Volcanic eruption at Conwy
Imagine for a moment a volcano. It is noisy, blasting hot ash high into the air - the lighter ash is carried on the wind, the heavier parts settling possibly in a shallow sea. The volcano is violent and unpredictable, molten lava is thrown out of the neck forming great piles of rock. Superheated clouds of ash and gas rushed down the side of the volcano hitting the sea and being catapulted forward great distances towards what is now Snowdonia.

However, no human eyes ever saw this volcano erupt, man had still to evolve. Today, 450 million years later those great piles of lava and ash are still there, forming what we now know as Conwy Mountain (Mynydd y Dref), Penmaenbach, Sychnant and Alltwen.

The Conwy volcano was one of many across Wales reaching as far as the Lleyn Peninsula. Mount St Helens volcano in the USA and the recent eruption in Indonesia that resulted in the local population being evacuated - are similar to our Conwy eruption.

So the next time you drive along the A55 through the Penmaenbach road tunnel, give just a moment's thought to the fact you are driving through the very heart of ancient but thankfully, now extinct volcano.

Later in this series I'll look at how important rocks are to the very way of life in North Wales. On Anglesey are some of the oldest rocks in Wales predating life itself. I'll also look at the remains of a once great forest that gave us coal, as well as fossil corals that once lived here in Wales.

At the other extreme Snowdonia was probably an ice sheet during the last Ice Age with great rivers of ice known as ice-streams gouging deep valleys, the remains left behind by these glaciers is breath-taking is only now being fully understood for the first time.

We can also look at the remains of huge river deltas that contained some of the earliest life and at the men and women who dedicated their lives in the 19th century attempting to understand the very earth on which they stood. One of these was no lesser person than Charles Darwin, whose experience in Wales was the change the world.
Ken Howarth