Rodney is enjoying listening to British traffic reports on the radio, especially when we are stationery in Eileen and perhaps looking out at a beautiful view in a remote part of this busy little country. But having said that, we’ll no doubt get caught out badly, somewhere on our travels….. Our first morning in Betws-y-Coed was spent doing chores, while listening to the radio, and I spent a couple of hours catching up on emails. Unknown to me, until the next morning, all of the emails I wrote disappeared before they got sent, I will not write about my reaction to the hours wasted… Mid-afternoon Mr Itchyfeet persuaded me to join him on the two hour (return) walk to Swallow Falls. It was a pretty walk through the woods beside the Ogwen River and the weather was perfect, but unfortunately the stroll turned in to a muddy ramble and took a lot longer to get there than anticipated.
When we finally arrived, we discovered that you have to pay to enter a six-foot high automatic turnstile, to be able to view the falls and guess what? We didn’t have enough change on us. After such a yucky walk, I was adamant I was going to enjoy the prize at the end of the trek. So we were very naughty, got creative, paid for one of us with the coins that we had, and then somehow squeezed into one section of the turnstile. We felt a bit guilty, but at least we both got to see the very pretty Swallow Falls.
After the shock of finding that almost every email I had done the previous day had not travelled anywhere, I decided that Tuesday was going to be a day when I wasn’t going to travel anywhere. The mobile phones wouldn’t work and the internet was out, so I couldn’t spend time using either of those. It was nice to just switch off for the day, no touristing, no photos, no writing, no cleaning, no washing, instead I just read magazines, did some sewing and even got to sit in the sun for a while. Mr Itchyfeet just couldn’t do it; so at midday he kissed me goodbye and wandered out of the campsite. Don’t panic, he did come back. At around about 5:30pm. He caught a bus up to Pen-y-Pass and then set off up the Miner’s Track towards the summit of Snowden; the highest mountain in Wales. Without me holding him up, with my short stride and blackberry picking habit, he walked at a pretty good pace, but decided that there wouldn’t be time to get all the way to the top and back, without the risk of missing the last return bus and have me worrying where he was. As I said the phones were not working and they didn’t come back on until around 4:30pm.
Rodney got as far as the junction with the Pyg Track, about 60% of the way up, and strolled back down that route to the road, although from all accounts it was a very rough track and he has a nasty graze on his left knee to prove it. He made it back down in time to have a cup of tea, before catching the bus back to Betws-y-Coed. He looked tired and a bit red in the face when he arrived home, but I was very impressed at what he had accomplished in such a short time.
The 150m morning dash to the bathroom, in the rain, was deserted on Wednesday; no other campers wandering about, or sitting outside eating their breakfast. There was also no sign of sunshine and on discreetly peeking through the windows in all the vans between us and the shower block, it seemed everyone was tucked in for the day and watching telly. We have no telly, so we packed up as the rain eased, and drove down through Dolwyddelan to Blaenau Ffestiniog, did a bit of a wriggle about and then followed the undulating A4212 towards Bala. All the woolly black and white sheep looked soggy and sad, but there was certainly still plenty of lush green grass around for their breakfast, their lunch and their dinner. We opted to eat our tasty lunch (no green grass for us) in a lay-by beside the Llyn Celyn (lake), before continuing on our journey.
With a little time up our sleeves, we drove right around Llyn Tegid, which involved driving once through Pandy (you should live there, Andy) and twice through Bala. We turned up the radio and enjoyed a good laugh at the traffic reports. But we don’t laugh when we go over speed bumps, or I should say, that Eileen hates speed bumps. It feels like all the contents of her cupboards want to break out and spill all over the floor and it has happened when they haven’t been properly locked! We then drove through Bethel, Druid, Rug and Glyndyfrdwy en route to Trevor; that’s a village not a person. But when we got to Trevor Old Mill, we found some people, our friends Phil, Ingrid and Rose were at home and awaiting our arrival. Phil pointed out a good spot on their property to park Eileen; we had views of their wonderful mill, the valley and the garden which was still full of flowers.
They have a most beautiful home, we both love everything about it and since we last visited they have created even more sensational rooms and views over the countryside. If I lived there, I could never leave. Unfortunately, we only had the one night there, but enjoyed a good meal at the Corn Mill restaurant in Llangollen and hours of good conversation all evening and the following morning. It was hard to tear ourselves away, but we really did need to get ourselves further south.
