Rhinog Fawr

On 17 December last year I walked up Rhinog Fawr. The rain that started falling as I had left Barmouth in the dark that morning was so contrary to the fair weather forecast that I had clutched at the straw that it was just a passing shower. As it went, I completed the walk in atrocious visibility and distinctly damp conditions.

On Thursday last week Husband and I were in Barmouth and found ourselves with a few hours to spare. As Husband had not been with me on my jaunt up Rhinog Fawr last year, and as it is one of the few tops in the Rhinogau up which he has not walked, we settled on spending our morning making the trip.

This time, as we left Barmouth at first light, the weather was staying true to the forecast – clear skies and cold.

The sun had just burst over the horizon as we arrived at the road-end at Graigddu Isaf (I didn’t recognise it when we arrived – there was a forest there a year ago and now it’s gone!)

17/12/2006 - That's a forest


13/12/2007 - The forest's gone!

and the two main Rhinog peaks were looking stunning bathed in the golden sunshine. It’s just a pity that my little point and click camera couldn’t do justice to the view (nor in fact any of the others of the day; such wonderful conditions and I didn’t get a single good photo).

Rhinog Fach and Fawr

Rhinog Fawr in the sunshine

Leaving the Roman Steps a while later to make our way up to Llyn Du the going became noticeably frosty, but nowhere near as icy as it turned out to be as we started climbing up the north side of Rhinog Fawr above the llyn.

Three RAF Hawks on some sort of an air-combat exercise immediately above us held our attention for a while until we decided that it was time to push on, at times being very inelegant over the boulders in trying not to slip on the icy surfaces.

Being inelegant!

Things went well (well, except for the bit when I cut my finger on a rock during one minor arm-flailing slip, and then, quite impressively, trod on my own hand a while later (but we’ll gloss over that one)) as we continued on up, admiring the views with many a ‘wow’ and a ‘gosh’.

All the scrambly bits were behind us and we were just on the final bit of incline up to the trig point (i.e. a nice easy bit) when I slipped on an icy rock. It wasn’t a serious slip and I’m not generally one to fall over a lot, so I did what comes naturally in such a situation and flailed my arms around with some force. Unfortunately for Husband he was standing a little too close behind me. I clocked him square across the jaw. He reported that his ear was ringing for the next ten minutes! Ooops. Bit of a clumsy day I was having.

Views from the summit were fantastic (a pleasant contrast to the ten feet that I could see last year!) so we spent a while pointing out the various places that we’ve camped in the area and oohed and aahed some more. The only cloud within view was covering the summit of Snowdon.

Looking North-westish from the summit.

After leaving the top in a westerly sort of direction and after some tramping over some interesting terrain (last year I took the easy option of heading down on a path until I met a wall, then following that wall back to Llyn Du, even though it wasn’t a very direct route) we picked up a path that took us back to Llyn Du, where we adhered to the principle that variety is the spice of life and so took to the north side of the llyn for our return.

Llyn Du from the West

Returning to the car a while later, the tally of people seen during the day stood at twelve – ten of whom were a school trip and were just heading up to Llyn Du to go up Rhinog Fawr as we were on our way down. The most notable things about them were the matching rubberised waterproofs that they were wearing (tops and trousers; that must have been slightly less than comfortable in such sunny weather) and the enormously heavy looking canvas-esque day-packs. Despite their uncomfortable looking attire, I was still miffed that we didn’t get to go on such exciting outings when I was at school.

Once again, it was only a very short outing, slipped into a few available hours – but given our propensity to climb hills in awful weather it was hugely enjoyable in the fine weather.