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Every approach to BLAENAU FFESTINIOG is dramatic, but none more so than the train journey through the Lledr Valley from Betws-y-Coed. Following the twists of the river, the railway passes through broadleaf woods which give way to the smooth, grassy slopes of the Moel Siabod, where the longest rail tunnel in Wales bores through over two miles of slate to suddenly emerge in the town. Blaenau means "head of the valley", in this case the lush Vale of Ffestiniog, a dramatic contrast to the forbidding town, hemmed in by stark slopes strewn with heaps of discarded, splintered slate. When clouds hunker low in this great cwm and rain sheets the grey roofs, grey walls and grey paving slabs, it can be a terrifically gloomy place. Thousands of tons of slate were once hewn from the labyrinth of underground caverns here each year, but these days the town is only kept alive by its extant slate cavern tour, and by tourists who change from the Lledr Valley train line onto the wonderful, narrow-gauge Ffestiniog Railway , which winds up from Porthmadog.

It is difficult to get a real feeling of what slate means to the town without a visit to the Llechwedd Slate Caverns (daily: March-Sept 10am-5.15pm; Oct-Feb 10am-4.15pm; single tour £7.25, both tours £11), on the edge of town on the road to Betws-y-coed. There are two tours available. On the Miners' Tramway Tour , you are plied with facts about slate mining as a small train takes you a third of a mile along one of the oldest levels to the enormous Cathedral Cave and the open-air Chough's Cavern. The awe-inspiring scale of the place justifies the trip, even without the tableaux of Victorian miners at work. On the more dramatic Deep Mine Tour , a steeply inclined railway takes you down to a labyrinth of tunnels through which you are guided by an irksome taped spiel of a Victorian miner. The long caverns angling back into the gloom are increasingly impressive, culminating in one filled by a beautiful opalescent pool.