The third Grand Adventure of the summer whisked me and my good friend and neighbor, Simon, to northern Wales, where we spend a very wet week exploring castles and hiking in and around Snowdonia National Park. I'd never been to Wales before, and after a week spent driving around its winding roads, giggling at the funny words on the street signs, and swimming through cloud canopies on its misty mountains and lonesome hillsides, it now feels like an old friend.
It rained every day, making the rare moments of sunshine truly exquisite. After my recent trips to Norway and Italy, where it was generally very warm, I was not prepared for how cold it would be. Yes, I knew it would be coldER, but I thought, "Hey, it's August! Who needs warmies in August?" Anyone hiking in northern Wales, that's who. In any case, it was all part of the experience, and luckily we had an excellent hot shower in the airbnb and a fully equipped kitchen for cooking wonderfully warming, post-hiking grub.
Three days after returning from Italy, and after two days of orientation for my new job, I headed back to the airport and flew with Simon to Manchester, England-England, where we rented a car and he expertly flipped a switch in his brain that enabled him to drive left-handed on the left side of the road (genius-genius). We then pulled out a good, old fashioned paper map and headed for Wales.
It was still early in the day and we had some time to kill before we could check into our airbnb, so let spontaneity take the reins and ended up hiking for a couple hours around the summit and cliffs of Great Orme, near the seaside resort of Llandudno.
The old church was always open to travelers in need, and offered shelter from the wind and rain in a particularly windy and rainy hour.
On a good day, one can apparently see out to the Isle of Man from the summit. It was not a clear day, so we just saw some leek and potato soup at the summit café.
Once we'd had our fill of fresh sea air for the day, we continued around the coast to our airbnb, did a week's worth of grocery shopping, ate pizza and went to sleep with big plans for the next day.
The weather forecast was not optimistic, so we thought we'd try for a smaller mountain in Snowdonia to start things off, hopefully staying below the cloud cover. We packed a lunch, pulled out the maps, and headed into the park towards Yr Aran. The sky cleared for a very dramatic moment along the A5, the mountains on either side revealing their electric greenness against the shadows of the clouds. We pulled over as I needed to get out and jump around a little.
That was unfortunately the only clear moment, as the trail up Yr Aran soon disappeared in pea soup, hiding what was most assuredly a pulchritudinous landscape. After over an hour of climbing, we were very wet, very cold, and finally gave up hope about conditions improving. So back down we went, not wanting to get sick before all the fun began.
Things of course cleared up later that afternoon, so we went for a short walk to the beach near where we were staying and poked around there for a bit instead.
It was raining again the next morning, so we decided to have a peek around nearby Caernarfon. There was a little pirate-themed festival going on down by the water, but neither of us where in a particularly touristy mood and we didn't stay long after walking around the castle.
From there we headed back into the countryside on an adventure that would lead us to an ancient forest and a very peaceful, very purple hill walk. Next time.
