Skip to main content

North Wales

The time of day, the brightness of the sun, shadow and hues and air temperature all impact how we feel and influence our perspective on place.

Hiking a mountain, walking a beach or cycling a canal tow path is an enriched experience when undertaken at dawn or dusk when the light is low.



Mount Snowdon

Mount Snowdon in north Wales is 1085m high and on a clear day one can see across the Irish Sea and to the Isle of Man. We set off when it was just light enough to see the path, about an hour before the sun rose. It was a perfectly clear autumn day. The colours in the sky enhanced by jet streams combined with the mountain hues and their reflection on the lakes were beautiful. Our experience was significantly enhanced by the time of day.

The miners track is the old route taken by the miners.  Along the lake edge is the old workings and some old stone building ruins. We hiked this route in and along the higher Pyg track back down. We beat the cog railway to the top hiking the mountain in 2 ½ hours.  A perfect warm autumn day with little breeze and a rewarding view.


Barmouth

The Welsh north west coast is largely sandy. Its sand is similar in colour and texture to Australia’s beaches.  Like Australia the beaches are walked and fished from dawn to dusk.  The ocean beach at Barmouth has a series of timber groins to retain the sand. With a tide in excess of 5m, the water moves swiftly on both the ebb and flow, patterning the sand.

In the late afternoon we shared a pint or two in a beer garden overlooking the beach. As the sun set, the light softened and shadows lengthened.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How to take a Van-life gap year

How to take a Van-life gap year You don’t just wake up one day, book tickets, fly to Europe and pick up the first campervan you see.  There is a lot of planning and organizing to make it happen. For us, it was a concept that we worked towards over two years and got serious about in the last 6-8 months.  Van purchase In researching vans, we learned that we could buy one, but couldn't insure or register it without being either European residents (read: address, bank account and utility bills in the country we wished to buy the van in) or set up a company to own, insure and register the van. Now this is not straight-forward as one needs to be able to navigate the system from the other side of the world and in another language (as vans in the UK / Ireland were considerably more expensive than on the continent). There are a number of companies who provide services in this space.  We chose EuroCampingCars, because they are based in France and deal in la...
2 comments
Read more

Isle of Skye

Isle of Skye Skye, simply beautiful.  Our highlights were The Storr and the Kendram Turf House. The Storr Our GPS told us that we’d arrived, so we parked. At this stage we couldn’t see The Storr in fact we could not see much through the fog and rain. Being a wet cold day, we donned our waterproof jackets, hoods up to protect our ears from the wind. Craig felt the need to double up and wore a beanie as well. We set off, walking up the steep mountain for about 30 minutes before the fog cleared revealing The Storr, and in particular, The Old Man. The Storr are rock pinnacles, some 100+ metres high clinging to the top of a steep hill. The slopes of the hill are covered in lush grassland. Like the 12 Apostles on the Great Ocean Road, The Storr has been formed through erosion.   The Old Man is the most prominent of these rock formations. The walk up to the Storr starts with a steep gravel path that gradually becomes steeper then deteriorates into uneven rocks, m...
1 comment
Read more

Ben Nevis – Bagging our first Munro

To a Scottish person, a Munro is a mountain over 1000m in height. To hike up one is to "bag" it. Every Scot can tell you how many Munros they've bagged.  Now a 1000m doesn't sound that high but the base of almost all Scottish mountains is close to sea level.   Yesterday we bagged our first Munro, Ben Nevis the UKs highest peak. Ben Nevis is walked by 12,000 people a year. In rough figures that is 400 a day. It is not walkable all year. Even without the winter snow, the almost constant cloud cover and accompanying rain mean that there are few great days to climb it.   We had checked the forecast and saw a window in the morning and knowing that thousands would attempt the climb we resolved to start early. The alarm went off at 5am. We started at about 5m above sea level and hiked the 1345m to the summit. The hike has three distinct sections: 1. The base to the saddle: the path winds its way through silver birch forest and sheep paddocks w...
2 comments
Read more