In the standard pattern, you visit Snowdon on day one, Conwy Castle the following day, then Betws-y-Coed, perhaps followed by Portmeirion. On the way home, on Sunday, stop off somewhere interesting to take some photographs. It’s a perfectly good way of seeing sights but it doesn’t reveal the real flavour and soul of the country, which gets lost in the rush.
The problem isn’t so much the programme but the speed at which it’s carried out. For while North Wales can certainly be seen quickly, it is nowhere near as rewarding as when it’s given more time. One of the main reasons is the country’s geology. The scenery, the history and the people do not flash by in an instant like advertisements on a video screen, nor even like pictures in a tourist brochure; they emerge gradually as they come within range – just as the field, in physical terms, takes a while to appear through the mist. For Best Hotel in Llandudno, visit //stgeorgeswales.co.uk
A view of Snowdon from a car window might give an idea of the lie of the land but will leave much still unseen and this unseen quality becomes clearer when you’re on the ground and slower than the pace of a car. Many villages remain invisible from fast roads and fast traffic, as do many of North Wales’s most appealing features. Only some of them will even be marked in a guidebook and quite a few won’t – except, perhaps, to an observant local, somebody who has known the place and its people and ways of life over a long period and who has watched life unfolding like a slow-motion film over days and years. In any case, the character of North Wales doesn’t just present itself. Its true beauty is best appreciated not from the height of a mountaintop or behind the lens of a camera or by rushing from place to place but at a more relaxed and lingering pace.
