A busy harbour town with a good range of shops and attractions, including nearby Portmeirion. You can’t keep narrow-gauge railway enthusiasts away. Porthmadog is a major hub, with no less than three lines – the Ffestiniog (running to Blaenau Ffestiniog), the Welsh Highland Railway (running all the way to Caernarfon) and the Welsh Highland Heritage Railway (with its excellent hands-on railway museum).
Trains were not the only mode of transport in Porthmadog’s history as an important hub based on the slate industry. The town’s Maritime Museum tells the story of the town’s rapid 19th-century growth into a thriving slate exporting and shipbuilding port for handsome three-masted schooners known as Western Ocean Yachts. Porthmadog’s best-loved landmark is The Cob, a mile-long embankment across the estuary that shaped the destiny of the town.After your morning in Porthmadog, you will head towards Porthmadog train station in time for the 15:25pm train. The Ffestiniog Railway is the world’s oldest narrow gauge railway with almost 200 years of history, taking you on a 13½-mile journey from the harbour in Porthmadog to the slate-quarrying town of Blaenau Ffestiniog. The historic trains climb over 700 feet from sea level into the mountains through tranquil pastures and magnificent forests, past lakes and waterfalls, round tight bends (even a complete spiral) clinging to the side of the mountain or tunnelling through it. Your executive coach & driver will be ready and waiting to collect you in Ffestiniog before we make the journey back to the West Midlands.