Criccieth to Caernarfon Great British Railway Journeys

For Edwardian Britons, a Bradshaw's was an indispensable guide

to a railway network at its peak.

I'm using an early 20th-century edition

to navigate a vibrant and optimistic Britain

at the height of its power and influence in the world.

But a nation wrestling with political,

social and industrial unrest at home.

As I conclude my journey in Wales, I fulfil a personal ambition -

visiting the home of one of my political heroes,

the only Welsh Prime Minister we've had, David Lloyd George.

Before the First World War, he pushed through economic,

social and constitutional change as a liberal.

He applied his inexhaustible energy to winning that war,

emerging as the nation's leader in victory.

Yet, when peace came, he led a coalition

that was mainly Conservative, plunging the Liberals into

a wilderness from which they have yet to emerge 100 years later.

My journey started in East Yorkshire

and went on to the city of York.

I tracked inland across the industrial heartlands

of West and South Yorkshire and Merseyside.

I explored Edwardian Liverpool

and made my way along the North Wales coast,

so as to finish in Caernarfon.

I begin the last leg of my journey in picturesque Snowdonia,

taking advantage of its splendid heritage railways,

to make my way to the hometown of David Lloyd George.

I'll strike north to Penrhyn Slate Quarry

and then west to finish my journey in Caernarfon's imposing castle.

Today, I follow in the footsteps of Edwardian climbers...

We've made it! Good stuff.

-And a great view.

-Yeah, stunning.

..meet a descendant of a great British Prime Minister...

How would you assess Lloyd George's role in winning World War I?

Victory was his goal, not glory.

..and after the Flying Scotsman, watch out for a flying Englishman.

Oh, my goodness! Oh, so close to the ground!

My train is running along the valley of the River Conwy

towards Betws-y-Coed, which my Bradshaw's describes as,

"One of the most, if not THE most charming spot in North Wales."

It offers a combination of rock and mountains, valley and river.

People come for the exhilarating air and the delightful scenery,

and Snowdon may be ascended.

It seems that a Welsh solicitor on his way to 10 Downing Street

was not the only one to see the opportunity

to climb out of the valleys.

Very well, enjoying the scenery so much.

-Oh, it's beautiful, isn't it?

-Yeah.

At the time of my Bradshaw's,

this railway line served both the slate industry and tourists.

And my visit to this charming, exhilarating place

begins with one of the prettiest railway stations I've ever seen.

Betws-y-Coed means "prayer house in the wood",

but the town certainly has a bucolic quality.

One establishment here would have welcomed guests

at the time of my Bradshaw's

and it seems to have an interesting history.

Nick Pullee is owner and manager of the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel.

-Hello!

-Hello there!

Hello, how are you? Nice to meet you.

-Very good to see you.

-How's things?

I saw the sign outside says, "The home of British mountaineering."

-How so?

-From the very earliest days of the Victorians

coming out here to explore and climb in this area,

along with those people came some folks

that later went on to become quite famous,

climbing some of the larger peaks in the Alps and around the world -

Winthrop Young, in particular.

The journalist and poet Geoffrey Winthrop Young

created a mountaineering community here by organising climbing parties

between 1903 and the 1930s.

Despite losing a leg during the First World War, he pressed on,

using his training in Snowdonia to prepare for great climbs,

including the Matterhorn.

I always think of British mountains as being rather puny

but they are useful, are they, to practise?

They are. Very, very useful, actually.

I mean, if you came back here midwinter,

you can find gullies and ravines,

exactly like there are in the Himalayas, covered in snow and ice.

In 1953, a team of climbers who had trained in Snowdonia

made their way to the Himalayas,

among them were Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay,

the first two men to reach Mount Everest's summit

and to return to tell the tale.

A lot of the history and all the first ascents and everything

have been very handily put down in this lovely old book.

We've had that here, even before our family were here in the '40s.

It goes right back to 1850.

And this is the day that Everest was climbed, in '53.

It's a lovely thing, this.

There's a little illustration of Everest and a Union Jack!

"The news reached Pen-y-Gwryd

"at four minutes past one on Coronation Day that

"Everest had been climbed by Hillary, the New Zealander and Tenzing.

"We celebrated this wonderful occasion in the PYG,

"the Pen-y-Gwryd Manor."

Oh, and here, photographs of the entire team, yeah?

That's right, they all came to stay here and train here.

And they continued to come, having climbed the mountain.

So your grandfather knew all these people then, did he?

Yeah, very much, they were good friends.

I mean, I remember them myself when I was younger.

Certainly Tenzing giving us piggy-backs up and down the stairs.

And so this book lives in the pub?

Under lock and key.

It's part of the foundation and history of the building,

-so it has to stay here, yeah.

