Surf Snowdonia
| Surf Snowdonia | |
|---|---|
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| Location | Dolgarrog |
| Coordinates | 53°11′24″N 3°50′28″W / 53.190°N 3.841°WCoordinates: 53°11′24″N 3°50′28″W / 53.190°N 3.841°W |
| Owner | Conwy Adventure Leisure Ltd. |
| Opened | 1 August 2015 |
| Website | www |
Surf Snowdonia is an artificial wave pool at Dolgarrog in the Conwy valley, north Wales, owned by Conwy Adventure Leisure Ltd. It is the world's first commercial artificial surfing lake and the United Kingdom's only artificial surfing lake. The site cost a total of £12 million and opened in August 2015.
In 2007 Dolgarrog Aluminium closed, and a group was established to decide what should be on the site in its place. The following year the site was purchased by Ainscough Johnston, a Lancashire-based strategic land company, whose initial plans were for housing – including affordable housing – and for leisure and amenity uses.
Plans for a surfing attraction were unveiled in 2013, with Conwy Adventure Leisure announcing that it was submitting a planning application to create the venue. The company predicted the facility would "attract 67–70,000 visitors [a year]". Conwy Adventure Leisure received planning permission in August 2013 and in December said it had invested over £7 million in the project. The park gained final approval from councillors in April 2014, with construction beginning in May. In June the project received £4 million in funding from the Welsh Government. Much initial decontamination work had to be undertaken, following a century of use as an industrial site, and over 25,000 cubic metres of on-site material was crushed and re-used during the construction, including the recycling of 400 tonnes of steel, cast iron and copper.
Development of the site was also complicated by the fact that it is adjacent to a Site of Special Scientific Interest, there is a high water table, and it is located on the flood plain of the River Conwy. A total of 6.3 miles of piling was driven into the ground in order to stabilize it.
In April 2015 a fire broke out on the construction site, causing some damage to a tower. The site opened to the public on 1 August 2015, having cost a total of £12 million. It served 14,000 people in its first two weeks of operation, including 3,500 people who surfed in the pool.
Surf Snowdonia has a freshwater pool which contains a wave-generation mechanism, manufactured by the Leitner Group, and based on a prototype built in San Sebastián, Spain, by the Spanish company Wavegarden. It has a contoured base that can generate three different sized waves, at a rate of one a minute. The pool can generate a 2-metre (6 ft 7 in) high wave which can last 16 seconds and travel 150 metres (490 ft). The company claims this is the longest man-made surf wave in the world. The pool is filled with rainwater collected from Snowdonia reservoirs including Llyn Cowlyd. This water passes through the adjacent hydro-power station, originally built to power the former aluminium plant, before being pumped from the tail-race into the surfing pool.
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Wikipedia