Lazy Weekend

Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th June 2013

Shell Island - Days 7 & 8

We woke up surprisingly free of aches and pains on Saturday morning, despite our Snowdon hike the day before. But just to be on the safe side, we've spent the weekend making sure our legs are fully rested and our bodies fully fuelled with food.

Claire's mum Jen arrived on Saturday to spend the weekend with us. We were in Barmouth at the time getting essential supplies (i.e. barbecue food, baby wipes and muffin mix), and when we got back she was waiting for us at our camp. Apparently she'd been able to find our camp easily because it is the site of an infamous Sat Nav joke made by her partner Andrew on a previous visit. Andrew was working this weekend, so the days have passed without that sort of humour.

We spent the afternoon on the beach, mainly flying kites, before heading back to camp where we cooked a whole chicken on the barbecue! This is the first time we've really been able to to make full use of our new barbecue. We bought it last year, but as the sun was only out for about 2 hours last summer, we didn't have much time to use it. The barbecue is called a Cobb grill, and it's a cross between a barbecue, oven, wok, and pizza oven. It also uses (optional) smoke free fuel blocks, which I like.
There was a bit of grumpiness on Jen's behalf about the lack of a camp fire. I blame Andrew for this, which may sound a little unfair as he wasn't even here, but we decided not to bring a fire basket because we knew Jen and Andrew would bring theirs (and, we don't have a fire basket so would have to buy one). Jen assumed we would never go camping without a fire basket. If Andrew had come, then he would have brought one "just in case", hence it is his fault we didn't have a fire.
The roast chicken was delicious, and cooked to perfection, and after that we made some bread rolls and some chocolate muffins (all with a slight roast chicken flavour).
Before bed, Jen forced us to drink some chocolate Horlicks with Tia Maria in (not to be recommended, although as I don't really like Tia Maria or Horlicks, it's no great surprise. The chocolate part was OK though).

Today started with a bacon and egg sandwich (using the bread rolls we made last night), followed by a trip to the newly discovered best butcher in North Wales, and then a trip to the beach, where we had a swim (well, more of a dunk for me), read some books and ate sausage rolls and chicken flavour chocolate muffins.

We headed back to camp when we got too cold on the beach, for some amazing lime flavour chicken breasts from the super butcher. Jen headed home after dinner, and we've spent the evening drinking wine and making more bread rolls, for tomorrow's pack lunch.

We're going up 3 mountains tomorrow all being well - Tryfan, and two mountains that are joined together called Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach. To avoid the problems we had on Snowdon day, we are going to get a bacon buttie on the road to speed things up. I will also try to remember to switch my alarm clock on too.

Before I sign off, I would just like to leave you with one disgusting conundrum. What explanation could there be for there being a Hula Hoop crisp on the floor of one of the portaloos, except for someone eating Hula Hoops whilst in a portaloo?!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Shell Island

More Uphill

Friday 7th June 2013

Shell Island - Day 6

Sorry about the lack of blogs for the last few days. We didn't do that much on Wednesday and Thursday so I didn't bother writing anything. And after three days of not being able to get a decent mobile phone signal, I gave in and bought 24 hours wi-fi access at Shell Island so I could post the Cadair Idris blog.

By Friday, Claire's legs had recovered enough from the squats and the mountain to go up Snowdon. We'd planned to get up fairly early and leave the campsite by 8am. But after I forgot to switch my alarm clock on, and our getting ready took longer than planned, it was actually quarter to 9 by the time we left. And then by the time we crawled along the lanes behind the worst coach driver in the world ever, it was gone 10 o'clock when we got to the car park at Pen-y-Pass where we were supposed to be starting our walk from.

Needless to say, the car park was full. We parked about a mile down the road, which although was a lot cheaper, added a mile and a hill to our walk. We had originally planned to do the Snowdon Horseshoe, which involves going up Crib Goch (which is the hardest way up, and involves scrambling up a steep rocky ridge), and down Y Lliwedd (which according to the guide book is fairly easy, and involves "little scrambling"). Because of our late start, and our extended route due to the parking problems, we decided to go up Y Lliwedd and down the really easy Miner's Track.

Y Lliwedd was far from easy, and involved quite a lot of scrambling in my opinion, and also a very steep climb up a scree slope to get to the summit. The first photo below shows an example of the path (take your eyes off it at your peril!), and the second shows Claire (obviously), with the steep diagonal climb up the scree visible behind her to the right. You can also see the way down further to the right, with the zig-zag path. The third photo is of the Y Lliwedd ridge.









