Dinorwig Slate Quarry, Snowdonia

There are places that stop you before you've even raised the camera. Dinorwig is one of them.

I'd seen photographs of the quarry before I visited, but nothing quite prepares you for the scale of it. Perched high above Llyn Peris in the mountains of Snowdonia, Dinorwig is a landscape that has been torn apart and left to slowly reclaim itself. Miles of slate terraces cut into the mountainside. Roofless barracks stretching into the treeline. Flooded pits so vivid they look like something out of Iceland. And over all of it, that particular quality of Welsh mountain light — restless, dramatic, never the same for two minutes together.

I visited in late autumn, which turned out to be exactly the right time. The woodland that has grown back through the lower quarry levels was in full colour — deep amber and copper oak, golden birch — and the contrast between that warmth and the cold blue-grey of the slate was extraordinary. The light that day shifted constantly. One moment the whole valley would flatten under heavy cloud; the next, shafts of sunlight would break through and light up patches of the hillside like a spotlight moving across a stage. You spend a lot of time on a quarry like this just watching and waiting.

Getting around Dinorwig takes longer than you might expect. The terraced levels don't connect easily, and some of the most interesting corners — the Anglesey Barracks, the flooded pits, the old tunnel entrances — require a bit of picking your way through the slate debris. It's worth it. Around every corner there's something that makes you stop: a waterfall appearing from nowhere out of a tunnel mouth, a wild goat picking its way through the ruins with complete indifference, a stencilled image of the quarry's workers ghosted onto a slate wall somewhere in the lower workings.

What strikes you most, though, is the view. From the upper terraces you can see the entire Llanberis valley spread out below — Llyn Padarn, Dolbadarn Castle sitting on its wooded hillside, the Snowdon massif rising behind it all. On the day I was there, mist was rolling in and out of the valley, and there were moments when the whole scene took on a quality that felt closer to painting than photography. I shot a lot of frames. I kept more than I usually do.

This is a place that rewards patience and layers up its rewards the longer you stay. I'll be going back.