Northern Waterfalls 2009

A ridiculous number of waterfalls, including many of the tallest in Wales.

These are the results of epic weekend trips to North and Mid Wales, trying to locate and catalogue the main waterfalls in those areas. Given how many there are to choose from (like in South Wales), there has to be a cutoff. The (not always followed) approach to selecting sites was to see if the waterfall was marked on both the 1:25'000 and 1:50'000 maps, and had either a name or a tourist attraction symbol on any scale of map. Also, any particularly tall, or personally recommended waterfalls were included. Note that these galleries do not include all of the waterfalls, as there are many that were already covered in various other galleries, such as Snowdonia 2007, Wales 2008, Snowdonia 2009 and Pumlumon 2009.

These trips required a lot of driving - far too much. Don't try doing it this way, take your time, pick a place to visit, and go there. Mid and North Wales are full of OAPs, farmers, 4x4 drivers and tourists. Generally, they drive well enough, but have no concept of speed. All like to belong in the Under-50's-Club - that is; they drive under 50 MPH, typically closer to 40 on the 60 MPH A roads, and once slowed down by a sharper bend (or a squirrel), they forget to speed back up again. The records were 25 and 23 MPH. The roads curve too much to allow much overtaking, and there are no dual carriageways, so there are always long tails behind the slowest drivers. To achieve the times needed for these trips, I was using back roads and obscure B roads to bypass slower drivers, and setting out as early as 06:30 to get a few hours of clearer roads. Driving beyond the speed limit is never a good idea, as they have major campaigns to catch speeding drivers.

I must also mention my sincere thanks to the farmers and landowners who granted access over their land, and whose local knowledge helped locate some of the less known waterfalls.