Wales
Cwm Idwal
The glacial bowl where Darwin found seashells in the rocks, beneath the Devil's Kitchen.
Charles Darwin came to this hollow in the mountains and found seashells in the rock. Cwm Idwal is a bowl scooped by ice, with a lake on its floor and a black cleft called Twll Du, the Devil's Kitchen, splitting the cliff at the back, and in 1954 it became the first National Nature Reserve in Wales.
The walk in from Ogwen takes minutes, and the circuit of Llyn Idwal is a path most people can manage, which is the valley's gift: a high mountain landscape without a summit to earn. The headwall rises in slabs and ledges, and above the reach of feral goats those ledges carry Snowdon lily, moss campion, alpine lady's mantle and purple saxifrage, arctic plants left behind when the ice went. A harder route climbs steeply towards Twll Du itself; the reserve's guidance is plain that the easier loop avoids it. Darwin's fossils of marine life, found in the rocks of this valley, were part of how he came to read the landscape. Down the road Bethesda is a slate town with a café worth the drive, and the Ogwen Snack Bar at the car park has fed climbers since 1953; leave the car in Bethesda and take the T10 bus up; the national park asks it, and the valley is better for it.
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors · Powered by Geoapify
Solo
The lake circuit at first light, then the steep path towards Twll Du if the legs and the weather allow, with a pasty from the snack bar on the way down.
Couple
A gentle loop of the lake in the evening light, the cliffs going pink, and supper in Bethesda.
Friends
Split the group: one half rounds the lake, the other climbs to the Devil's Kitchen, and everyone meets at the Ogwen Snack Bar.
- Cwm Idwal became the first National Nature Reserve in Wales in 1954, a glacial hollow with a lake held in its floor.
- Charles Darwin worked here in the first half of the nineteenth century and found the rocks around the valley held tiny fossils of sea creatures and marine plants.
- Above the lake the cleft of Twll Du, the Devil's Kitchen, splits the headwall, and the ledges beyond the reach of feral goats hold Snowdon lily, moss campion and purple saxifrage.
- The path round the lake is a circuit most walkers can manage, and an electric bus runs up from Bethesda so the valley can be reached without a car.
A pasty or a bacon roll from the Ogwen Snack Bar at the valley car park, in one family's hands since 1953 and part of the mountaineering history of the place.
Caffi Blas Lôn Las in Bethesda, the quarry town down the valley, for the proper meal after the walk.
Aberdare National Park
Kenya
Mist-soaked moorlands and waterfalls above a forest where leopards pass treetop lodges at night.
Abisko
Sweden
A rain-shadow valley whose famously clear Arctic sky draws the aurora hunters north.
Aconcagua Provincial Park
Argentina
The rooftop of the Americas at 6,961 metres, filling the sky above high-desert valleys.
Aiguille du Midi
France
A glass floor at 3,842 metres with nothing between your feet and a kilometre of granite.
Aberdaron
Wales
A church on the sand where pilgrims ate their last meal before the island crossing.
Abergavenny
Wales
A market town under three mountains that fills with food producers one weekend each September.
Aberystwyth
Wales
Starlings swirl under the pier at dusk, a cliff railway climbs, the national library watches.
Bala and Llyn Tegid
Wales
Wales's largest lake, an ice-age fish found nowhere else, and a drowned village upstream.