Today’s walk began at Penrhyn Castle with the goal to walk to Tregarth. It was about 6.5 miles, mostly on paved trails — a shorter recovery day that we all appreciated!
Shortly after leaving Penrhyn Castle we reached Ogwen Trail, a paved trail and cycle route along the old railway line that was once used to bring slate down from Bethesda to Porth Penrhyn. This goes right into Bangor and I never knew it existed — I’ll certainly be returning here for other walks!
After crossing the old steam rail bridge and seeing the old horse-drawn rail bridge (above) — and finding an exciting geocache! — we came upon an area with quite a bit of wildlife, including swans, egrets, and some nearby jays.
After emerging at Porth Penrhyn we walked up Bangor’s High Street, stopping at Blue Sky Cafe for a tasty lunch. While in Bangor we also visited Bangor Cathedral. I’d been there before, but this time I learned about Robert Thompson, a woodworker who made many of the wood pieces in the cathedral — and included small mice (known as Thompson Mice) on his pieces. Children who find all of the mice in the cathedral are rewarded with a small toy mouse, and the cathedral docent decided to gift me with one. So the little mouse is going on my backpack to become a pilgrim mouse!
Heading out of Bangor, we walked up a footpath I’d never noticed before — it comes right off of High Street and winds up the hill into trees (and bluebells!) before going past the golf course. And then we turned and saw Snowdonia again over the fields south of Bangor.
We joined the same trail/cycle route that we had been on before, in fact quite near where we had joined it before but now going in the opposite direction, walking toward the slate mines instead of toward the port. It was an easy walk up to Tregarth and our B&B is just off the path!
This is the fourth of 12 daily blog posts I wrote as I walked the North Wales Pilgrim’s Way, May 13-24. I am publishing them after the fact but they reflect my thoughts as I completed each day’s walk.
Expat Linguist 
Looks beautiful! 🙂
I like the church mice.