Click on the image for licensing terms
The Snowdonia National Park in North Wales is renowned as an area of outstanding natural beauty, with dramatic mountains, hidden valleys, forests, waterfalls and a beautiful coastline.
But Snowdonia is also very much a man-made landscape, sculpted over the centuries by generations of farmers, miners and builders, whose efforts are still very much in evidence across the park.
Any maybe nowhere more so that at the lower end of the magnificent Nant Ffrancon valley, heavily mined for slate in times gone by, with huge piles of spoil to testify to the riches extracted from this area.
But another, gentler, mark that man has left on this landscape are the miles and miles of drystones walls that criss-cross Snowdonia's mountains and valleys, some regularly repaired and some left to decay.
This particular drystone wall, just away from the path leading into the Nant Ffrancon valley, had definitely seen better days, but although its function of restraining livestock had come to an end the rugged, decaying and weatherbeaten slabs of slate made for an evocative image, typical of Snowdonia.
I wonder how many centuries this wall had been standing for, and how many more before all trace of it passes away.
Filename - snowdonia drystone wall 01
Lens - 24-105mm zoom @ 47mm
Exposure - 1/5 sec @ f11, ISO100
Filters - Polarising filter used to enhance colours.
Location - Nant Ffrancon, Snowdonia, North Wales
Image enhancements - Adobe Lightroom
Comments - Tripod, remote release and mirror lockup used to prevent camera movement.
All content copyright © Howard Litherland 2009-2026 unless otherwise stated.