Forest of Gold and Kings by Kath Norgrove

The walk was nearly over before it began. The forecast was for cloudy weather, but it was chucking it down with rain, so I felt soggy from the beginning. The 9,000-acre Coed y Brenin Forest Park is situated around the valleys of the Mawddach, Eden, Gain, and Wen rivers. To the east is the wild and lonely Rhobell Fawr, an extinct volcano in the Meirionnydd Mountains, and to the west are the rugged Rhinog Mountains.

This was once part of the historic Nannau estate founded by Cadwgan ap Bleddyn, Prince of Powys, in 1100 AD. The forestry commission brought it in 1920 and renamed it to Coed-y-Brenin (The King's Wood) for the Silver Jubilee of King George V in 1935. It became a Forest Park in the 1990s because of its outstanding walking and recreational opportunities. Today, Natural Resources Wales looks after the forest for people, wildlife and timber production.

The broad gravelled track north from the car park was through Douglas Fir woodland carpeted with ferns, leaves and broken branches to our right and Birch to our left, some of the earliest original forest. Beyond that was the raging Afon Mawddach. We had heard that birdlife was rich and varied, but we'd so far heard no bird song and hoped it wouldn't be this quiet for the entire walk. A substantial footbridge, Pont Cae'n y Coed, was to our left where we could see the river rolling down some rapids.

To get to a smaller, second footbridge a bit further on, we passed a rocky slate outcrop on our right, strewn with mosses and ferns, and just after that turned left and dropped to the footbridge over the river. There were some great views of the river and some lower level waterfalls crashing over rocks. In the sky, there was a slight streak of yellow as the sun made an attempt to break through the cloud. After a short break, we returned to the main track and continued up through the woodland. We reached a short meander in the river. In the nook of the meander were the overgrown remains of an old gold processing mill. 

In 1864, gold was found in a mine, not now visible, which had previously been worked for lead. Prospectors headed to North Wales hoping to dig their way to a fortune. They dug hundreds of horizontal mine tunnels through the rock by hand into the surrounding hills, looking for the gold-rich white quartz rock seam. It was a bit like holes in Swiss cheese, trying to find the one that contained the gold. Welsh gold is incredibly rare but has been mined since at least the Bronze Age. An analogy for this was finding gold in most mines around the world was like finding the cream in a sponge cake, whereas finding Welsh gold is like finding a sixpence in an extremely large Christmas cake. There was no pattern of logic, so you never knew when you could be inches away.

In its peak (in 1888) the area produced 9,000 ounces or about 255 kilograms of gold which would be worth up to £17 million today. The quantity of gold found was never predictable, and only 200 ounces or 5.6 kilograms was produced in 1890. In 1893 gold from here was used to make the wedding ring of Princess Mary of Teck (later Queen Mary) for her marriage to Prince George, Duke of York (later King George V, great-grandfather of our current monarch). In the end, though, it was not very profitable and only a small quantity of gold was extracted. However, the Gwynfyndd Goldmine continued production on a much smaller scale for the next hundred years, finally closing in only 1999.

More yellow brown and orange brown leaves fell from the trees as we crunched through those laying on the ground. Slate exposures were on our right-hand side with ferns, mosses, lichens and grasses growing from them. Small rivulets and waterfalls cascaded down the side of the slate, joining a small stream that went on to join the river below us. From here, we could hear and see the waterfalls that we were heading for.

The dramatic Rhaeadr Mawddach Waterfall was impressive with two concurrent flows created out of the rocks, which looked like it is now used for renewable energy. Due to strong currents, deep water and the danger of falling rocks, access to view the waterfall was difficult.

We stopped for lunch between the two waterfalls near the ruins of the Gwynfyndd Goldmine situated at the foot of the falls, which produced 95% of the gold found in the area. A sturdy building beyond the tunnel was the strong room where the gold was kept before being taken along the tramway up to the mill we'd not long passed for processing. Traces of the tramway can still be seen. The rusty door came from the old town jail in Dolgellau, which was closed in 1878. When the penal reformer John Howard visited the jail in 1774, he commented about how filthy it was. In 1788 inmates petitioned about the maggots and "nasty filth" in the water which came from the river Aran where sheep skins were washed. 

 After lunch, we walked across the footbridge just below the equally impressive Pistyll Cain Waterfall. With the river to our left, we proceeded down the track heading back to Tyddyn Gwladys where we'd started from. To our right was a large rock wall covered in green and brown slime with a constant cascade of water from mosses and ferns and all sorts of vegetation above collecting in a small stream, to the side of the path. Looking more closely, the very beautiful wall was all sorts of colours, from snotty purples and blacks to dark and light greens. We followed the forest track south along the river in a steep sided valley surrounded by mature forests.

We finally reached Pont Cae'n y Coed again. Named after a nearby smallholding, it translates to "field in the woods." Once a temporary Bailey bridge stood here to take out timber from the other side of the Afon Mawddach. These days, the new bridge serves as an essential connection for mountain bikers and walkers. It is also the starting point for the challenging 11km Volcano Trail. The trail's name comes from the fact that it crosses the location of Rhobell Fawr's old magma chamber. From its highest point, Moel Hafod Owen, you can see all the way to Cader Idris. For us, it was just following the path over the footbridge turning right with our right-hand side to the river and once we started hearing the sound of motorbikes we knew we were nearly back at the car park.

Gold Processing Mill