Llanberis Bomb Store

 

Charlie and I went exploring just outside Llanberis, drawn by the half-whispered legend of an old RAF bomb store buried in the slate hills of North Wales. It's not a place you’ll find on tourist maps or TripAdvisor—no signs, no footpaths, and certainly no welcome mats. Which, given the place’s history and hazard warnings, is probably for the best.

After some determined poking around (and a few wrong turns), we eventually found a hole in a fence and clambered down a slope of loose shale. The kind of descent that crunches underfoot and makes you feel like you're about be snowboarding, or shaleboarding.

At the base was a large, imposing building—industrial, forgotten, and eerie in the afternoon light. There's one door, thick and rusting, and forced ajar. With a little effort and a lot of caution, we stepped inside.

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Inside the Bomb Store

What we found wasn’t just a space—it was an atmosphere. The kind that presses in on your ears and settles behind your eyes. The inside swallowed sound, thick with damp air and decades of silence. Our only light was the dim torch on my phone, which flickered against rusted steelwork, and darkened concrete corridors.

We didn’t venture too far in. Something about the place suggests self-preservation and you shouldn't overstay your welcome. It’s not fear, exactly—more like reverence. A respect for a space that once held thousands of tons of ordnance, and where a catastrophic collapse in 1942 buried a loaded train and forever changed the site’s role in the war effort.

We stood in silence for a while, trying to make out shapes in the dark, then quietly made our way back to the light of day.

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A Vision for a Gig in the Void

Back outside, I couldn’t stop thinking about that front façade—the wide open slate amphitheatre, the silent bulk of the building, the raw acoustics. It sparked a vision: a Spam Javelin gig right there in front of the bomb store. No audience, no festival logistics—just the band, a film crew, and the slate echoing every distorted riff into the hills.

It brought to mind Pink Floyd’s "Live at Pompeii"—a concert with no crowd, just the music echoing through a space heavy with history. A performance for the ghosts, the ruins, and the mountains themselves.

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Final Thoughts

There’s something about that place—about all of Glyn Rhonwy, really—that sticks with you. It’s a relic of a world at war, buried in a landscape that's older than memory.

And maybe one day, with the right light and the right sound, we’ll bring some noise back to it. Just briefly.

Spam Javelin at the bomb store: no merch stand, no crowd surfers—just riffs in the void.

Stay tuned.