Week end in Wales: Friday 

Pork pie in front of the Snowdon

My friends L., Y., E. , his sister C. and I went to visit Wales the last weekend. Herein, is the description  of our trip from the notes I have been taking. 

Thursday

Friday

After 5 hours of sleeping, I woke up with the same tune that when I fell asleep, the melodious but extremely loud snoring of E., it was 7:30 and my only option was to go down to the lounge and have something to drink  waiting for the others to wake up. After wetting my throat  with a good pint of water, I start reading old issues of National Geographic (1982-83). It was very funny to see the review about the prospect of chips and computer. I have never been a big fan of National Geographic because I found it boring while I was a child, but now from the end of my twenties, I could realise it quality. It was also ironic to read about the secular state of Iraq, with a bright future, I also was impressed by the gorilla Koko that could "talk" using hand language and wish I could met her and try to communicate. 

Anyway, I needed to have a tea and we didn't bring any and I didn't have any money. Y. came down and we start to have a breakfast made of toasts with Nutella. I manage to buy a teabag for 10p and drink it waiting for the other to breakfast. 

I dressed up and we went outside to do a walk, the landscape was covered by 20-30 cm of snow, it was superb and very peaceful. First we went to a small lake 100 meter far from the YH, (the lake at the bottom on the map) and we start to do a snowball fighting. Thus we went east to catch a path that was climbing gently to Yr Aran on a crest. Our attempt to do so by walking on the shore of the lake failed miserably due to the combination of frozen swamps and heavy vegetation. So we went back on our steps and try to join the path by the road. We found a path through a farm and start to climb the mountain with herds of sheeps around us. The snow was everywhere, the sky was almost perfectly blue, and we managed to quickly reach the crest. We aimed the peak of Yr Aran, but soon stopped to have a lunch protected by a shattered wall of flat stones.  It was simple but Melton Mowbrie pork pies and buttered bread were very welcomed.

We start walking again, everybody had cooled down a bit and we need to get active. We go on climbing towards Moel Cynghorion and found a slump where snow was almost 1 meter deep, we jumped into it until we got totally covert by snow. I started to feel the cold specially in my feet. Walking on the crest, we headed toward the peak of Moel Cynghorion that we quickly reached. The wind was becoming more intense and full of snow, everybody was really cold, and we decided to go down as , I could hardly feel my head and my feet. E. started to run and fell after 50 meters, we imitated him, everybody was running, falling, rolling, running again, falling and rolling until we were totally staggering. It was wonderful, we were playing like dogs in the snow. The sun reappeared when we reached the end of the slump, it was 14h30, we were cold and tired, we decided to return to the YH. 

On the way, I was feeling really good, I'm definitely a mountain kind of person. I love the sea but my feeling toward it are nothing compared to the mountain. I like the sensation when you feel like some really small part of something so much bigger, pure and wild. I also like the dryness and the cold of air, my legs that can walk and climb whatever the fatigue. Sometime, I see myself as some kind of ibex.

We arrived at the YH have a good hot shower, I realised my little toe was purple and spend some time rubbing it under the hot flow. We changed and drove to a bar in an hotel, have a couple of beer and decided to eat outside. We went looking for  a better menu and found another pub where we had some beers and eat something. While I was eating a salmon steak, a lot of people came around, and drank some beer to the table next to us. I heard them saying something like "after looking in the literature, the proves were shown to be inconclusive,...." Fucking Hell! they were lecturers, I mean leaving the university for the week end and hearing academic dicussion was quiet a pain and somehow a little bit pathetic. 

We went home and opened up by drinking an imitation of Bailey's, that was cheap but still really enjoyable. We were inactive and bored so L. and I started to do a Jigsaw puzzle of 500 pieces while the other went in their room to sleep. After 2 hours, around 20 scouts arrived, making a hell of a noise. It took us 3 hours to finish all the alcohol remaining and the puzzle, full of rubbish cats in a theater. L. went to bed, I stayed in the lounge to wrote down some notes and followed him to bed. 

Well, my last though was that the scouts were less noisy than E.'s snoring... 

The picture on this post haven't been taken during the trip, I had chosen them from internet by courtesy of the original photograph.

Picture

Steve Pardoe's Snowdon Page

Map

Snowdon Map

Map from LonelyPlanet.com

England and Wales Youth Hostels web page