Welsh Visit

be natural® visited Wales recently and of course the National Slate Museum of Llanberis was a stop we couldn´t miss.

Between films telling the story of the slate industry in North Wales, the Slate Splitting demonstration, the Quarrymen´s houses and the largest Waterwheel in Britain, the visit was fantastic. Be sure you go to the boutique, they have plenty of slate books and slate decorations.

The buildings where the Museum is today once housed the industrial engineering workshops for the former Dinorwing slate quarry which at its height employed over 3,000 men.

Not only the slate museum but all North-West Wales «smells» natural slate. The remains of the industry, the quarries and mines themselves, the transport networks, the towns and villages are all remarkably well preserved.

Slates from Wales once went to roof the world. By the late nineteenth century as many as a third of all roofing slates produced worldwide came from Wales !

Of course, the industry and the people have changed and adapted over the years but the indelible stamp of SLATE is still everywhere.

Today the WELSH SLATE company is keeping the identity of the area by extracting slates from 3 different quarries (recently opened the 3rd one) and exporting all over the globe a little bit of Wales and his slate history.

Thank you to Michael, John, the people of the Slate Museum and David Gwyn for his fantstic book.

Llechi Cymru