The local forecast for Wednesday 1 January was for incessant rain the whole day through. Combined with Friday’s forecast for even more rain, but carried on wind gusting to 70+mph, we decided that home was probably the most sensible place for us to head.
Mick looked at me with incredulity when I announced my plan for a walk on the way. Then he looked outside at the lashing rain. Then he cocked an ear at the sound that was not so much a ‘pitter patter’ as ‘buckets of water being thrown’. I reassured him that my plan was for a very short walk and that I had no problem with him sitting in Colin reading his book if he so chose.
He didn’t so choose, and half an hour later off we set off on a walk that I struggle to fathom how I’ve never come to walk before. The Torrent Walk is advertised on Snowdonia National Park’s website as being 2.5 miles long and it lies about 150 yards off a road that I have travelled along hundreds of times over the last 28 years. I always knew it was there, so why had I never spared an hour to go and take a look at it? Still, better late than never, and arguably a wet spell in winter (lots of water; lack of tree cover; lack of people) is a good time to go, although a crisp sunny day during a wet spell would be even better.
It’s seldom that we have walked in rain quite that heavy, but the torrents distracted us from quite how wet it was:
The weather wasn’t conducive to more than a couple of quick snaps, which really don’t do justice to the torrents
It’s a simple route, which goes down one side of the (raging) river, crosses over it and then comes back up the other side. As an added bonus for us, somewhere on the upward leg the rain temporarily eased to the point of almost stopping.
What was always going to be a short outing turned out to be shorter than expected. I know not what method the National Park Authority used to measure the route but our experience suggests that it’s woefully inaccurate. Judging by the time we took, our Garmin-Gadget read-out and subsequent plotting, it was barely more than a couple of hundred yards over 1.75 miles, rather than the advertised 2.5. It must be the shortest ‘first walk of the New Year’ I’ve ever taken – but surely even 1.75 miles is better than nothing?
For a more demanding walk enter the water at the bottom bridge and follow the river up stream. I have done this 3 times and it is very rewarding (if not very wet). Some waterfalls are not passable after heavy rain but the whole thing shoud take no more than 2 1/2 hrs.
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