as a symbol of good fortune, and in others bad luck. I looked away, not wanting to have a dalliance with fate and set off to catch Sally.
As I looked around, low grey clouds drifted lazily across the surrounding mountain tops like wraiths and that feeling of dread closed in. The only sound was water rushing passed me. Signs of where humans had engineered nature to suit their needs. Banks of this channel, originally used to harness water to power dressing mills, were shored up with thick slate, but some sections had collapsed through years of neglect.
Sally had stopped at the llyn ahead and I told her about the raven. She laughed at my stupid superstition. The water in the llyn was thick and black, a patch of water lily looking out of place. A slight breeze sent small ripples of white shimmering across the surface and I half expected something to slither out and grab me.
Looking up and pointing to a big crag she said “Look at the piles of slate waste. And those big striations on the bedrock, the long gouges, you can see the direction and weight behind the pressure of the glacier that started here. The huge geological processes that formed this landscape”
“Yeah, and humans come along and carved away more for slate. But it looks like nature is claiming it back in places” pointing down to the collapsed banks and plant life thriving in the cracks.
Shifting my focus away from the slate tips I saw the more resistant rock that made this landscape. Cliffs of untouched dolerite and rhyolite that would have been difficult to quarry. Igneous rock formed underground cooled and solidified before being pushed up and exposed to the world.
This cwm, with its steep cliffs on the back headwall, had been the start of the glacier. Snow would have collected before turning to ice and then forming a huge moving glacier. This build-up was at odds with gravity and so the ice would slide downhill, in a rotational fashion, gouging out the arm-chaired shaped hollow and scarring the rock.
There were large erratics scattered around, rocks that had travelled through time. Originally broken off by the action of the glacier, these rocks were picked up by the mass of ice and carried along before being left where they now stood when the glacier subsided. There was white banding in the rock, cracks and joints filled with fluid and crystals before solidifying as quartz.
The deeper we ventured into the cwm, the more evidence we saw of the people who lived and worked here. Slate fencing lined where old rail tracks would have carried the slate from the quarries down to waiting mills before being shipped off elsewhere.
The slate that was quarried here was a fine-grain metamorphic rock, soft mud or silt, heated under pressure and transformed. This hard water-resistant rock was easy to split into thin sheets and shipped throughout the world.
Across the llyn, we saw a big building almost hidden by tall trees. Reaching what looked like a garden gate, we walked through, a paved path leading us up to where there was once a front door.
All four walls of this two-storey dwelling were still standing, with lichen, spleenwort and feather moss growing amongst the brickwork. The ceiling and floors had collapsed at some point, leaving piles of old slate roofing and timber.
I ran my hand across the brickwork on the nearest wall. It was cold and damp to the touch. How much coal would it have taken to keep this place warm? I asked myself out loud.
Living and working here as the quarrymen did over 150 years ago must have been tough. The life expectancy of a quarryman was 38 years. Physical toil, the inhalation of slate dust, extreme underground temperatures, poor diet and living conditions taking their toll.
Whole landscapes were carved up and for every tonne of slate removed, twenty tonnes of waste were left. At some point in history, the markets shifted and quarrying here eventually ended.
Some people don’t like this industrial landscape. They see waste, ruin and devastation; but I had noticed nature in the mounds of shattered slate and the slow process of re-naturalisation. Lichen and moss binding up the wounds, scars and gashes slowly fading. Lichen helps with the natural breaking down of rock over time to create soil where more plants can grow, bringing insects and birds, bringing life.
Standing in the doorway a loud crack shook me, followed by a bright flash, the cwm briefly illuminated. We exchanged knowing glances.
“Let's get out of here,” I said.
“Yep, right behind you”
We started to retreat back down the path, stopping to put on our waterproofs as the rain started. More rumbles and the sky started to tear itself apart with light, the storm was moving overhead. Dodging pools not there earlier, raindrops burst around us. At first, beads stuck to our jackets and rolled off but as the rain got heavier it gave up and ran away in small trickles.
Moving with haste we got back to the old gate, making quick work of getting through and arriving at the van. I started to dig in my rucksack for the dry bag with the key in. “Goddamit!!!”. The rain continued, knowing I should have left it in the lid.
“Hurry up”, Sally said, a farce unfolding in front of her.
Then I had it. With a click and a slide, we bundled ourselves in and slammed the door shut, rain and hail battered the roof in staccato.
“Fucking ravens” I muttered as Sally burst out laughing.