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:

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

Highland Games

Arriving in Scotland we saw Highland Games advertised in almost every town that we visited. The problem for us was the events were either the week before or in 4 days time; never at a time convenient for us. Our luck changed on the Scottish Borders town of Peebles; all the stars aligned.  Highland Games are when local communities get together and celebrate Scottish culture. All Highland games include: a pipe band competition, highland dancing, and traditional heavy events including caber tossing, hammer throwing, and the crowd favourite of haggis hurling.  Pipe bands and dancing are open to all ages and cover a range of abilities Shot putt is the same as the Olympic event but competitors are free to use whatever technique works for them. Some use a standing throw, others use a run up or spinning preparation.   Hammer throwing, unlike its Olympic equivalent the hammer has a wooden handle and the athlete does not spin in a circle before throwing it. ...
2 comments
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