Dinorwic Slate Quarry, Snowdonia — Pete Rowbottom Landscape Photography

This one has been a while coming… I’ve wanted to visit all the buildings here for quite some time and on my last 2 visits I spent that much time taking pictures and generally exploring a smaller area of the quarry that the main bits that I wanted to visit I didn’t get to, (also because I couldn’t find them, or at least a way to get to them)

Opportunity arose for a 3 day visit to the area for Landscape Photography and again I planned another visit to the quarry, this time armed with a fantastic few pages of information provided to me by Mike Innes on FlickR, a regular explorer of Dinorwic and very helpful guy - https://www.flickr.com/photos/pentlandpirate/

For anyone who has been you’ll know the vast nature of the place, for anyone who hasn’t, basically it is enormous. To put the place into perspective, when it was open It was the second largest slate quarry in Wales, and indeed in the world. It remains the same size but closed down and abandoned. It closed in December 1969 after a downturn in demand for slate, ever since it has been sat dormant, deteriorating year after year, there have been a lot of collapses but there is still a lot to see.

The main purpose of the latest visit was to find the old cutting sheds on the ‘Australia’ levels, the other buildings still fitted out with heavy machinery, and the ‘Caban’ (or Cabin) which still contains the Miners’ old work boots and clothes. I managed to finally find all these on what turned out to be a 6 1/2 hour circular walk, some very hard going but well worth it.

It’s a true photographers paradise, with great compositions to be found literally everywhere around the site, it also has the added bonus of looking great in poor weather, when low cloud and mist can often feature, and the wet slate takes on new colour and drama.

The images are from a number of visits, if you want any further info get in touch.