A Couple of Days in the Rhinogs - Day 1

By Friday afternoon I had finally got the Psion and the computer reliably talking to each other and Husband had made a route choice for Saturday.

It perhaps looked like a lazy choice that we would repeat a ridge walk that we did at the end of January, but there was good reason: at the end of January we spent two days up in the clouds with no visibility. We felt sure that the views would be superb, if only we could have seen them, so vowed to return in good weather. The forecast for Saturday was good, so it was an easy decision to make.

We set out from Barmouth late on Saturday morning, went past the slab and onwards to the mast, from where we headed diagonally up the hillside until we hit the ridge at a junction of two walls. Then all we had to do was follow the ridge to Y Llethr.

The downside of having good weather was that we could see what was to come; back in January we couldn’t see the big inclines coming, so uphill section seemed to be longer than the visible 10 metres! But on the plus side, what views! It was one of those unusual days when neither Cadair Idris nor Snowdon was shrouded by clouds, and from the ridge we had a view of both.

The most amusing incident of the day came at our lunch stop, when we were crouched down behind the ridge wall, commenting that it was amazing that on the Saturday of a Bank Holiday weekend we had walked for over 3 hours without seeing a single person, when just then we heard someone approaching on the other side of the wall. He became visible to us as he climbed the stile over the wall, it turned out to be a chap wearing boots, socks and a rucksack – and nothing else. A Naked Rambler!

Husband forgot the rule of not laughing out loud at other people’s appearances and guffawed.

After lunch, we headed up to Diffwys, on to Y Llethr and then down the ridiculously steep ‘path’ down to Llyn Hywel (so this was where everyone was!) before popping up to the top of Rhinog Fach. Peace on the summit was shattered by an unruly group, mainly of children, and we didn’t dally long.

We then made our way down to our intended pitch for the night and settled down to wait until a decent time to pitch the tent.

We were joined by three chaps who decided to pitch ten yards away from us. I was all for moving on somewhere else, but Husband was intent on staying (I have to say, it was a fairly spectacular pitch). I’ve never had to share a wild camp with anything but wild life before – but the chaps didn’t disturb us, and were gone before I made it out of the tent in the morning.

An excellent day in excellent weather.

Day 2 to follow - I've got to go and do some chores just now...