Hillwalking in Wales

After my Irish trip in May, I decided to continue my quest to bag all the 3000 foot mountains in Britain & Ireland with a trip to Wales, combining this with a touring holiday by caravan.

There are 15 peaks in Wales credited with being at least 3000 feet, and if you are sufficiently masochistic it's possible to do them all in one massive 20 hour expedition, but I decided to break the task down to three managable days of 6 - 8 hours each. Day One I tackled the classic Snowdon Horseshoe route, up Crib Goch, along over the pinnacles to Crib y Ddysgl, then on to Snowdon itself (large numbers of people who had come up by train !) and then finally over Y Lliwedd to complete the circle. A very enjoyable day in pleasant sunshine. The second photo shows the Crib Goch pinnacles (very similar to parts of the Aonach Eagach) and Snowdon on the skyline.

Day 2 I climbed the Glyders starting with Tryfan, and the first photo shows the extent of the North Ridge - which I didn't take on, preferring the Llyn Bochlwyd approach. A further 4 peaks were traversed, all over rocky terrain for a 19k walk with 1800m of ascent.

And then finally Day 3 was over the Carneddau, seven peaks in a long line (with an out-and-back excursion to one of them). My wife dropped me just up from the A55 road near the North Coast and came to pick me up when I finished the 23k at Llyn Ogwen.

There were rainy days in between, but I was very lucky to pick three days when I only had one shower of 5 minutes, which seemed to contrast with the weather being reported back in Scotland !