This black and white photo, undated but probably inter-War, is a favourite of mine. It shows a carriage of the Snowdon Light Railway pulled by a steam driven locomotive ascending the line from Llanberis to the peak of Mount Snowdon. Snowdon is the highest mountain peak in Wales at approx. 3500 feet above sea level, the summit can be accessed by three alternative pathways or by the railway (s.p.b.s). The peak is top centre in the photo. The railway remains a flourishing tourist attraction although the steam locomotive is rarely used these days. The Snowdonia National Park, the third national park to be created in Britain, early 1950s, covers an area much larger area than Snowdon’s immediate sister peaks and thus includes mostly land still in private ownership, farmers and landowners working in collaboration with the National Park Authority.
The old rule of ‘rocks in the west old, in the east new’ remains broadly true but is a huge generalisation. The bedrocks of Snowdonia are some of the oldest rocks in Britain having been initially created by conditions on the land or sea bed some half a billion years ago, mostly known as Cambrian strata. More recent strata of the Ordovician Geological Era, approx. 450 million years ago, are also much in evidence. Ver time these rocks have often been changed in nature by intense heat in the form of magma intrusions (volcanic lava) from below the Earth’s crust. Thus these rocks are very ‘hard’ (resistant to erosion and weathering) as well as being impervious; resulting in very rapid ‘run off’ after periods of heavy rain or snow melt.
The other great natural force at work here has been glaciation, 3 million years ago to 10,000, with the bulldozing force of icesheets and glaciers rounding off peaks that might previously have been jagged.
The little train shows the technology of Man dwarfed by the forces of Nature.
(to be continued).