Industry or folly? Two and two make three.
This geocache pays homage to two 19th and 21st century follies and two towers representing British Industry at its greatest and its daftest. To complete the cache you will need to visit three places – a well lit but empty space, a monument and the cache. You are looking for a micro (ish). The co-ordinates are not for the cache but for the first clue.
The cache is placed along a public footpath that crosses the line between the towers of Penrhyn Castle, the 1848 Railway Tunnel on the Euston to Holyhead line and the grand old Oak trees at the head of the vacant Bryn Cegin Industrial Estate – you decide which are great industry, and which are pure folly!
The present Penrhyn Castle (now owned by the National Trust) was built for George Hay Dawkins-Pennant between 1822 and 1837. Dawkins-Pennant inherited the castle from his cousin Richard Pennant who made his fortune from Jamaican sugar cane and the Slate Quarry in near-by Bethesda. A series of caches follow the slate railway (now mainly a cycle track) from Penrhyn Port to the Quarry.
The smaller second tower is an air-shaft built above the Railway tunnel built in 1848 to link the mainline through the first of three hills that surround Bangor railway station. This railway is one of the great Victorian industrial creations – including two tubular Bridges built by Stevenson to cross the Conwy River and Menai Straits.
The second folly can be seen just to the west of the towers – why not park up and take a wander down the beautifully smooth road through the quiet Parc Bryn Cegin.
In February 2005, Gwynedd County Council granted planning permission for Parc Bryn Cegin. This then allowed funding for the project to be released — £4.9m from the erstwhile Welsh Development Agency (WDA) and a further £3.5m from the European Regional Development Fund through the Objective 1 Programme. Funded by the WDA, Gwynedd Archaeological Trust carried out excavations at the site in 2006 and 2007 to record details of several monuments of national importance including remains of structures and evidence of activity from the Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Romano-British and early Medieval periods. The infrastructure lies dormant; the 89 acre site remains unoccupied and forgotten by all except dog-walkers and skateboarders.
To find the cache:
- First you must find the well lit number at N53o 12.781 W 004o 06.305 - A
- Find the dates for George Pennant at the entrance to Penrhyn castle N53o 13.029 W 004o 06.060 BCDE-FGHI
- Use this information to find the cache... N53o B2.CA4 W 004 o 0E.F6H
There is plenty of roadside parking near both waypoints and it is possible to walk between them all safely using the small back road between Penrhyn Castle and the Industrial Estate.
Please take care along the main road.
The main cache site is not wheel chair accessible.