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Published: June 27th 2006
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Snowdon Inn
Our caravan is the one visable nearest the pub! Weather so far.....10 days - 1 sunny - 9 naff!
Well Wales can officially be described as
wet! We hoped to be walking every day in our bid to get fit, this has been hampered a bit by the weather (shame eh!) Although we have managed to brave the elements to take on the 34 footsteps from the caravan door to the pub bar!
We are staying in a caravan (tin tent) outside a pub called the Snowdon Inn just outside Llanberis. For company we have a menagerie consiting of
- 2 dogs (Shiloh and Sasha)
- 2 cats (Bella and Fluff) and 3 kittens (4 weeks old)
- 4 chickens
- 6 ducks and 27 ducklings plus a heap of eggs waiting to hatch!
- 1 ghost (!)
The pub is said to be haunted by the ghost of someone killed in an explosion outside in 1869 when a cart full of explosives on the way to the slate quarry exploded on the old road where the new bar now is. Bill the landlord delights in telling us the scary tales late at night after a few beers!
We have been lucky enough to land ourselves in a
The Tin Tent!
We swapped a three-bed semi for this???! pub run by an English couple so have been following the football. About half the pub cheering when England scores and the other half (all the welsh people!) cheering when anyone scores against England!
It still feels strange that we are not about to end a 2 week holiday and go back to work, Terry woke up in a cold sweat the other morning dreaming he was late for work! We keep thinking that sooner or later what we are doing will sink in, but so far it just seems like holidays and we will be all too soon back to the grindstone.
Snowdon Yesterday (Monday) we decided to have a go at walking up Snowdon. We'd been waiting for better weather but cloudy with light rain seemed to be the best we could hope for, so we set out to walk at least part of the way to the summit, aiming to turn back if the weather got too bad.
There's 6 named paths up Snowdon. We'd had a go at the Rhydd Dhu path from the south-west a few weeks ago, but had to turn back about half way when the weather closing in
34 Steps to the pub
This was never gonna be good for a month of detoxing! conveniently coincided with us feeling too knackered to carry on.
This time we chose the Miners Track, starting from Pen-y-pass in the east, partly because its easier to get to from Llanberis, and also because it starts off fairly easy to a series of three lakes, offering good views and convenient targets to aim for.
The Miners Track was built during the last century to serve the Britannia Copper Mines, the remains of which we walked past. It was abandoned in 1917, but its said that in its heyday it was such a good path the owner of a local hotel drove his car all the way to the furthest lake, Llyn Glaslyn. We were actually passed on the path by the mountain rangers in their land rover, but despite Claire flashing her leg they didn't offer us a lift up!
We found the first part of the path past the lakes fairly easy, even overtaking a few other walkers. We had a bit of en encounter with a helicopter which repeatedly buzzed around us and fired a flare about a couple of hundred yards away up the mountain. It hovered so close to us that we
got sprayed from the lake. We weren't sure if they were trying to attract our attention and we nearly set off up the mountain thinking that someone might have been in trouble, but then they just flew away. On the side, it said it was from a Flying Training School, its often about and we think it might be crews training for the Search and Rescue helicopters.
In terms of distance, Pen-y-pass to Lake Glaslyn is probably 4/5ths of the way to the summit and took us only about two hours, if that. Heightwise though, we'd only climbed from 359 to 605 metres. The final 480 metres to the summit loomed ahead of us as a series of zig-zags up to meet the Pyg Track, and then more zig-zags up to the final ridge to the summit.
The term path here is probably a bit misleading. This was more a wall of rock! Had we known how difficult it was going to be we would have turned back from the lakes. Stopping every few minutes to get our breath back we were reassured by climbers coming down, who kept telling us that it was very well known not
Kitten!
Ahhhhhhh! to try to walk
up the Miners Track, "always walk up the Pyg, and down the Miners", because the climb was so steep! We couldn't see the summit because of clouds at the top, so couldn't see how far we had to go. One guy descending looked at his watch and spurred us on with the news "only 200 metres to go!". Then we realised he meant height, not actual distance!
The clouds started coming down thicker and we decided that our safest bet rather than trying to descend the poorly marked climb down was to continue up as we were so near the summit, but then descend down the better marked Llanberis Path, down to the village itself. The Llanberis path is the most popular of the 6 paths, the main hazard on it is getting knocked over by coach loads of Portugese school children. It also runs along the railway line, which at a push could be walked down if the fog got too bad.
So, we eventually reached the summit, four hours after setting off. It was well worth it for the view, as you can see from the photos! There's a stone marker at
The one sunny day!
Walking the long way into the village the top with a brass plaque pointing out the landmarkes we should have been able to see. We had to wait for the Portugese schoolkids to finish eating their lunch before we could get near it, but finally we were on top of the world. Or Wales, anyway.
20 minutes and half a banana each later, we were on our way down. The Llanberis path proved to be harder than we thought, the very loose surface being difficult to walk down without twisting our ankles. The other attraction of this path was the Halfway House Cafe, and every walker we met coming up we questioned as to whether it was still open. It was the thought of a hot coffee and a sandwich that kept us going. Everyone said yes, it was still open and how nice the coffee was, until about 300 yards from it we were told that it was shut. Bit like telling a kid on Christmas morning that Santa has not bothered visiting.
So we trudged down, hungry and thirsty, looking up at the now crystal clear summit. Then the rain started coming down just to cheer us up even more, and the clouds
closed in.
Finally reaching the bottom three and a half hours after leaving the top, we were greeted by the mirage of an ice cream sign outside a cottage. Not believing it could really be open, we were soon being fussed around by Stephen who warned us not to feed any of our scones to his diabetic dog who sat at our feet dribbling in expectation, gave us free lemonade and called us a taxi to take us the 8 miles back to Pen-y-pass and our car.
So today, we're taking it easy. Claire has vowed never to walk anywhere again, and I'm using yesterday's exertion as an excuse to eat anything sweet and sickly I can get my hands onto.
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