It has been a while since I added an entry on this site. It has been a while since I got to go on a walking trip.
We visited Snowdonia in Wales on our way through to the Scottish Highlands, with a view to getting some scrambling practice. We decided to revisit Tryfan and the Bristly Ridge, which we keep going back to, almost to check that we are still fine on it. We had arrived the night before, on Saturday, and the campsite was the busiest we had seen. We started walking before 9am. We carried our basic climbing gear to get practice carrying it with us (though I think B chose to leave his helmet behind). We set out to get as much scrambling practice as possible, and in choosing to take the lines with the most scrambling we could handle, we ended up being out that day for almost 10 hours.
The route we took went over Tryfan, the Bristly Ridge, Glyder Fach (including going over the highest point – the ridiculously big jumble of massive rocks with awkwardly huge gaps inbetween), Castell y Gwynt, Y Gribin, Llyn Bochlwyd, and back along the road. The weather was fairly good, except for occasional mist. I saw my third (I think) Brocken spectre! I was tired that evening, but towards the end of the walk I felt I could have kept going, which was encouraging. I researched some nearby scrambling routes that we might try the next day. There was a bright moon that night.
Next morning, we set off in a similar direction, towards Tryfan, but turned off to walk along the Heather Terrace on the eastern side of Tryfan, where many climbing routes start. We had chosen a Grade 1 scrambling route up a gully. As often seems to be the case, the first part of the route seemed the trickiest, and we were debating how to interpret the directions in the scrambling guide book. We decided to rope up to get some practice using the gear. Once we got going, the way seemed generally clear, though there was one section where we could not see the next section until I had climbed up a steep ‘ladder’ with an awkward narrow gap to negotiate at the top of the section. The last section near the top of the route was quite exposed, so I was glad the rock was not wet. Clambering around some rocks, we suddenly found ourselves in front of the familiar sight of Adam and Eve, the twin rocks standing at the top of Tryfan. The air was full of flying ants in full mating flight, and all the rocks were crawling with them, leaving nowhere to sit to eat our sandiwches. So it must have been quite a sunny day at that point, but we had been in the shade for most of the day as we clambered up to the top.
So we did not stay long on the top, deciding to try going back down the same way we had come up. We passed a group of people intersecting our route, going in the other direction, some of whom apparently looked at me a bit oddly as I was still wearing my helmet at that point, though we did the descent without protection.
The next morning, we drove to Ogwen Cottage down the road, as yet undecided about the day’s activities. We found that there was a new Visitor Centre building, with nice new toilets (and interactives that did not quite work how they were supposed to). Looking at the sky, and at the weather forecast which promised some rain, we conluded that we would move on to the Lake District, and drove to Wasdale Head in the Western Fells.
We stopped off in Bangor for B to buy a new camera, as the one he had was refusing to even turn on. Then on the very busy M65 driving out of Wales we were alerted by another driver of a flat tyre: this resulted in a call to the AA, and a trip to a nearby tyre place to replace the spare and one other tyre just in case. While standing a distance away from the roadside waiting for the AA mechanic to arrive, I noticed that I was standing beside a blueberry bush, with very appealing-looking blueberries on its branches – but it did not feel like the right moment to start foraging blueberries by the motorway, so I did not try eating them. Ringing ahead to check about arriving in the evening at the Wasdale Head National Trust campsite, I was informed that we would not have any trouble driving onto the site as the barrier was currently inoperative. It was a relief to arrive after our vehicular adventures.
