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More About Holiday Cottages in Snowdonia

The Slate Trail runs eighty-three waymarked miles through the old quarrying villages, Bethesda and Llanberis to Blaenau Ffestiniog. Get out on Llyn Tegid at Bala, a mountain lake that stays cold into the summer, or spend a whole day on the sand at Harlech, where the sea is unwatched, then come back to a Welsh-speaking village with the pub two minutes away.

Beddgelert has lanes with the peaks straight above them, Harlech has miles of dunes behind its beach, and the valleys inland run back into empty hills. The southern end of the park opens onto the Dyfi estuary, where the sand goes on for miles.

Getting into these mountains was, for a long time, a question of money. A week among them belonged to people with means, and everyone else made do with a day trip on the railway.

The Youth Hostels Association set out to change that. It was founded in April 1930, and the first hostel it opened anywhere in Britain was here in North Wales: Pennant Hall, near Llanrwst, where thirty people spent that Christmas. It lasted a matter of months before a neighbouring farmer contaminated the spring that supplied it.

The one that stuck opened at Easter 1931 at Idwal Cottage in the Ogwen valley, and it is open still. Its warden was Connie Alexander, the first the association appointed anywhere in the country, a capable climber involved in several rescues off the surrounding hills. A night cost a shilling.

The same idea has grown up since: a whole house in a village rather than a bunk in a hall. It is still how most families get a week in these mountains instead of a weekend. It is also how eight people who like each other end up under one roof with a fire going.

Gwynedd has more holiday homes than almost anywhere in Wales, and inside the National Park they run to 17.4 per cent of the housing. The council keeps a close eye on which houses change hands and what they become.

It rains here, and it is worth knowing the figures before you book. The Met Office puts annual totals in Snowdonia above 3,000 millimetres, and Britain’s wettest observation sites take more than four metres of rain a year. A kitchen, a fire and a drying rail turn a washed-out Tuesday into an easy one.

The park runs down to the sea, which surprises people. Harlech and Aberdyfi sit inside it and Barmouth is just outside the boundary, with the Cambrian Coast railway running along the back of the dunes. Thirty-seven miles of the park is coast, so you can be up a mountain in the morning and on sand by four.

Eryri was designated an International Dark Sky Reserve in 2015, and a house set back from the street lights is the easiest way to use it. The nights are long from October and the villages are small, so on a clear night you see far more than you can at home. Snow or sleet falls on more than thirty days a year here and the mountain passes feel it first, so check the road before a winter drive over one.