North Wales

On Monday I drove to North Wales to a place not too far from Bangor. I had a good drive up in Will's car (little MOF not really being up to long journey's now...). There was very little traffic on the road & I arrived at about half 4 in the afternoon. My friend Jon had driven down from his home in Scotland on Saturday to spend a couple of nights with family in South Wales, then continued up to North Wales on the Monday.

On the Tuesday we decided to tackle Tryfan, which is a hill I've been meaning to do for a long time. It's about the only hill in the UK that you can't just walk up -it's essentially a scramble on the rock from top to bottom with no set path. Depending on how things went we were thinking of also doing the Glyders as well, but conditions were pretty poor. It wasn't raining but there was a lot of moisture in the air & the rock was very slippery. There was also a bit of snow & ice around, plus so much mist that visibility was extremely poor.

Jon took me an 'interesting' route, to put it mildly! There was a couple following us who didn't really know where they were going, & the woman was getting a bit freaked out. Never-the-less, my knee coped fine and after a couple of hours of great scrambling we were up on the summit. The summit is marked by two pillars known as Adam & Eve, & the brave celebrate by jumping from one to the other. We weren't silly enough to try... As you can see, the visibility was atrocious & we couldn't see a single thing from the summit which was a shame.

Once we were over the other side of the mountain & lost a bit of height there was some sunshine over the valley which was nice. The way down was pretty tough & steep with lots of loose gravel, plus snow & ice to contend with. About half-way down I fell on some icy rock & managed to twist my injured knee again which wasn't great. I sat & iced it with some snow for a while, then managed to carefully make my way down, much to Jon's relief. He had visions of having to call out Mountain Rescue!
On Wednesday I wasn't really up to walking, so had a nice day exploring Caernarfon and Porthmadog, a couple of the North Wales towns. Even if I hadn't have hurt my knee I think I would have struggled to do another hill day. EVERYTHING hurt, from my calves & quads, to my arms & shoulders. Scrambling really is a full body workout! Jon set out to climb Bristly Ridge which is another famous scramble in the area, but came back down after he was about two-thirds up. He just lost his nerve, & climbing by himself he said that his mind has started to play tricks on him. Porthmadog has a pretty harbour, & I also went & checked out the steam train which runs from there. On Curto's request I also visited the Purple Moose brewery to pick up a mixed case of beer for the real ale club back at school.


On Thursday I decided I was up for a gentle walk where there was no risk of further damage to the knee. we decided on the Miners track which takes you half-way up Snowdon. It's a tourist path so really well maintained & practically a highway. We had a lovely walk to the end of the track & back. It took about 3 hours, but again we had very poor visibility. We did have a navy sea-king rescue helicopter do a bit of low-level flying on a training run which was quite interesting.

So, that was it. It was lovely catching up with Jon, & nice to get away for a few days. The drive back on Friday (my birthday!) wasn't as easy as the drive up with lots more traffic on the road. I eventually made it home & it was lovely catching up with Will. We celebrated my birthday with a Chinese take-out & a bottle of pink bubbles!

This weekend has been relaxed. I've been writing lots of reports, in-between being distracted by our new birthday Wii we have bought! All my reports due tomorrow are now completed, although the next lot are due the following Monday, so no doubt a lot of this week will be taken up with that!