-Beautiful.

I don't expect ever to climb Everest,

but I want a taste of what Winthrop Young,

Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing experienced.

Climbing instructor David Rudkin has agreed to take me on

some of the easier routes that Snowdonia has to offer.

Just over the clearing cloud is Snowdon,

the highest mountain in Wales.

How much of it can we not see at the moment?

It's just the last couple of hundred metres, really,

-that's not quite showing.

-Beautiful valley.

So, this is where we're going to start the scrambling from, Michael,

so we'll pop our helmets on here as it just gets a little bit steeper.

-We're going up that thing, are we?

-That's it.

So, we're just following this line of big footholds

-straight up.

-OK.

Doesn't look too bad so far.

Yeah, that's it, placing your boots there.

That's spot on, Michael.

-Happy with progress?

-Yeah, really good.

That's a good one just there.

-Good.

-Great.

One big step here, so you've got to place your foot up.

Oh, I've got you. We've made it!

Good stuff. It's like a staircase, really.

-Yeah.

-And you call this scrambling?

Is that a recognised activity, then?

-Absolutely, yeah.

-Uh-huh.

So, this is where you are often just ascending

those steeper parts of the mountain,

where you are going to use your hands a little bit more.

Spot on, great.

-Are you quite a fraternity, you climbers?

-Yeah, definitely.

It's a real sort of bond you get with the friends that you climb with

and you're certainly used to looking after each other.

-And one last one to the top.

-A nice big step at the end.

Made it again. And a great view.

Where have you climbed, David?

I've climbed all over the world, actually,

in some of the mountains in the Alps, in the Himalayas,

like Pakistan and Kyrgyzstan.

Well, I'm a city man myself,

but I do see the point of scrambling

-when you end up looking at that.

-Yeah, that's it.

A fantastic view, eh? Stunning.

I'm bound now for Criccieth.

For the first leg of my journey,

I have the pleasure of travelling powered by steam.

I last travelled on the Ffestiniog Heritage Railway

seven years ago and I have very fond memories of it.

The line was built to take the slate down to Porthmadog.

And this locomotive is very exceptional.

It's called a Double Fairlie.

It's like a mirror image of itself.

And today, guess what?

My locomotive is named David Lloyd George.

It's a good omen, as he is the very object

of an excursion that is special to me.

I'm making my way by degrees towards Criccieth,

which Bradshaw's tells me is situated overlooking Cardigan Bay.

"A high conical rock with an old castle juts out

"and divides the sea frontage.

"Modern terraces and villas are built east and west of the castle."

Was it something about this place that made David Lloyd George,

in his own words, "wage implacable war against poverty and squalidness"?

-Thank you.

-Thank you very much.

I've forgotten how spectacular it is.

-It's superb, isn't it?

-Oh, it's wonderful.

-Thank you. Bye-bye.

-Thank you. Goodbye, Michael.

Bye-bye!

I'm swapping narrow gauge for standard gauge at Minffordd.

Before arriving at Criccieth, the railway hugs the coast,

giving me a chance to catch a glimpse of its beautiful castle.

My destination lies a couple of miles west of Criccieth,

in Llanystumdwy, where David Lloyd George grew up.

I'm excited to be meeting one of his descendants, Benji Kerry Evans.

-Hello, Benji, I'm Michael.

-Michael, lovely to meet you.

-Welcome to the Lloyd George Museum.

-Thank you very much indeed.

And there we have a bust of David Lloyd George, the great man.

-What relation was he to you?

-He was my grandfather.

And did you know him?

Well, yes, I did know him up till about 17 or 18,

-when I joined the services.

-What are your memories of him?

Well, he was a dramatic personality.

Charismatic, fabulous man.

I've never met anybody like him.

-Extraordinary.

-What in particular?

Well, his memory. He never seemed to forget a book that he read.

Did he have affection for you as his grandson?

Well, yes, he was very good with...

He always wanted to know what we were doing in school,

and since I wasn't doing very well

it was rather a disappointment for me!

David Lloyd George was born in Manchester

under the name David George and was one year old

when his father died and he moved to this village.

Benji, I've often thought about seeing this house.

This is where Lloyd George grew up.

His mother moved the family to this house to live with his uncle

Richard Lloyd, a staunch liberal,

whose influence was such that David would add Lloyd to his surname.

So here we are in the childhood home of Lloyd George,

and it is quite a comfortable place.

I'm wondering, where do you think

his great interest in social justice came from?

Well, this was an industrial area in those days.

The Ffestiniog quarries were slating the roots of the world

and I think that's where he got his social justice,

all the hardship of the quarrymen.

And the Lloyd Georges spoke Welsh at home, did they?

