Category: Wales

Added a few new images from an early morning walk around the old industrial, quarrying town of Trefor. A granite quarry was established here in 1850 and a narrow gauge railway used to bring the rocks to the coast for shipment. Not much remains of industry today.

For more of these coastal path images head here –

https://worldly.wales/2018/07/27/the-wales-coastal-path/

Whistling Sands is a beach spot in a place known as Porthor, in N Wales. (Note – video might take time to load).

The phenomenon of whistling sands occurs at a few locations around the world and is not fully understood. Basically what happens is that movement of the sand grains against one another causes a noise. The movement may be induced by wind, or by gentle kicking. The noise seems to require spherical sand particles with a consistent size, and at Porthor is easily generated by either mechanism. The sound here is rather more of a squeak than a whistling, or at least it was when I visited. Aside from the noisy sand this is a quiet undeveloped place with wonderful natural scenery and wildlife – the gannets were furiously diving for the plentiful fish.

The reddish tone of the rocks is an indication of the local jasper mining for which the area was once famous.