Almost a decade ago, when I still lived in Wales, my friend Joe was driving me home from the pub well after midnight on Christmas morning. We had been out drinking in Bangor, and he had very kindly offered to take me a couple of valleys over from where he lived to drop me off. We were on the winding bit of road going into Llanberis that we called “the bends” when I looked up at the sky. “Look at the stars,” I said. I had never seen them so clear. Joe pulled over and we just stood there, looking. I’ve rarely seen anything like it.

That Snowdonia has just been awarded international dark sky status does not, after that singular experience, surprise me (though I will admit that when my editor mentioned the award to me, I thought at first she meant dark skies during the daytime).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Snowdon Mountain Railway. Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

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The wet Welsh weather is legendary and, growing up surrounded by mountains, I often felt as though a mass of black clouds sat atop the valley like a large cloth hat, dispensing a permanent wall of drizzle. There’s a saying around these parts, that if you can’t see Snowdon, then it’s raining. If you can see it, it’s still raining. But when the weather is clear in Snowdonia there is no better place to be.



What a place to spend a childhood; we roamed for miles, and hours, on end, granted freedom by our parents, provided we avoided the bypass, advice we ignored, and came home in time for tea. In the summers we would swim in the lakes, ignoring the usual, touristy suspects for what we termed “secret lakes”, always a few miles out of the village or up a mountain and usually deserted. I’ll never forget the time I saw Llyn Dwythwch – rumoured to be populated by the Tylwyth Teg (Welsh fairies) – and swam in its cool, clear waters. We would swim in the rivers, too, up beyond the waterfalls just below the tracks of the Snowdon mountain railway – a not entirely safe endeavour because of the strong currents.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Castell Dolbadarn Photograph: Alan Novelli/Alamy

Another favourite activity was to ride our bikes up Pen-y-Pass, the merciless mountains looming over us on either side. To this day, the ruggedness of the landscape makes, in my mind, the rolling English hills feel wimpish in comparison. Just beyond the boundaries of the park, the industrial quarrying of those edifices claimed the lives of my ancestors and made some Englishmen very, very rich. Look at a map of the national park and you’ll see a hole in the middle – Blaenau Ffestiniog, excluded on the grounds of ugliness.

Its impossible to be a child in Snowdonia and not feel the presence of Welsh history and mythology everywhere you go. From the monster of Llyn Tegid to the fate of Cantref Gwaelod, which now lies beneath the waves – though you can still hear the church bells ring, they say – the stories I grew up with dominated my imagination. (That village, according to legend, suffered an accidental drowning; a more deliberate flooding occurred when they drowned Tryweryn in 1965 to make a reservoir for Liverpool).

As children, we were fascinated by the face of the lady of Snowdon, set against the single remaining tower of Castell Dolbadarn, built by Llywelyn the Great, and where we would shimmy up the chimney (or toilet chute, we weren’t sure which) to a secret room. Beddgelert, too, was a favourite place, where the same Llywelyn was rumoured to have murdered his dog, believing it to have killed his son when it was in fact protecting him from a wolf. Above Beddgelert is Dinas Emrys, the hill-fort attributed to Vortigern, beneath which I used to read over and over of how a young Merlin witnessed the battle between the red and white dragons (the red dragon won, obviously).



It’s no surprise that, with my name, the tales of the Mabinogion loomed large in my childhood, too. I had a map of Wales on my wall that marked the locations of the main stories, and would ask my father again and again to tell them to me. Though it wasn’t until adulthood that I learned about the fate of Rhiannon: accused of infanticide and cannibalism, and made to sit by the gate of the castle and tell her tale to travellers, before carrying them on her back.



Facebook Twitter Pinterest Harlech Castle. Photograph: Alamy

Having grown up there, it is impossible for me to untangle the landscape of Snowdonia from the language and culture and history of this part of Wales. It feels as though it lurks in my bones. But even those unfamiliar with the place and its past will find wonder in this part of the world.

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I meet people all the time who spent their holidays on the beach at Harlech or at Betws-y-Coed. “Oh, my family had a holiday cottage there,” they will say, sometimes, and I will say nothing of Meibion Glyndŵr or the thorny issue of second homes and their impact on the local community. Tourists are welcome and come in droves, but leave a property standing empty and you could face double council tax. Aged eight, we once crept into a particular cottage that had been abandoned for nearly 30 years to marvel at the 1970s decor, canned goods and board games, rotting slowly as no one claimed them.



For those who love the outdoors, whether camping, kayaking, bouldering, climbing or wild swimming, Snowdonia is a natural tourist destination. It’s brilliant for children, especially those preoccupied with steam trains, as my brother was. The Fun Centre in Caernarfon, the beaches of the Llŷn peninsula, and the Greenwood Forest Park all lie outside Snowdonia’s boundaries but are well worth a visit for families staying in the area. There are some excellent pubs, and restaurants too, though climber’s caff Pete’s Eats, near the park’s north-western boundary, will always have a special place in my heart, as will the large beer garden of the Dolbadarn pub, framed by foliage and overlooked by the church. There is nowhere on the planet that I would rather be on a sunny day. And, of course, when night falls, the stars really are quite something.



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