We made it up, pouring with sweat and feeling a bit sunburnt, went up to the summit (where there was some serious summit hogging going on), and had a sit down and a scone with jam and cream in the cafe. I would give the scone 3 out 10, and it only scores that high because it was chilled and I was hot. There are certain criteria to be met when it comes to cream teas, and this particular scone met them in name only.
However, we did enjoy them, despite the inadequacies. Whilst we were eating them, I realised that we'd made a schoolgirl error with our route (or should I say, distance) planning. We'd assumed that the distance and duration for each route in the guide book were for a return trip, but it turned out they were actually one way, which makes sense I suppose. So our 4 mile walk turned into an 8 mile walk, plus our car parking extension, and the 1,000 metres of ascent!

Our route down was far easier. In fact, we were going so fast that we were overtaking people on the way down! The zig zags were much easier than they looked, and once we'd passed them, the rest of the route was like walking on a pavement in comparison to going up.

Snowdon is an impressive mountain - the view down from the summit, which is a 500 metre drop into the lake, is amazing, and really brings it home how high you've climbed. The only downside is all the other people there, most of whom have come up on the train and are skipping round in flip flops and stilettos. However, We'll definitely come back sometime and try and go up via Crib Goch.

We practically jogged back to the car from Pen-y-Pass, as I'd seen on the Shell Island blackboard in the morning that the causeway to Shell Island would be flooded for two hours from 7.30pm! We had a fast drive back, and arrived at the causeway at 7.26pm, to find that the blackboard had changed it's mind and actually the causeway would be open all day.

The Island was very busy when we arrived back, as a lot of people had arrived for the weekend. Fortunately, our choice of camp meant that we can't really see any of the new arrivals. We can still hear them though. We had showers, and had a couple of beers with a burger and chips in the Shell Island Tavern Bar while we waited for our laundry that we'd left washing, then collapsed into our sleeping bags ready for a lazy day tomorrow.


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Location:Snowdon

Mount Sinai

Tuesday 4th June 2013

Shell Island - Day 3

I had an excellent night's sleep last night. I decided to wear my earplugs, and woke at 8.05am to Claire moaning that I'd been snoring, and the alarm had been going off for 5 minutes. I didn't hear a peep out of those noisy birds though. Or anything else for that matter.

We managed to drag ourselves out of the tent after about half an hour (an improvement on yesterday), and I made some porridge whilst Claire made sandwiches out of some homemade bread that she'd baked on last night's barbecue, and the remains of last night's sausages. We set off at 10am, which was an hour later than we'd planned, but not too bad.

It took us about an hour to drive to the start of today's walk. We'd spent some time last night deciding the best route to take up Cadair Idris. We eventually decided on the shortest, most scenic, but steepest route. 6 miles in total with about 1,000 metres of height gain (and, of course, height loss, which in my opinion is the difficult bit).

The walk started off climbing through some lovely woodlands with a river and waterfalls, up to a turquoise blue lake which made a perfect sausage sandwich stop. I must say that the sandwiches were delicious, especially the bread. Partly because they actually were delicious, and partly because I was chastised for not mentioning the bread baking in yesterday's blog.


After lunch, it was onto the ridge leading up to the summit, which was much easier going than I was expecting. Not so for Claire, who was suffering the after effects of the squats in yesterday's kettlebell workout.
There were views for miles in every direction as we ascended, and as we got to the top, the view towards Snowdon opened out before us. It was nice to be able to see something from the top of a mountain for a change!
At the summit, there was a rather annoying group of southerners (possibly from Essex, but I'm rubbish with accents) who were "summit hogging". In my opinion, and Claire agrees too, when you reach the trig point, the correct mountain etiquette is to climb on top of it, pose for photos, and then relocate nearby for a break/lunch/nap or whatever takes your fancy. Not so for the Essex crew. They decided to sit in a ring on the little concrete base of the trig point, talk loudly in Essex accents, flaunt their unsuitable mountain clothing (a denim skirt!!!!), and make the summit a very unwelcoming place.
After about 5 minutes we got bored of waiting for them to move, and barged our way through to the trig point to claim the summit. We didn't take any photos because of the denim skirted southerners in the background.





From the summit, we spotted a couple of blokes we'd crossed paths with earlier, by the turquoise lake. They appeared to be facing in the approximate direction of Mecca (east-ish), and were on their knees praying. They'd both looked pretty unfit earlier, in fact, we thought one might actually die on the ascent as he was that red in the face. We walked down from the trig point (ousted by the swarms of southerners), and as we walked towards the men we noticed that in actual fact, one was checking his mobile phone inside his rucksack, and the other was lighting a cigarette in the shelter of his rucksack. We stopped for a quick chat, and they couldn't stop laughing when we told them we thought they'd found Allah on top of the mountain. We also found an alternative explanation for the red face, as they were both swigging from cans of beer!


