Top Snowdonia Art & Culture

Betws-y-Coed is Britain’s first artists’ colony, nestled at the entrance to Snowdonia National Park. On this self-guided walking tour, you’ll stroll down this village’s charming streets, riverside paths, and historic bridges to find out how this woodland paradise inspired generations of landscape painters. The tour starts at the historic Betws-y-Coed Railway Station. As you explore this picturesque settlement – meaning “prayer house in the woods“ – you’ll find out how painter David Cox established Britain’s first art colony here in 1844, forever changing the Welsh village’s fortunes. Other landscape artists, unable to travel to Europe during the Napoleonic Wars, soon discovered its dramatic beauty and, as railways brought Victorian tourists, the once-peaceful artist haven evolved into the gateway to Snowdonia we know today.

Snowdonia National Park has so much to explore, but this Snowdonia National Park Underground Adventure takes you underground to an old, abandoned slate mine for a unique experience. Plus, this adventure also has an optional, abseil, boat trip, and numerous climbs for those more daring travelers. A guide leads the way through it all to ensure safety and to tell a bit of history of the mine, too.