Blue Lake, North Wales
Blue Lake is a flooded quarry above the village of Friog, North Wales (Figure 1). Blue lake has an interesting and eventful history. Someone (I couldn’t find out who) created the lake artificially to supply water for a hydroelectric powerplant which they didn’t finish. Sometime later, Blue Lake became a popular swimming and cliff jumping destination. The landowner shut off access to Blue Lake in May 2019. I shall talk about Blue Lake from its creation to its closure.
Blue Lake is a Flooded 19th Century Quarry
Goleuwern quarry became Blue Lake. Goleuwern was an unsuccessful slate quarry opened in around the mid-1860s. This quarry was a hole dug into the hillside from which the quarry workers removed slate via tunnels. The quarry was divided into four levels. The lake submerges the first level. The second level is around the surface of the lake and the third and fourth are higher up to the left of the picture (Figure 1). The quarry closed in 1915 because it was unprofitable.
Blue Lake is an Artificial Lake
Someone flooded Goleuwern quarry to create a reservoir for a hydroelectric scheme. When this happened is unclear. The powerplant was meant to power the coastal village of Fairbourne but the scheme was never completed. They flooded the quarry by blocking the tunnel which accessed the bottom level. Water eventually filled the quarry up to its second level, creating the lake. Skirting the edge of the lake is a pathway that leads to a tunnel in the bottom right-hand corner of the image (Figure 1). After they abandoned the hydroelectric powerplant, the lake became a swimming destination.
Blue Lake Was a Popular Swimming Spot
Blue Lake was a swimming spot from the 1970s onwards and became more popular over time. I tried to quantify Blue Lake’s increasing popularity, but it wasn’t easy as there is no record of visitors. I could indirectly look at its changing popularity using Google’s Search Trends tool to follow the relative popularity of the search terms ‘Blue Lake Fairbourne’ and ‘Wild Swimming’. Searches for ‘Blue Lake Fairbourne’ showed no trend between 2004-2020 (Figure 2). However, searches for ‘Wild Swimming’ showed an increase in popularity over the same period (Figure 2). Wild swimming is a term which describes swimming in lakes and rivers for pleasure. The website ‘Wild Swimming’ included Blue Lake in a list of ‘Best Wild Swims in Wales’ published in July 2018. Wild Swimming (at least the search term) was becoming more popular over time and Blue Lake likely had increased visitors as a result.
A Dangerous Cliff Jumping Spot
Blue Lake was a cliff jumping spot. Most people jumped from the cliff on the right-hand side of the image, which is about fifteen meters high (Figure 1). Jumping here is risky because of a path that skirts the edge of the lake (Figure 3). This path sticks out about three meters from the base of the cliff to the lake’s edge. Clearing the pathway relies on jumping well from the cliff above, which can easily go wrong as there are loose rocks and gravel on the cliff’s edge. Sadly, someone jumped from the cliff and did not clear the path below.
A Death Where I Jumped
In June 2017, a woman died at Blue Lake. She jumped from the fifteen-meter cliff but didn’t clear the path below. A BBC news article reported that she ‘probably slipped’ during her jump.
Two years before her death, my friends and I had jumped from the same spot (Figure 4). This was definitely a bad idea in retrospect. If we hadn’t jumped far enough, we would have been severely injured or died (Figure 3). I recently found out that a semi-professional group of cliff jumpers refused to visit Blue Lake. They reasoned that jumping there was too dangerous.
Permanent Closure of Blue Lake
In May 2019, the landowner permanently blocked the tunnel which leads to Blue Lake because of increased littering at the lake. Because Blue Lake is on private land, the owner is legally responsible to remove rubbish. According to the landowner, the amount of litter was increasing, and he wasn’t willing to keep clearing rubbish from the lake.
The End of Blue Lake
Blocking the access to Blue Lake ended its period as a swimming destination. The landowner’s decision to close the lake is legitimate though it does seem brutally final. A less drastic solution mentioned in newspaper article comment’s section would have been a voluntary litter-picking group to remove rubbish from the lake. In my opinion, this would have been an adequate solution to the littering problem. However, it is now too late, and the owner has sealed off Blue Lake forever.
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