Blaenau Ffestiniog: A Canadian YouTuber’s Love Letter to a Welsh Town

A Canadian photographer and YouTuber says he has fallen in love with the “other” beauty of a former slate town in North Wales.

Kyle McDougall has previously photographed the great lakes and forests of his native Ontario and the small towns of the American Southwest, but said it was Blaenau Ffestiniog that captured his heart.

“When I first went through the mountains, it was just that connection and it was basically falling in love with the scenery,” he said.

“There’s this raw and pure wilderness in the North Wales landscape that I absolutely love…I was hooked straight away.”

It’s far from the first accolade for the city that was once called the slate capital of the world.

Nestled among the Moelwynion Mountains, it is one of six distinct areas in the slate landscape of north-west Wales, joining the Pyramids of Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India and the Grand Canyon in 2021. UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The town, with rows of old diggers’ thatched cottages, grew up around the development of slate mining during the 19th century.

“The landscape was almost in some areas built by industry,” said Kyle, who shares his photos of the area on YouTube with his 136,000 subscribers.

“You have these mountains of slate and these piles of slag and it’s just like nothing I’ve ever been to.

“It’s an incredible wilderness that feels remote and open and it’s beautiful — and then you combine that with these great signs of history that really weren’t that long ago.”

Kyle and his wife moved from Ontario to England in 2020 to be closer to his wife’s family.

Soon after moving to Reading he realized that the UK had a lot to offer the landscape photographer.

“There’s a lot in a much smaller land area than Canada,” he said.

“There was a novelty to things being so close and the landscape changing so quickly, so it was quite exciting for me to be able to drive to somewhere like North Wales within five hours and the landscape is there. Very different from where I live in England.”

He had already visited Scotland, the Lake District and parts of South Wales but it was North Wales that impressed him the most.

He has constantly returned to Blaenau Ffestiniog, in the heart of Eryri, as it is called. Snowdonia National Park.

“The first time I walked into a Denver wig mine, I was like, ‘This is another world, it’s absolutely amazing here,'” he said.

After his first visit to the area in 2022, he was so impressed by the strange beauty of the area that he decided to start a new photography project.

Slate City explores the landscape and legacy of the region’s slate industry.

He has spent time exploring and photographing the area’s trails and piles of slate, its old mine sites and hills made of abandoned machinery.

“I think it’s endless,” he said.

Far from putting him off, he said the wet Welsh weather was part of the area’s appeal for a photographer.

“You never know what you’re going to get and it can change several times a day and a scene can completely change within five minutes and become something special,” he said. said

“The weather is a big draw for me there.”

On a wet and foggy day he admitted that the bluish-gray slaty outcrops of Blaenau Festeneug might seem desolate to some.

“It can feel a bit harsh and sometimes dark, but to me beautiful wilderness comes in many different forms,” ​​he said.

“Every now and then you find these places that just kind of inspire you and just intrigue you.”