More hills.....

The birds were cheeping loudly when I awoke. It was warm as the sun was beaming down on our tent. The night had been quite comfortable, despite two of us being squeezed into a tiny space. It was immediately apparent that Rosemary had done a fine job of navigating us here in the dark as we had come down the least steep bit of the valley. Everything else appeared precipitous. That said, we were getting out the valley the other way……up a precipitous climb. Breakfast was a few bars and a glug of water…. Moel Siabod stood between us and a cup of tea!

We packed up quickly and then started ascending the hill. Rosemary traversed in the opposite direction of Moel Siabod suggesting that this would be quicker than going straight up the mountain. Although she is a premier adventure racer and I just like photographing hills, I still knew best! Inevitably, she got onto the ridge well before me and in a less sweaty state! I should have listened.

It was a beautiful morning though and the scenery was amazing. Yes, going was tough but life doesn’t get much better than this. The ascent to the summit was my kind of thing….grassy rather than boulders. We met a man doing the Paddy Buckley Round, in which you’ve got to run 100km over 47 summits in 24 hours. We were only doing about 9km after the 25km from yesterday.

I had nightmares coming off Moel Siabod, the scene of a dreadful triathlon run. A few years before, I had done the Snowman Triathlon and had done a great swim, a good bike and then it went wrong. It wasn’t fitness….it’s just that I cross rocky hilly terrain like a just born giraffe! I went from being with some fit guys in the top 30 to chatting to women with pendulum like breasts who do such events as a life challenge. Fortunately, we weren’t racing today so the descent was more bearable. We did have to get a jiggy on though as the café in Betwys-y-Coed stopped selling breakfasts at mid-day.


We made it with plenty of time to spare though and the nosebag was tremendous. The Glamorgan sausages were particularly good and my scone was humungous. It was then off to the bus stop to catch the bus back to Llanberis. “Ooohhh, just time to look in the Ellis Brigham discount store” I thought. I did, however, sense panic in Rosemary as the bus comes only every 2 hours. My browse was limited to 3 minutes. The bus was spot on time and John picked us up at the other end and we headed back to Dinorwig, via the ice-cream shop, and then I fell asleep for the rest of the afternoon.