Conwy Estuary

If we are to make any inroads into carbon emissions and global warming there needs to be a complete rethink about the role and function of public transport which has to be led by governments and in particular ours.

We travelled from Kent to Llanberis today to join people from all over the country for the second annual national Walk1000miles hike up Snowdon. Today’s blip is from the train crossing the Conwy estuary just after leaving Llandudno Junction.

By car, it’s a 630 mile round trip with a journey time to Llanberis of 5 and a quarter hours which is similar to the train. This would generate 150kg of carbon. Instead we went by train and bus which generates 4kg of carbon. There’s no competition is there?

I’ll tell you why people go by car. Door to door. No lugging luggage to the station, fed up with a lack of space for luggage on the trains, uncomfortable trains, late trains,trains not connecting with buses, infrequent buses and non existent information about where buses depart from and the cost of fares.

On the plus side we did find a super cafe in Bangor, the Blue Sky Cafe, to while away the two hours between the bus we could have caught had the train been on time and the last bus of the day which we had to catch. It too was late despite apparently starting from Bangor did not arrive on time. We were beginning to wonder if alternative arrangements may be necessary.

Collected our badges from the organiser and returned to the hotel for dinner. Muscled in on an illustrated talk by a local historian in Snowdonia to a big crowd of people on a coaching holiday. The illustrations were old fashioned slides in a slide projector which was a blast from the past.