Yes. Absolutely. Yes, first language.

So, for David Lloyd George, English was the second language?

Yes. Yes, definitely.

Remarkable thought.

Equipped with a brilliant mind,

Lloyd George was elected Liberal MP for Caernarfon at the age of 27.

He became Chancellor of the Exchequer in 1908.

Two years into the Great War,

he became Secretary of State for War and, within months, Prime Minister.

How would you assess his role in winning World War I?

Oh, it was absolute.

Victory was his goal,

not glory. He never took credit for anything.

He said, "Oh, no, no, no, I didn't win the war.

"Three things won the war - the blockade, the women,

"and the remarkable courage of the British troops.

"That's what won the war."

He was what they call a people's Prime Minister.

He wanted to do it right by the people.

In his own words, Lloyd George saw his task as making Britain

a country fit for heroes to live in.

He's buried in the village in which he grew up.

Here lies David Lloyd George.

You may be surprised that he's a hero of mine

since his politics and mine were very different.

He was personally responsible for social reform,

for waging the Great War, for writing the peace.

A statesmen carries to his grave all his successes and all his failures.

The important thing is to make a difference.

He did.

It's a new day in the mountains of North Wales.

Under this beautiful landscape

lies some of the highest quality slate in the world.

20 miles north of Llanystumdwy, I'll find the Penrhyn Slate Quarry.

At the turn of the 20th century, it was a vast operation,

with a main pit nearly one mile long and over 1,000 feet deep.

News here of a highly acrimonious industrial dispute -

a lock-out at the Penrhyn Slate Quarries.

The Wrexham Advertiser of the 1st of December, 1900

reports that work is completely at a standstill.

Men have left for South Wales in search of work.

It's not known how long it will last, some say for months,

others say it will be permanent.

I'm headed to the quarry myself now

to find out what caused such a deep rift in the valleys.

The historian David Gwynn can tell me all about it.

David, I find it hard to grasp the scale of Penrhyn Quarry.

What was it like in its heyday?

Well, 117 years ago, it was much the biggest slate quarry in the world.

Huge employer. But it had become a bit of a dinosaur,

still working on methods that would have been recognised by quarrymen

who'd been there in the middle of the 19th century.

Conditions were hard,

and serious accidents and fatalities were common.

The quarry's owner, Lord Penrhyn, and his English manager,

were determined to prevent their workforce from becoming unionised.

What was it that caused the lock-out, do you think?

Fundamentally, I think we would have to say that

it was a conflict of two social visions.

The conservative Anglican forces represented by

Emilius Alexander Young, the quarry manager,

an Englishman who literally found it impossible

to speak to his workforce, who were Welsh in speech,

radical in their politics and dissenting in religion.

In November 1900,

2,800 workers walked out over pay and union recognition.

Young and Lord Penrhyn retaliated by locking them out.

Although the dispute officially lasted three years,

making it the longest in British industrial history,

some workers returned before 1903.

As men are drifting back to work,

this must be divisive in the community.

Very much so. The divisions persist to this day.

It really divided friends and families in a very serious way.

By the end of the strike, both parties were weakened

and a depression had hit the building industry,

so that demand for roofing slate declined.

The North Wales slate industry would never recover...

..and the region would have to reinvent itself.

Modern Wales is full of surprises, new uses for old places.

In this quarry, which once roofed Britain,

which produced so much slate and wealth,

but also toil and sweat and bitterness, there's now a zip line

and supposedly the fastest in the world.

This is the little zip wire, but you're bypassing that

-and going straight to the big one.

-Is this a good idea?

-Yes.

THEY LAUGH

We are around 1,500 feet above the base of the quarry

and somehow it feels like I'm about to meet my maker.

The test weights have just zoomed off down the wire,

accelerating at a terrifying pace,

and, in a moment, becoming just dots in the distance.

OK.

There are times when you just have to trust strangers

and follow their orders...

I'm just going to pull the harness down

and then, if you relax into the harness...

..and this is clearly such an occasion.

Bring your arms back for me.

They'll just tuck in, just down the side there.

-How's that?

-That's not bad.

There you go, enjoy.

I'm trussed up like an oven-ready chicken

and just about as powerless.

It's such a lovely view, it's a shame to spoil it

-by being scared to death.

-OK, Michael, are we ready?

Oh, I'm ready.

-Are we steady?

-Steady.

-Holding on.

-Three, two, one.

Oh, my goodness! Oh, so close to the ground!

Nought to 60 in less than ten seconds!

Accelerating over the quarry.

Oh!

I'm flying!

-Yeah!

-Yay!

-Lovely.

-How was it?

-Oh, exhilarating.

Fantastic. Nice and fast.