After that, we walked along the ridge, which was actually a huge grassy path on a gentle slope, before starting our descent.
This was the bit I hadn't been looking forward to. Since childhood, I've always found downhill more difficult than uphill (thanks for the inherited knees Dad), and it's got more difficult the older I've got. Today's downhill was a particularly big and steep one. I'd been wearing a pre-emptive knee support all day, in anticipation of this moment, and, at the time of writing, it seems to have done a good job. My knees feel better than after coming down Shutlingsloe last week, and that's only about a third of the size. We'll see how they feel tomorrow.

We made it back to the car, checked the clock, and found that our speed for the day was approximately 1mph! 6 miles in just under 6 hours! That does include two generous food and tea breaks, and plenty of mini-breaks to admire the view/check the map/tie shoelace or any number of excuses for a breather.

We've had some nice barbecued chicken and cous cous for dinner and are planning an easier day tomorrow walking along the beach.

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Location:Shell Island

The Dawn Chorus

Monday 3rd June 2013

Shell Island - Day 2

We didn't sleep very well last night. Everything was fine until about 4.30am when the birds started singing. These birds were particularly vocal, and I suspect may have been a little bit annoyed with us for pitching our tent in the middle of their circle of trees. One of them was even cheeky enough to land on one of the tent poles and sing to us.
So we've decided it might be best to get an early night in future, although however early I go to bed, there is no way on earth I am getting up at 4.30am when the birds start singing.

When we finally left the campsite it was about midday. We did our railway trail bike ride, which was really nice, despite the lack of any Julia's. It wasn't too busy, although there was a pack of pensioners spread out across the trail at one point. They were either getting hard of hearing, or were just choosing to ignore our bike bells.

When we got back to Barmouth, we had a late lunch of seafood chowder from a little restaurant on the quayside called the Lobster Pot. We think, somewhat controversially, that it was nicer that the fish and chips we usually have from the Harbour Fish Bar round the corner.

The weather has been amazing today, and according to the forecast, it should be sunny for the rest of the week! We can hardly believe it, and my finger is hovering over the delete key right now, for fear of jinxing ourselves. Despite the sunshine, I have managed to avoid getting sunburnt (!) - by remembering to put the sunscreen on at the start of the day instead of the end.

Tomorrow we are going up Cadair Idris, which is a big mountain, which we cycled below today. It looked pretty big earlier, and after consulting the guide book, it seems like all the routes start from practically sea level, so there is a lot of climbing to do. I'm beginning to wonder if the kettlebell workout we did at the camp site earlier was such a good idea. Claire's thighs are still all wobbly whenever she stands up.

So, at a quarter to nine, I am going to sign off, get my rucksack ready for tomorrow, have my hot chocolate, and get to bed in the hope of getting a good night's sleep before those naughty birds wake me up.


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Location:Shell Island

First Impressions

Sunday 2nd June 2013

Shell Island - Day 1

As the weather was so nice, we decided to have a rushed morning of packing and stressing and drive over and set up camp today.

After loading and unloading the car several times before we managed to fit everything in, we set off and had a nice but not particularly blog-worthy journey here.

We are staying for 7 - 12 days, depending on the weather, and we're hoping to do a mixture of going up mountains, some bike rides, some easier walks, and some playing on the beach.

I was a bit apprehensive about camping at Shell Island. I've been once before, and it was OK, but nothing special. I camped in the fields then, so it was just like any other campsite really. Various people have sniggered and made comments like "Hell Island" or "Shellsuit Island" when I told them where I was going, so it's understandable that I'd be a bit concerned.
But Claire's been loads of times before, and thinks it's the best campsite in the world ever, so we decided to give it a try.

Up to now, I haven't seen anything hellish and it's one of the nicest campsites I've stayed on. Although I haven't visited the portaloos yet.
We've found a nice spot in the dunes to pitch the tent (and the giant "event shelter" that Claire has borrowed from work). I can hear children, but I can't see them, so they should be safe.
The views from our pitch are amazing - we can see loads of mountains in the sunset, and we think the big pointy one in Snowdon. We will have to see how pointy it is when we go up it later in the week.
By the time we got set up, cooked dinner and had a couple of beers, it was 9pm! No wonder I'm freezing.

Tomorrow we're going for a bike ride along a trail that, according to Claire's mum, is frequented by Julia Roberts! I'm sure I've heard that Julia Bradbury did a TV programme there as well, but we don't mind bumping into her as well. You can never have too many Julia's.
I've been told that I'm not having any chocolate until I've finished typing, so I'm going to go and raid the sweets bag myself.

I've got my chocolate rations, and also taken the opportunity to visit the portaloos. As well as being the least unpleasant portaloo I've ever been in. It was also supplied by my favourite Swedish pop group!

It's getting quite gloomy now, and it's very close to my bed time, so I'm going to finish my chocolate and get snuggled up with my hot water bottle (a.k.a. Claire) and try and have a good night's sleep before meeting all these Julia's tomorrow.

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Location:Shell Island - North Wales