The Blue Lake

After a lazy breakfast we drove down the road to Fairbourne where there's a narrow gauge railway, and when we arrived the 12pm train was due to depart so we decided to hop on - I think the driver was glad we'd turned as there wasn't anyone else, so we had the train to ourselves!  The train goes to the Barmouth ferry point and then there's a 10 minute stop before heading back to Fairbourne.  We got off to have a look around and saw the ferry coming over, we did laugh as it was just a small fishing boat and when it got to shore, he pulled out a little wooden ramp to set down on the beach.  He wouldn't have been able to fit many people on it, so I'm not sure what they do in the summer season, maybe they have a bigger boat then.  Once back we had lunch in Bertie - we'd parked in the beach car park and were able to park side on so we had the door open out to the beach so we could enjoy the view.  

This afternoon we went in search of the Blue Lake at Arthog, which is hidden in a disused slate quarry.  This is another spot recommended by Clare, and she said there's a tunnel that leads to the lake (which you can see on the photo) and you can swim in the water.  However, when I googled it, I was disappointed to read that the land owner had blocked up the tunnel in 2019 due to people littering the place.  I tried to find information on whether we could access it from the top to look down on it, but couldn't find anything, so we decided to go and look for ourselves.  It was quite an adventure with a big uphill walk - we spotted  a narrow slate archway with a little stream running through it and we decided to climb up through the stream (fortunately it was only trickling water and not very deep) and when we came to the top we followed a path which brought us almost to the top of the quarry.  The views over Barmouth were amazing so we stopped to catch our breath and then climbed up the final hill which took us to the point we'd hoped to find.  The water is so blue, and I'm sure on a sunny day with blue skies it looks even bluer!  It really is beautiful and I can only imagine what it must have been like to come out of the tunnel at the edge of the water, although I bet it was very cold to swim in!

It started to rain while we were up there, so we set off back in case it got quite bad as we had a lot of slate to climb down and didn't want to risk it getting too slippy,  but we were fine and I even found a heart shaped piece of slate which I brought back with me as a souvenir.

Our final port of call was at Penmaenpool where there's an old wooden toll bridge over to Barmouth which is on the Mawddach Trail.  Clare's friends Barry & Sue own the toll bridge and the old toll keeper's cottage is now an Airbnb.  We had planned to walk along the Mawddach Trail which is a disused railway line along the banks of the estuary, but it was too late in the day, so we stopped to have a chat to Barry, walked over the bridge and then just a short distance along the trail before heading back to the cottage.  

The sun was starting to set as we drove back, so we stopped on the coast road and watched it go down, the perfect end to the day!