Wales: Llanberis Weekend

How Not To Do Moel Eilio

Ingredients:
The annual rainfall of the world in 24 hours
A big, fat dollop of snow on your hill of choice
Widespread low cloud

Mix all ingredients together on the day you are meeting up with some people to lead a walk that you have organised  …

…. And choose a different walk

On the Saturday evening I met up with forumites Andy, Chris, Alan and Jim in The Heights pub in Llanberis. It was raining.

Introductions were made for those who’d not met until now and alcohol was consumed. I developed a bit of Smock Envy towards Jim’s black Paramo and wondered if he’d notice if I discreetly swapped it for my ladies fashion waterproof coat. Andy set the bar of the conversation pretty early as he and Chris recounted tales of various long distance walks they’d done where, on occasion, they’d stopped for “a roll in the heather”.

… Moving swiftly on… we all toddled off to our various accommodations for the night after agreeing to meet at Pete’s Eats at 10am the next day. It was still raining.

Sunday dawned bright and sunny (at 7am, for 5 minutes)… then it started raining. After a generous portion of scrambled egg on toast and more tea than was socially acceptable to drink, I decided it was a full waterproofs type of day from the outset. It was then, as I shoe-horned myself into my waterproof legs, that I figured they must have shrunk in the wash

It was raining as I headed to Pete’s Eats and found Alan sheltering under the awning from the rain (did I mention it was raining?). A few minutes later Andy, Chris and Jim turned up and we umm-ed and ahh-ed about whether Moel Eilio was a good idea, given that it had acquired a fresh and generous dollop of snow overnight and was currently hidden under a blanket of low cloud which looked fairly set in for the day. I didn’t think it would be any fun whatsoever in the current conditions, which were a far cry from the crisp, cold, blue skies and sunshine with a smattering of snow that I’d asked the Weather Gods for

The regrettable but sensible decision was made to change our plans. But what to? Andy and Chris mentioned a walk they’d done the day before around the quarry above Llyn Padarn. The trees would shelter us from the rain a little and what it may lack in summit-bagging height it would make up for with interesting buildings and slate mining gubbins. So a plan was born. We’d go and explore round there and do a loop round the mast and return along the shores of the lake. “About 7 miles”, they said. “That’s plenty enough in this weather”, they said. “We can go to the pub afterwards”, they said

After a flurry of frantic map re-folding from Jim, we set off towards the lake railway. Crossed a bridge. Then headed straight upwards via some Steps For Giants. How tall were these quarry workers? It soon became blatantly obvious to me that (a) this hillside was steeeeeep, and (b) my skin-tight waterproof legs were somewhat hindering my ascent. Jim kindly lent me his walking pole to haul myself up / steady myself, and I not-so-silently cursed my waterproofs, whilst Andy, Chris and Alan stood at the top of this first flight of steps, laughing at me!

We first reached the quarry – quite a stunning sight to see really and the photo doesn’t do it justice:

Dinorwig Quarry

Between each flight of steps, there was a level bit with interesting buildings. Some of which housed free-range goats, sheltering from the rain – it was raining don’t you know, staring at us:

Ha - I'm dry and you're not!

Probably thinking “nutters, out walking in this”.

More Evil Steps For Giants brought us to a pulley system where I took a picture of the hill we should have been walking up:

Doesn't look too bad really - apart from the blizzard

It doesn’t look too bad there does it? Don’t be fooled. A little further along the path it looked like this:

Blizzard

Definitely a good call to not be up there today. Cold, windy, exposed. I doubt it would have been much fun to be honest.

Shortly after this, we had a pit stop so I could TAKE MY SODDING WATERPROOF LEGS OFF. Gawd they were annoying and I decided wet legs were preferable to not being able to lift my legs up to climb up steps.

Needless to say, there were no more steps!

We carried on through the woods and optimistically thought the rain had eased off a little, despite feeling like Jesus, walking on water as the paths had turned into small rivers. After a while we came across a house-in-a-house and went for a nosey:

House in a house

We couldn’t decide exactly what it might have been used for as the inside house was far too small for these giants that obviously roamed the hills in the quarrying era.

Eventually we crossed a river and Alan decided that a plastic bag wasn’t really the best thing to keep his phone in when it was chucking it down with rain.

Taking a northerly turn, we headed towards Bigil and the mast (sounds yorksher for big hill to me) and discovered mud. Up to now, though waterlogged, the paths had been fairly rocky. Oh no, not now. From here on in, mud was the order of the day. Mud, and rain. Reaching the road was a delight, only to cross it to aim for more mud. Up, up, up we squelched until we reached another road. Shortly after this we found a bus stop and stopped for a sarnie (I’m not saying we stopped for a roll in the bus stop ).

