Monday 29 May 2006

Bank Holiday Weekend

Wales had been calling to me lately. So we went. Unfortunately we went on a Bank Holiday weekend. But it wasn't all bad. We had nice evening at the Stables in Betws-Y-Coed under their umbrellas, which had heaters during the warm afternoon and then switched off as the evening turned cooler, I got pushed out of my seat by a Norwegian but the scampi was nice and the beer went down well.

It was quite amazing on Saturday to see the hoardes of walkers getting off the buses at Pen-Y-Pass to go up Snowdon. There were people everywhere. Thankfully we were going the other way, to walk from Nant Gywnant back to Betws (15.5 miles) over Moel Siabod (872m) - in other words, bloody knackering.
















Looking back towards Llyn Gwynant with Snowdon topped in cloud in the distance. Just imagining the crowds at the top makes me shudder. We saw seven people all day while out on the tops, a family of three in the distance, a couple of blokes who were ahead of us during the slog up Moel Siabod and a (french?) couple who asked us to take a photo of them at the top.
















A bog! This just about sums up most of the first half of the walk.












And a welsh windswept sheep.

We tried a new campsite, which I think would be ok at any time other than a Bank Holiday, but then at any other time, the Riverside would be a little quieter too (I was quite surprised that there were any spaces left when we arrived on Saturday afternoon) and it's a much nicer site, so I don't know that we'll ever use this one again. The 'Site Full' sign went up on Saturday evening and the number of people on site was reasonable, but we ended up coming home early because of ignorant, rude people who arrived on Sunday, having no idea about being considerate towards others and put their tent up between our car and tent where there wasn't even enough space for them to pitch their tent straight, let alone put any guys in. I feel that we kind of let them win by leaving, but I really didn't want to spend the night knowing they were within 3 feet of me. So Rob drove us home and I slept till 10am in my own bed. Hurrah!

Thursday 11 May 2006

Holiday reminiscing (Dolomites)

In between all this knitting there have been a couple of holidays.
We went snow shoeing in the Dolomites in March which was great, although it was knackering and the flight times were slightly inconvenient.The pic below was taken on the last walking day, up on a plateau which was the scene of fighting during WW2. We were warned to not stray from the path for fear of falling in trenches! Rob is one of those little trugers... I was lagging behind to take the photo!