Wild Walkers visit Wales

It is fast becoming a ritual that after travelling from Letchworth, we meet up in Betws-y-Coed in the middle of the day and have an afternoon walk up to the monument on Llyn Elsi Reservoir. A lovely woodland walk finishing with beautiful views at the top before making our way to Coetmor Mill in Bethesda.

The following day we were naturally keen and ready for a challenge so drove down to park at Ogwen Cottage and climbed up to Bochlwyd. A beautiful Llyn on a clear day! Given the lack of visibility at that level, it hardly made sense to push on and up to the Glyders and even less to try and summit Tryfan. Accordingly we settled for simply going over Bwich Tryfan (the pass to the other side) and taking the easy Heather Terrace back. Those who recalled that route from, well err, umm, about 60 years ago, remembered it as a fast, easy, benign path. It was a tough, rocky, scarcely discernible track! Once down we had a simple 2-mile walk beside Llyn Ogwen to the cars exhausted!

On Wednesday we drove round to Pont Dolgarrog in the Conway valley and after a long steep ascent, walked back along the length of Cowlyd reservoir to the A5 just north of Capel Curig where Chris who had ‘sat the day out’ kindly picked us up and ferried our two drivers back to the cars.

On the final day we started from Capel Curig on what has previously been our “last morning” hike north towards Llyn Crafnant only this time we went right through to the very pretty pass to the next valley and the Llyn. Then over Mynydd Deulyn, turned south through lots of woodland, stopped for lunch beside the charming small Llyn Bychan in calm and quiet, only to get a call from Tom Coates to report he had summited Carnedd Dafydd in a howling wind and close to nil visibility but he had finally achieved his ambition to be there. Next time we must hope for much better conditions and the joy of walking the ridge to the others in that range. Meanwhile the big party carried on back to Capel, then rewarded themselves with a visit to the only good café in the area to indulge in their monster scones? Tea cakes? What were they called?

On the Friday whilst the majority of the group travelled home in the morning Geoff and Tom took advantage of the best weather of the week and climbed the first peak of Cefn y Capel to be rewarded with the best views of the week in every direction. A great close to the week.

Geoff Smith