It was a rainy walk to Avis near Piccadilly station to pick up our hire car this morning. Luckily we managed to get out of Manchester towards north Wales without too much trouble and our first stop was Llangollen to ride the tourist railway here. We had a little bit of time to wander & unfortunately I managed to get a truly terribly coffee whilst Sean got a very tasty sausage roll! The little steam train took about 40 mins each way & took us up along the edge of the river for much of the trip. First train of the day done we had a look at the horse drawn canal boats which ran along the canal at the top of town & then I grabbed another sausage roll for a quick lunch before setting off in the car for Porthmadog at the foot of Snowdonia national park. After a short nap I woke up as we came into town which was absolutely heaving with tourists. Even the traffic along the main street was barely moving. Without accommodation organised for tonight we went to the tourist information where the very helpful lady found us a reasonable priced B&B in a little town about 5 miles along the coast. Before we could head there however we had the Ffestiniog railway to tick off. Probably the most famous of the little trains of Wales it took 1hr 20mins to wind up through a couple of tunnels & one spiral to Ffestiniog. We passed through lots of thick green trees, almost Otways type forest & past a heavy flowing waterfall. Back down the mountain we arrived back to Porthmadog about 7pm & headed to nearby Criccieth to find our accommodation which was directly opposite the Castle. Finding a park was a little difficult but after a lap of the waterfront we managed to get one just across the road. The room was nice & we had a view up to the castle from the window. For dinner we had been recommended the local fish & chips just down the street. The line was out the door and as we waited to order we realised that they had a ridiculously inefficient conveyor system going where all the staff would sometimes be standing around waiting on one particular thing, like the chips. After almost 40mins we got our order & headed to the water to eat our admittedly good food (for fish & chips anyway). Being still light we walked along the waterfront to work off some grease & then headed back to the B&B for an early night.