The first couple of days of our holiday proper were spent in North Wales, at Betws-Y-Coed, which is one of my favourite places. It has a nice campsite (the Riverside, open March till end of Oct), nice pub with outside seats and heaters, and lots of outdoor shops to browse.
On Monday (while NOT AT WORK ha!) we caught the bus (with very friendly bus driver) to Capel Curig and walked back to Betws via Llyn Crafnant (always pretty) and The Grey Mare's Tail waterfall. The walk was 11,5 miles but not particularly hilly.
We passed lots of old mine workings and relics of industrial days, all overgrown and reclaimed by nature. The men that worked in these places must have thought that their walls were so solid and the industry would last forever, and yet not so very long a time later, here I am wandering through their ruins looking at the plants and trees that have taken hold.
It always makes me wonder how long it would take for all the things we take for granted, like shopping centres, motorways and so on to disappear if the people did. I think I've seen too many films, as it's usually around this point that I start thinking about zombies and get scared... anyway back to Wales.
You can't really tell on this little picture, but the white blob on the left of the tree is a sheep that was taking a nap on a rock. So cute!!
Saw lots of white welsh sheep and these two - which I think are Jacob sheep (although my sheep spotting talents are minimal to say the least.)
I made a slight error in judgement during a visit to my sister's last weekend. As we were leaving, I called to my nephew to give his auntie a goodbye kiss, forgetting that my sister had informed me earlier that they were getting over colds and it was too late to back out by the time his snotty little face and plastered itself all over mine. Nice. Not. Bleugh. Needless to say, three days later I started with a sore throat, the voice went completely over the weekend and now it is coming back but I still sound like Janet Ellis.
On Saturday, we decided that some fresh air was needed and headed out on to the hills not too far from here, following the Pennine Way across the M62 at Windy Hill bridge (by the big aerial on the tops by Jcn22 if anyone knows the area) up to the Aiggen Stone,
round the reservoirs overlooking Todmorden and back. It was a lovely day (although there were some ominous looking clouds further north for a while) although slightly spoiled by having to walk the last hour or so in almost agony because of stupid blisters on my stupid feet. Managed to put some tape on them before they caused any real damage, but it was really really slow and uncomfortable hobble back to the car. Today's Lesson: put the tape on BEFORE your feet start hurting.
Some sheep, because it's been a while.
We were very lucky with the weather over the weekend, it is very unusual for Manchester to seem to have the best of it. And the day was rounded off by a spectacular sunset.
On Saturday we drove over to Bakewell to meet up with my Dad and step-Mum who had brought their caravan up to the Peaks for a few days.
We got a guidebook of walks in the area from the tourist information office and set off for a nice three mile walk up to the Nine Ladies Stones, the four of us and dogs Holly and Ben. There were some interesting things along the way, such as a protest camp / squat in the woods where the council want to reopen a quarry, they had rope ladders, rope bridges and everything. We didn't see any eco-warriors, but they could have been hiding out in their amazing (but rather unsafe) looking tree houses. Also encountered on the way were some rather anxious cows, one of whom took an obvious dislike to Holly and Ben, thankfully there was enough room around the edge of the field for us to skirt around and there was a fence which looked easily climbable in the event of an emergency.
After a couple of hours of walking, it became obvious that the walk wasn't three miles long - it was actually 5,2 miles and quite hilly - but everyone coped and later, over a nice cup of tea, declared it had been a good outing although I thought the Nine Ladies were a bit of an anti-climax - Avebury and Castlerigg it is not... I didn't take a picture of the stones as there were lots of people sitting on them.
The weather forecast said it would be cooler this weekend, which as far as I am concerned is much better weather to be having than that of late and we decided to head out onto the hills of the Lake District. On Saturday we walked up Blencathra (868m) and down the other side (10.5miles) and then to the pub for tea. It most certainly was colder, hood and even gloves were required at the top.
On the way back, we passed a field with some llamas.
Posing for the camera: llamas know they're cute.
Last weekend was amazing. After the previous weekend of knackering myself out and having campsite issues I had declared that we were staying in and avoiding people. However, on Thursday night we wandered up to our local for dinner and a few pints and both confessed that we'd been thinking how nice it would be to go camping and that we ought to get back on that horse.
So we decided on the North Lakes as it would hopefully be a little quieter than the central area around Ambleside and picked a campsite that was new to us having been told that they weren't full but we would be 'up on the hill'. Up on the hill is a very accurate description. There was a small carpark, a toilet block and a few statics there - and a flat area the size of a postage stamp with dozens of caravans and big tents crammed on. The rest of the site would have been enormous had it been stretched out and laid out flat, but as it was a one in two slope with a few little flat ledges dotted around there was actually only about 6 or 7 decent pitches in the entire place. We could have pitched up near to someone else's space as theoretically there was room, but given that I would have had a hissy fit if someone had done that to me and it was still early evening, we decided to try our luck elsewhere.
Luckily, our Good Lucky Fairy had decided to join us for the weekend and we found a dead nice (and quiet) campsite that isn't on the map. It was by a river and on both evenings we got to see lots of bats flying around unbelieveably close to us. There were also some ducks, chickens, some cute little dogs and a big dog that cocked his leg on our tent but I screeched at him so he ran away, but the bats were by far the most interesting.
We had a lovely walk (about 10 miles) on Saturday around Derwentwater and back over Catbells (451m), a dead nice pub that served cheap beer and scrummy food and on Sunday I purchased lots of shiny new kit. Including a new spork for my collection!
Buy that Luck Fairy a beer!
