Geoff writes: having realised that the sunny but windy weather was going to continue, we decided to go walking for a few days in Snowdonia. Right enough, we spent an hour or so on Monday morning agonising over this – write off flying completely, or take the gliders with us; go to Snowdonia; or the Lakes; or the Dales. In the end, we took the easy option, no gliders, and the closest place, on the grounds that Monday and Tuesday were blown out almost everywhere except Scotland, and Wednesday probably would be too.

So off to Snowdonia. Being a bit unfit, and not having done any serious walking for many months, we decided to do a walk with a 700 metre height difference, and classed as strenuous mountain walking – the Glyders range – Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach. We’ve flown the Glyders a few times, but never walked them, so we set off from the other side from where we fly. It is a truly stunning walk, up the back of a cwm – two cwms in fact. Most tourists had gone home by this time (it being bank holiday Monday), so there were very few people out.

It was very, very windy, and the closer we got to the top, the windier it got, so much so that we were a little worried, especially as people coming down said how wild it was on top. We passed someone else walking up, a father and young son. The father – who had no map, no compass, no signal for his mobile – asked us if we thought it would be safe for them to continue! Though why you would trust the word of a complete stranger, I have no idea. But the son decided he wanted to go back down, so, probably wisely, they did. We carried on anyway, and really, it wasn’t that bad. We walked over the top of the bowl we normally fly up, but this way we had a lot more time to enjoy the views.

The actual walk was only eight kilometers, but because of the height difference it took us some five hours to do it, with the walk down being particularly hard on Judith’s knees. But all in all, a brilliant day out.

We found a campsite for the night, but slept in the van, as usual – the wind was still very strong, and frequently shook the van throughout the night.

See photos of today.

2 Comments »