Can you let go for me? And I'll come up and get you down.

The chicken has landed!

That was completely exhilarating.

Very fast.

-Let's go again.

-Excellent!

I'll continue at a rather more sedate pace

aboard a heritage train that was built

to transport slate to the coast.

I'm boarding at Waunfawr.

I'm back in the lap of luxury,

perhaps appropriately because today my mind is on princely matters.

I remember the investiture of Prince Charles

as the Prince of Wales back in 1969.

The ceremony was full of pomp and circumstance,

but also intimacy between the monarch and her son.

I'm on the Welsh Highland Railway, headed for Caernarfon,

in whose castle the royal event took place.

-Hello, may I join you a moment?

-Of course. My pleasure.

How are you enjoying the ride?

Very much so, it's my birthday today.

Ah, well done. And that's why you've come on the railway, is it?

It is. We know the area very well.

We've done the Blaenau in the other direction.

This is quite an extensive network, isn't it?

Between the Ffestiniog and this one.

Well, I think, if you put the two together,

it's the longest combined network in the country, I think.

-You would know!

-Well, I believe it is, yes.

And there's just something so magical about these tiny trains

that were built for dusty, horrible, hard work.

And now we sit here on comfy chairs,

drinking coffee and enjoying the surroundings. It's paradise.

Situated on the banks of the Menai Strait,

Caernarfon was an important harbour for the slate industry

in Victorian and Edwardian times.

Then, as now, the town was dominated by its impressive fortress.

Wales is, of course, famous for its grand castles.

But can any claim to be finer than Caernarfon?

Tour guide Sue Kirk is introducing me to its royal connections.

-Hello, Michael.

-Hello, Sue.

Prynhawn da. Croesawch y castell yn Caernarfon.

Thank you very much, that means

-"welcome to the castle at Caernarfon", I think.

-It does.

And what a spectacular space. Sue, I watched on television

the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales.

What do you think was the impact on Caernarfon?

Well, I think that the impact was positive in many respects,

in that it put Caernarfon on the map internationally

with the TV coverage.

However, 95% of the local population here speak Welsh

as their first language and it does rouse deep passion.

Having an English prince crowned in the Welshest town in Wales

was a little controversial with some people.

Controversy has haunted Caernarfon since the 13th century,

when English King Edward I built this fortress.

Legend has it that he also tried to woo the locals,

promising them a Welsh-born prince who did not speak English.

He brings his wife, the queen, here,

contrives to have his son born in Caernarfon.

A mere ten months after building work starts,

in the middle of what must have only been a building site,

he produces this newborn in front and says,

"There you are, here is your prince,

"born in Wales, and he can speak no English."

Speak no English because he speaks nothing at all.

He speaks nothing at all.

-And we've had Princes of Wales ever since.

-Pretty much.

No ceremonial accompanied

the investiture of Princes of Wales until 1911.

With the death of King Edward VII the previous year

and the accession of his son George V,

the title of Prince of Wales had fallen vacant.

His eldest son David, the future King Edward VIII,

was to take it on.

David Lloyd George, then the MP for Caernarfon,

took the opportunity to invent a tradition.

He appropriated this idea of having a big deal

royal ceremony in this ancient pile.

Caernarfon had grown from a medieval town of about 400

to a town of over 12,500 in less than 100 years.

It was a huge expansion for this area and people wanted to celebrate.

The investiture of the new Prince of Wales

celebrated the British Empire and Welsh industry.

The royal family and aristocracy attended,

along with a choir of 200 women clad in Welsh national costume.

I see what was in it for David Lloyd George,

who was the local Member of Parliament,

but were there broader interests here?

I think there were. On one level,

this was about celebrating Caernarfon in particular,

but Wales's success in the industrial context.

In South Wales, the coalfields were powering the world.

Here in North Wales, we were busy roofing the world.

There were also a lot of other things going on in Wales

at that time. With the industrialisation,

there were social, economic, political, and cultural divides

that were opening up. It seems that part of this ceremony

was to kind of unify all these different divisions in Wales

and try and, at the same time, celebrate and have that party.

During my journey across England and North Wales,

I've had a snapshot of a country that was undergoing change.

While King George V was investing a new Prince of Wales,

suffragettes were breaking windows and going on hunger strike in jail,

Ireland was headed for home rule and maybe civil war,

and the unions threatened to close down the railways,

the coal mines and the docks. It was not a quiet time.

When Britain emerged from the Great War,

women over the age of 30 got the vote,

Ireland fought bloodily for independence,

and a general strike loomed.

The World War had proved just an interval

in a continuing domestic agenda

and the Member of Parliament for Caernarfon was still in high office,

but now David Lloyd George was Prime Minister.