We are a week into autumn so by posting this information now we are hoping that you will have all forgotten about it by next year's holidays. That way there should not be hordes of new users there then. We are fairly confident that not many people who have attempted the Paddy Buckley read this website so we would like to tell you about some of the finest acres in the British Isles, Croesor. Croesor is at the head of a valley so beautiful we are lost for words.

It is at the foot of Cnicht, a hill that from the right spot looks like a famous pointy mountain in somewhere foreign – from the summit you can see clear to Ireland. The village of Croesor has a very active community who have built their own lido slap in the middle of Snowdonia against the will and the might of local authority and facility manager gauleiters.

The Guardian swimming supplement (outdoors is so radical!) missed this one.

In April 1963, to create a safe swimming area for local children who were always sloping off down the valley to lovely pools where they were at greater risk and out of sight, local resident Tudor Owen started digging a hole in a very hard bit of Wales. Insurance, grants, local authoriity support, forget it. Children might happily clamber over rocks in the beck - but a pool - without lifeguards in Snowdonia where they leave some of the most beautiful bits of Britain outside in all weathers - forget it.

By redirecting the stream into a whole dug with a JCB and using a big paddle to block the outflow, a swimming pool was created through which the water flows as you swim. Over the years with a bit of cement here and a few stone flags there the community built itself a container for a bit of occasional, friendly and fresh sheen to slip through and enjoy. The River Authority used to be in charge of the water that flowed through the village but the sums they wanted to allow water for generating power had caused a woolen mill downstream from Croesor to go back onto the National Grid. This meant some stealth was required in the early years but more recently the Environment Agency has had a more lenient and affordable approach to non-profit organisations.

Still entered through a simple, unlocked kissing gate beside the footy pitch behind the primary school the pool has gradually changed and developed since 1963. The pool is not always full and relies on weather, water flow in the river and Tudor getting it ready to use. As the health and safety wallahs have tweaked the project the loose shale floor had to go, the glaciated rock gently falling into the pool had to be sawn off in case someone slipped on the same stuff that litters mile after mile of Wales but there it is still working. After a run up and down Cnicht or the Moelwyns or as a stop off on the Paddy Buckley with a coffee and a bun from the Cyfeillion Croesor caffi that has grown from the community effort of the construction of the pool you could be in ... Croesor.

We recommend, full Welsh breakfast at Pete's Eats in Llanberis or Eric Jones's opposite the Tremadoc crag and then, from Croesor, legging it up Cnicht, then making as if toward Siabod until veering right to the old slate workings at the obvious place. There are several wonderful tarn pools on the route in which to swim, (or there are two delightful twin pools north west of Cnicht toward Llyn Dinas that must be the finest swimmable puddles in Wales). Then a long glorious descent back to Croesor toward the setting sun, pick up a coffee and a bun at the caffi and head for the pool.

If you bump into Tudor you will get a lesson in Welsh and the history of not only the pool but the whole area. Your job, if you go there, is to write the Croesor entry for Wikipedia.

| Lido News | 3 October 2007; 12:21:55 AM |# | croesormoreorless.kmz 1K | |