Wales – 2 weekends on the trot
PYB
At the beginning of April we were up at our favourite North Wales location, well mine anyway – Plas-y-Brenin. This time it was for a Discover Mountain Biking course. We had a great weekend, and although the main purpose was for D to become more confident off road, I have to admit that I learnt a lot as well, and had a great time.
All my photos from the weekend can be seen on my Flickr site here.
Putting it into Practice
Keen to put our new found mountain biking skills into practice we planned to head back to Wales the following weekend – Easter. The original plan was to travel up on the Thursday night to give us Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday in Wales. However, even with me working from home on the Thursday it was a big ask to get everything together. I therefore rang the campsite to let them know that we would still be going but would be there Friday instead. The campsite, Celyn Brithion , was appreciative but laid back.
Rather than travel up to the Snowdon area again, and face the hordes of tourists tramping along the motorway around the Snowdon summits, I wanted to explore some of the other areas of the National Park. So, I had looked to the South East and found Dinas Mawyddy, complete with a decent summit – Aran Fawddwy.
Friday
Having arrived at the campsite in the early afternoon we went for a short walk to stretch our legs.
The overiding memory of the walk must be: “Sheep”, or, more accurately, “Lambs”. They were everywhere, some of them were obviously very very young, as evidenced by the presence of afterbirth on the track and long remnants of umbilical cords hanging from the lambs.
This short circular route can be seen on Trailzilla.
While research the town of Minllyn we found reference to the Brigands Inn, about a mile down the road. We headed down there for a meal and were very disappointed. D had a burger that was fairly tasteless and there was so much dressing on the salad that the plate was swimming in it and the bun was soaking. I had steak, and despite talking to the waitress about how I wanted it cooked it came back overcooked. Basically the trouble seemed to be that the chef was trying to do too much and be too fancy.
Saturday
Saturday we decided to head out on the mountain bikes, to try to put into practice some of the skills we had learnt the previous weekend at Plas Y Brenin and to build on our new found confidence. I had pored over the maps to find bridleways for us to u se and come up with a circular route from a picnic spot up a side road from the small village of Corris.
We did not get off to a good start as the first part of the route headed off into an area that was closed due to logging. So we headed down the road into Corris and battled up an extraordinarily steep bridleway that left us both wondering if it was all worth it. After another push up a bridleway we made it to a junction of forest trails and it was downhill all the way after that. A mixture of forest trail, farmer’s track and steep twisting singletrack. Excellent fun.
Our route for Saturday can be seen here.
On our way out from the campsite we had spotted a pub just round the corner from the campsite – the Buckley Arms. We decided to give it a go for dinner and had a great time. The staff were all friendly and welcoming, the food was simple but excellent and they had decent beer. I can totally recommend the Buckley Arms.
Sunday
With Aran Fawddwy just up the road I had planned a fairly long mountain day. I had planned to park on the road, near the open access land in Cwm Cywarch. However, once there the opportunities were not as good as I had hoped. Luckily I spotted a sign post indicating that there was parking further up the valley. Amazingly, the farmer had developed a parking on a small piece of his land. Complete with all weather surface and a portaloo he had decided that this was better than tourists blocking his road, ruining his land and generally causing lots of problems by parking all over the road. By adding a collection box the farmer had managed to collect £1,300 over the last year, which was donated to the Welsh Air Ambulance.
Parking there a more obvious and slightly shorter route presented itself to us. We climbed up the stream, leaving the stunning views behind us and headed into the mist. It was soon raining hard with strong winds blowing from the side. Adding in the occasional snow drift and the going became quite hard work.
Our walking route can be seen on Trailzilla.
I’m sure that the views from here are truly stunning in clear weather, in the limited visibility we had in the clouds it looked fairly hairy, particulary on the crossing from Drws Bach to Drysgol.
We had planned to ascend Waun Goch and come down the steep sided valley of Cwm Terwyn. Unfortunately, D twisted her ankle coming down from Drysgol so we cut short our plans and headed down the gentle path, with stunning views back across the valley. The ridge we had walked across was hidden in the thick cloud.
When we got back to the camp site we got changed and headed out for dinner, back to the Buckley Arms Hotel again. It started raining just as we started dinner and continued to rain all evening. It carried on raining all night and by morning it was still raining and blowing a hoolie. Rather than head out to the hills we headed home in the rain, beating the bank holiday traffic.
Result, one day excellent mountain biking and one epic quality mountain day to add toward the ML assessment.
Carl Sprake 