Looking across at the opposite side of the valley, the weather hadn’t improved any.  Alan enjoying the views  :

Lovely day for a stroll isn't it?

The mast on Pen y Bigil:

Pen y Bigil mast

I was quite enchanted by this craggy, lumpy, boggy hill. The gorse was out, the contrast of the bracken against the rock, the mud, the rain, the occasional dog poo …

Yes, what’s not to like?

But seriously, this hill was a lovely splash (literally) of colour on a drab, grey day.

From there, we reached a tarmacked river, erm, road, with some …. interesting …. parking techniques:

Grow your own parking space

We followed this for a while until we gleefully spotted a much more fun muddy track:

Excellent! A muddy path

Chris got all artistic with some Rock Art whilst waiting for me to uff and puff my way up the hill:

Rock Art

Up until now the mud was pretty bad but fairly avoidable with carefully placed tootsies. Not anymore. Nope. The next track we followed was a river of mud and squelching in it was unavoidable. Even the grassy sides were just hiding soft, squishy, foot-engulfing mud:

Oh look, a river of mud path

Soggy cows (it was raining don't you know?):

Who said leather was waterproof, huh?

The rain actually seemed to be getting worse now, if that was possible, and the cloud was getting lower and it was with some relief to reach another road which took us South to the Western end of Llyn Padarn:

Lovely view along Llyn Padarn

I’m sure this view would have been quite a cracker on a nice day and it did rather remind me of views along a Scottish loch. Shortly after this my camera decided it didn’t like the rain and packed up on me

Heading along the Northern shore we climbed steadily towards Fachwen. I think it was this road where I needed to stop for a cheese sarnie ‘cos I was flagging. Eventually we turned off down the hillside at a café (I forget its name and it had the cheek to be closed anyway) and took a more gentle zig-zag path down to the shore and the railway.

My legs were telling me they’d reached their 8 mile threshold …. But it was only about 7 miles, this walk, they said. My bladder was also telling me it was full but following the railway seemed a fairly popular route (by rainy, off season weekend standards) and it’s just not an option for a woman to “nip behind a wall/tree”. So it was (literally) a relief when we reached the toilets at the Eastern end of Llyn Padarn.

From there, we simply followed the main road back into Llanberis “proper” where we separated and went to our various accommodations to dry out.

Unfortunately, Jim had to drive home that evening so couldn’t join us in the pub later on

After the most Wonderful Shower Ever, and all my soggy gear draped over the radiator in my room I headed out, in the rain, to meet Andy, Chris and Alan in the pub and to chow at them for adding a sneaky extra 3 miles onto the walk. TEN MILES guys The furthest I’d walked all winter was about 4 miles so it was a shock to my system, that’s for sure

Thanks guys for coming along and letting me lead a walk which I had no idea of where I was going I really do feel bad for having to make the decision not to do Moel Eilio but it was the right decision, all said and done, so thanks to Andy, Chris and Alan for coming up with “Plan B”. It was a really varied and interesting walk with better views than what we would have had if we’d done Moel Eilio.

Despite the rain, we had lots of giggles along the way. I’m still incredibly unfit and struggle with gradients of any sort but a massive plus was that my Achilles tendon didn’t hurt at all and my camera dried out enough (thanks radiator) to work again the next day.

Viewranger Track

Monday saw me heading out alone in completely different weather.  Beautiful, wall to wall sunshine.  What a difference a day makes eh?

A few pictures from my "make it up as I go along" walk.  Roughly, my plan was to look at Dolbarn Castle and Victoria Falls...

Steep path up to the Castle

Dolbarn Castle

Views over Lly Peris

Inside the Castle

View from Castle towards Llyn Padarn

Signpost OCD

Lovely, peaceful forest track

Green and furry woodland path

Y Garn(?) covered in snow

Very tame Song Thrush

No chance of getting lost

Victoria Falls

Elidir Fawr with a dusting of snow

Snowdon Mountain Railway track

Brew With A View

Victoria Falls just before they fall!

Service train chugging by

Llanberis Main Street

Viewranger Track

All in all, a lovely long weekend.

Thanks for reading 😊

Wales: Snowdonia - Moel Eilio (6.1 miles)

Sunday, 16th October 2016

I headed to Snowdonia for a couple of days. My original plan was to arrive earlier on the Saturday and bag a couple of waterfall walks but, alas, an accident on the M62 which closed 2 lanes put paid to that (fortunately nobody was injured) and I arrived just in time to check into my B&B in Betws-y-Coed before it got dark, where I was given a free upgrade from a saddo singleton’s room for one to a small double room with en-suite facilities I then had a little mooch into “town” in search of my evening meal and the next day’s lunch.

