Dolbadarn Castle

About this place

One tower, and nothing much else. That is all that remains of Dolbadarn, but it is a tower raised by a Welsh prince rather than an English king, and that is the whole point. In the 1220s or 1230s Llywelyn the Great, one of the most powerful Welsh rulers before the conquest, planted this round stone keep on a wooded knoll between the lakes of Padarn and Peris at the mouth of the Llanberis Pass, to watch the road between Caernarfon and the Conwy valley. It stands roughly 14 metres tall and is reckoned the finest surviving Welsh round tower, which makes it a genuine rarity among the great English-built castles of the north. The tower's story is harsher than its stones. Historians believe Llywelyn the Last held his own brother Owain prisoner here from 1255 until he released him in 1277, twenty-two years; a contemporary poem describes a captive 'in a round tower' that is thought to be this one. Edward I took the castle in 1284, a year after Wales fell, and the English did not bother to keep it up: they carried off some of its timbers for the vast building site at Caernarfon. It sat in ruin until the Romantic painters found it, most famously Turner, whose brooding 1800 canvas belongs to the Royal Academy in London. Today it is free and unfenced: Cadw looks after the site and it is open all year in daylight hours. From the pay-and-display car park on the A4086 you follow a muddy farm track that steepens at the knoll, ten to twenty-five minutes depending on where you leave the car, then stone steps with a handrail to the doorway. Inside, a modern stair takes you to the top, and the reward is the view rather than the ruin: both lakes, the pass behind you, and the towering purple terraces of the Dinorwig slate quarry across the water. Half an hour at the castle is enough, a little longer on a clear day. Worth a day trip from the Snowdonia hub on its own? No. As part of half a day in Llanberis, without hesitation. The castle is a few minutes' drive or a quarter-hour walk from the high street and the Snowdon Mountain Railway station, about 30 minutes by car from Betws-y-Coed over the Llanberis Pass or 20 from Caernarfon. The path is no place for a pushchair, small children need a hand on the stairs, and in the wet North Wales winter the track turns slippery and daylight is short, so aim to be there before three. The National Slate Museum across the water is shut for a long redevelopment, but the Llanberis Lake Railway still runs a shortened service, and the quarry hillside itself fills in the other half of the story.