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About Gwydyr Forest | About Llyn Geirionydd
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We’ve walked Gwydyr Forest a few times now, and each time we find more beautiful routes, amazing forest paths and stunning lakes. We decided to head further into the northeast of the forest than we have previously explored and found much more of the same. Which is to say, still stunning and definitely worth it.
We started in Betws Y Coed and headed up the main road before crossing the popular bridge over the River Lugg. Once here, we joined onto the Snowdonia slate trail path. This runs alongside the river. It is a path at height, on a wooden platform and is unusual as parts of the walkway even fork around trees. Once off the walkway, the path is clear until you come to an open area. Here, a couple of paths go up into the forest but the one we want to follow is slightly hidden behind a rocky outcrop to the left. Once you move behind the rocks, there is a little gate that leads up, over a flat field and runs very close to the river. Leaving the field, we came to a few steps up to another gate where the steps run back down. However, we stay on the paved pathway, still running parallel to the river.
From here we followed the Snowdonia Slate trail along and up to a small forest road, there were a few cars on here so we had to take care but there was enough room for them to pass easily. This a road through the woodland at height and it is easy to make good progress. As we reached the point where the slate trail turns left towards Swallow falls, we continued on the road. It gets much steeper here and the road starts winding up the hill. This took a bit longer to get up and there is a T junction at the end. We turned right here and followed another road along. There are some nice views at this point as the trees behind have dropped away and you get a panoramic view. Further up this road we reach a path.
Upon turning left onto this path, we found it was used as a mountain bike route! We only ran into two bikers, and we stepped off the path in good time to allow them to fly past, but if you are nervous about this, take the left-hand turn at the road you past previous and that would avoid this part. Once we had made it past the bike trail it was onto a nice wide forest walk, and again thanks to the height we got some good views of distant mountains. We followed this path sweeping past our first lake, a small body of water that runs alongside the path for a short while.
Not much further round and we found ourselves dropping down to a little hidden path to the left. How glad we were that we chose this path, as the next body of water was so beautiful that we decided to sit here and have lunch. While we sat there, we could see a heron across the far side of the lake stalking fish, and upon closer inspection, we saw many small fish right in front of us (I popped the go-pro in to take a look below the surface, so check out the video below).
Moving on from here we arrived at a farm, and after some rough navigation found the Sa, Helen path, this one took us over the brow of a hill and gave us the view of the day. Llyn Geirionydd in all its glory on a sunny day. Luckily, we got to follow the path all the way down with this view in front of us. Once at the bottom, we follow a good path to the far end of the lake, before swinging around to the other side. The path here is much rougher and at the section where the hillside slides out towards the lake, we found a small technical scramble, made difficult by some damp roots.
Once over this, the path returns to normal and we soon made our way around the lake with the sun blazing in our eyes. Yes, the sun was surprisingly bright for a mid-November day. Once we had rounded the lake, we headed onto a small road. This leads us back to the lanes we walked to get here. The rest of the route back was following these lanes back down to the slate trail, and then taking that back to Betws Y Coed. We know we have much more exploring to do in this forest, and although a large amount of this walk was on lanes, the view of the lake as we came over the hill was stunning.
