Fachwen to Brynrefail Footpath
31st July 2026 • Map and GPX Downloads
This map is a JPEG, 1810 x 1360 pixels and 1.1mb. You might want to save it to your device so you can look at it when you have no phone signal.
The map is quite an old one, published in 1901 by the Ordinance Survey. It's out of copyright and very detailed at 6" to a mile. I have drawn the route in Red, the closed part of the road to avoid is in Blue. Lots of historical interest, missing from modern maps, if you like that kind of thing.
Fachwen to Brynrefail GPX • To 'see' the route you'll have to load the GPX file into a map programme on your device, if you have one. If you have any issues you might try a right-click or long press to download the GPX track.
I recorded the route with my Garmin Fenix GPS watch on the 31st of July 2026, so should be fairly accurate and up-to-date.
The road to our home on Fachwen has been closed at one end to all traffic.
The road is closed at the bottom of our hill. To get to any house on Fachwen you now have to descend from the top of the hill near Dinorwig. This is for the whole of 2025 we believe.
About ½ way up Fachwen Hill you can still access the footpath that will take you to or from the Slate Quarry Hospital area.
There is no through access to people by car, bike or on foot. There is 24h security on the closed section so is very much 'off-limits'.
We now live on a cul-de-sac. Quite pleasant to have very little traffic really, nice and quiet most of the time. However - the extra travel time is very much of a pain, adds about 30 minutes of travelling to our day if we want to drive anywhere, even more if I want to ride the bike. The road at the top of the hill is narrow, very steep, full of pot-holes and can get very icy in winter 😵.
For people wanting to walk around Llyn Padarn there is a way to bypass the closed section. From Fachwen this path starts about 1km from the bottom of the hill on the tarmac section and leads nicely off-road to Brynrefail. The start of the path is massively sign-posted. It's possible to walk it either way of course, but we only encounter those who are curious about going down the hill.
The start of the path to Brynrefail.
The road, downhill, from here is a road to nowhere.
The path is a well established historical route used for well-over a 100 years. It was a pack-horse path before the lower part of the road and the slate quarries even existed. Not too tricky on-foot today really, but there are many junctions where if you take the wrong one you risk not finding Brynrefail at all.
Elevation Profile : As you can see it is uphill for a few 100m, then downhill to Brynrefail.
Total distance of this path is about 1½ Km and at a gentle pace takes about 30 minutes. There is a good café in Brynrefail itself - 'Y Caban' you might want to visit.
This diversion seems to add about 800m to the route we'd normally use to walk around the lake. The total now is close to 9.5km.