09/06/2026
Cwmorthin above Tanygrisiau near Blaenau Ffestiniog is an abandoned slate quarrying community of extraordinary atmosphere, with quarrymen’s cottages, a quarry manager’s house, a quarry chapel, and the surrounding industrial workings all in various states of romantic decay on a hillside above a dark reservoir.
The walk takes around 45 minutes from the village.
Those who visit Cwmorthin on a grey afternoon when the low cloud is on the surrounding quarry waste tips and the silence of the abandoned community is broken only by the wind describe it as the most powerful and most completely atmospheric abandoned industrial community experience available anywhere in the mountains of Snowdonia.
