Dolbadarn Castle

Dolbadarn Castle stands on a rocky knoll above Llyn Padarn, a few minutes from the centre of Llanberis, and gives a mountain view for a walk that Cadw puts at 10 to 25 minutes from the car park. Llywelyn ab Iorwerth (Llywelyn the Great) most probably built it in the early thirteenth century specifically to hold the Llanberis Pass, the main historic route between the coast at Caernarfon and the Conwy valley. Llywelyn added the round keep and curtain walls after his son Dafydd married into the powerful Anglo-Norman de Braose family in 1230, a deliberate show of status built in a style borrowed from Norman military architecture. The keep, which Cadw gives as 15.2m high, is the castle’s defining feature.

Edward I’s forces occupied the castle in 1283, during his conquest of Wales, and timber taken from it was reportedly reused in building Caernarfon Castle. It later became a farmhouse before falling into ruin, and its picturesque decay attracted painters through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, J.M.W. Turner among them. Sir Michael Duff gave the castle to the state in 1941; Cadw now looks after it, and entry is free.

The pay-and-display car park is across the road, and Cadw describes the walk from wherever you park as 10 to 25 minutes along farm tracks that can be muddy, uneven and slippery, steepening towards the castle; the last few feet to the top of the keep are up a single ruinous staircase, so this is not a step-free visit. The reward is a near 360-degree view: Llyn Padarn directly below, the Llanberis Pass running south-east towards Yr Wyddfa, and the terraced scars of the old Dinorwig quarry across the water. It suits an hour in Llanberis before or after a hill, and anyone who wants the Pass laid out in front of them for almost no effort. Neither a wheelchair nor a pushchair will manage the approach, and the keep stair rules it out for anyone unsteady on steps. For a level lakeside alternative, the path along Llyn Padarn’s north shore needs no climbing at all.