B4406

The B4406 is a short B-road in North Wales, connecting the village of Penmachno with the rest of the classified road network.

Penmachno

The route starts at the Conwy Falls on the A5 deep in the Conwy Valley and heads south at first, immediately passing the Conwy Falls Café, which was designed by Clough Williams Ellis of Portmerion fame. After crossing high above the River Conwy on Bont Newydd, it begins its winding journey up the valley of the Afon Machno. Although it has a centre line for much of the route, the road is often narrow, hemmed in by stone walls and hedgerows. Houses and farms are dotted across the wide valley floor, a few right on the roadside, but most out in the fields accessed via winding lanes. The route passes through no places of any size en route and eventually reaches Penmachno itself, where it follows Llewellyn Street. In the centre of the village the route bends sharply right to cross the Machno before ending without ceremony a short distance further on. As the road passes the church, it bends left onto the High Street, and the B4406 ends and becomes an unclassified road.

Beyond Penmachno

The head of this small valley was widely exploited for slate in the past, with quarries and mines on the hillside above the small settlement of Cwm Penmachno. These workings exported their product by taking it up over the hill to the quarries at Ffestiniog, where it was taken down the Ffestiniog Railway to Porthmadog. As a result, there has long been a connection between the two communities, and a hill road survives to this day. This unclassified route forks left off the valley road at Carrog and climbs steeply at times up Cwm Hafodyredwydd to a summit of around 480m where it meets the B4407, which road drops down, via the B4391, into Llan Ffestiniog. The views from the climb to the summit can be stunning on a clear day, looking back down the idyllic valley.