Sunday arrived, damp and drizzle-y and I chatted with the B&B owner about my plans for the day. He kindly went on line and got me a weather forecast for the Llanberis / Snowdon area … and it didn’t look good – strong, gusty winds, heavy showers and thunder storms with temperatures a few degrees above freezing on the tops

Nevertheless, after a rather splendid breakfast, I waddled off to my car for the 30 minute drive which, in parts, reminded me a little of Scotland. The drive through the Llanberis Pass is quite spectacular and it was a pity there were cars behind me because I would have stopped (stuff the fact it’s a freeway/no stopping) to take a photo.

I got parked up down a little back street and remembered to actually set Viewranger to track record this time, and off I set – up and up and up on a never-ending metalled track upwards, without relent. The benefit of this was views started happening quickly and the forecast so far was wrong - it was patchy sunshine and I was sheltered from any wind.

Looking across towards the Llanberis Pass:

 

Higher still and looking across at the fascinatingly ugly scars of the pillaged Elidir Fawr(?):
 

It reminded me of a Dali painting and did look quite photogenic with the sunshine glinting on the wet quarry face.

At a very derelict farm building (Maen-llwyd-uchaf) the metalled track ran out (there’s also parking spaces for about 4 cars here in case anyone’s interested) and the path, still obvious, followed various walls, and still endlessly uphill.

Not that I stopped frequently on my way up or anything but here’s a view Gallt y Foel(?) above Lly Padarn with views of Anglesey just starting to peep into view in the background:
 

I decided to go a little off piste to avoid a large puddle, then continued up the broad, grassy nose of Bryn Mawr. This seemed like a good idea …. 6 false summits later …. Much of my view ahead was this …. So near yet so far:
 

I noticed my camera was almost out of battery (note to self, charge camera before walk in future) so saved it for summit snaps but couldn’t resist one of this pointless stile just before the final pull up to the top of Moel Eilio :
 

The wind was bitter now and constantly in my face and I’d had to brace myself against the gusts, making it feel like I was walking up something much harder than it was (that’s my excuse anyway ), but thankfully, no rain as yet and no thunderstorms.

It took me ages to get from the pointless stile to my next pic and I can only put this down to lack of fitness/stamina as my breathing was fine but my leg muscles tired far too quickly.

And finally, hooooraaaahhhhh! The summit shelter:
 

I was quite glad to see this appear, all of a sudden (them pesky false summits), and it spurred me on towards my nice cuppa and sarnie. I was even more glad to get to it as a sudden, sharp blast of hailstones “got” me (head wind don't forget... ouch!). I had my lunch and let the weather pass before venturing out for some summit piccies.

Looking across a fine ridge walk to Snowdon with its head in the clouds:
 

Looking North-East-ish:
 

Looking West-ish:
 

Looking North-West-ish to Anglesey:
 

And finally, looking back the way I came:
 

I took this last pic more for the strange colour of the weather (if that makes sense). Given the short, sharp showers and the sunshine, I think I was “in” a rainbow

Anyway, the weather had definitely changed and I could hear distant rumbles of thunder so it was with regret that I decided not to continue along that lovely looking ridge as planned, as, being the highest thing on a grassy ridge with no shelter in a thunder storm, probably wouldn’t have been one of my better decisions. So I returned the way I came – at least I had a back wind to assist me down the hill

My return path and the thundery clouds are starting to catch me up:
 

Shortly after this pic the heavens opened in a magnificently Biblical fashion and the waterproofs went on, the camera went away and I fairly scuttled down the hillside to reach the track which had now turned into a river. Choosing a shortcut back to the car past Cae’r-fran wasn’t one of my better ideas either as the track was a river of mud and I was relieved to reach a road as I turned left onto the lane which passes the Youth Hostel.

Back at the car I stripped off my soggy waterproofs and was pleasantly surprised to discover that I was dry underneath them. I think it may have been a different story if I’d needed to wear them heading uphill. I did have to wring my gloves out though

So hands up everyone who agrees…. Having a good day’s walking, followed by a shower, getting a belly full of food, a glass of wine and falling into bed and falling asleep almost instantly is possibly the best type of day ever?

Again, no particular Achilles tendon problems and I could quite happily have walked much further – I think wearing shoes and not boots has all but solved the problem.

For a long time now I’ve been looking for a “safe” mountain walk to do in Winter…. I think I’ve found it…. Moel Eilio… it’s broad, it’s grassy, route finding is easy, it has amazing views in all directions that would look truly stunning with a full winter pelt … and it’s over the magic 2,000ft mountain status.

I will be back.

ViewRanger Track

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