Hill-Bagging

By Dugswell2

National Slate Museum.

I returned Mike Royle's winter Munro bagging gear obtain in Braemar to his wife Mair who works here. Mike cycled from his home in NW Wales to climb all the "Munro" hills of Wales, England and Scotland finishing on Ben Hope in under 4 months with no help and lost 2 stones in weight. Its a GR8 place just wish I had time to explore but the hills on the Lleyn peninsula need to be climbed.

These workshops, which served all the needs of the quarry and its locomotives, were built in 1870 on land created from the continuous tipping of spoil from the adjacent Vivian Quarry, and as a replacement for the store sheds which were previously sited there. Rail access to the works was by both 2 ft (610 mm) gauge (the quarry gauge) and 4 ft (1,219 mm) gauge (that of the Padarn Railway which carried the slate from the quarry to Port Dinorwic). Rails also entered the main yard through the main entrance.
The museum is now connected to the nearby village of Llanberis by the Llanberis Lake Railway, which uses part of the building as its workshops.
The museum reopened after receiving a £1.6 million grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund and now has innovative displays featuring Victorian era slateworkers' cottages that once stood at Tanygrisiau, near Blaenau Ffestiniog. They were taken down stone by stone and re-erected here. As well as many interesting exhibits, it has the multi-media display, To Steal a Mountain, showing the lives and work of the men who quarried slate here.
The museum also has the largest working waterwheel in mainland Britain, which is available for viewing via several walkways. The waterwheel was constructed in 1870 by De Winton of Caernarfon and is 50 ft 5ins in diameter, 5 ft 3ins wide and was built around a 12in axle. Close to the museum is the partly restored Vivian incline, a gravity balance incline where loaded slate wagons haul empty wagons back up.

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