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.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Snowdon
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