First Impressions of the Ogwen Visitor Centre

I made a brief stop last week at a building which has been nearly a year in the making, Ogwen Visitor Centre, just off the A5 near the lake, next to the celebrated youth hostel and the start of the popular walk to Cwm Idwal. The building itself is superbly constructed from stone and slate and well chosen timber. It has a very convenient car park and a useful kiosk type café. However, my first impressions were that it has been rather spoiled by the current obsession with things digital and with the current fashion of dumbing down information. Have I misjudged it? See comments below.

This image shows the quality of the construction and design. It is clearly built both to impress and to withstand the weather.

This is the main source of information, a touchscreen display which will tell you something of how the mountains were made. Choosing the level at which to relate this story must always be difficult, but this particular display unfortunately chose the level of an average 11 or 12 year old.

The main room is quite large, and lends itself well to these blocks of text which are projected across the wall. It looks modern and it works.

Images are also projected along with the text.

I wasn't quite clear what the screen was about. When I was there it was just a succession of images of the local hills.

A 3-D model of the surrounding hills, with a rather disappointing button system to provide snippets of information relating to parts of the model.