Snowdonia 28 to 31 May

Waking up to the sound of downstairs' burglar alarm isn't exactly on my top 10, but on Thursday this faulty alarm proved itself especially useful as it went off just before my alarm, at 3.28am to be exact.

It was about 5am by the time we were in the car and slowly making our way to that wonderful place that is Snowdonia. We stopped only a couple of times, it wasn't the most comfortable of rides with all the equipment crammed into the car. We eventually arrived at our campsite for about mid-day.

Tents set up, well fed and happily hydrated with plenty of water, we set off on our first walk which took us across a ridge and up to a summit of 320m. From here we followed the ridge right down to the other end where it descended to a lake and the path soon led us back to our campsite about 1.5km away. The weather was moderate, a few clouds at just over 300m limited our visibility slightly, the forecast was to improve over the weekend with some very sunny weather during the next couple of days.

On Friday we awoke to a cloud-less sky, ignoring our plan to sleep well into 10am we set off early in order to get the most out of the sunny day. It was beautiful, all the peaks that were covered the day before - and most other times i've been there to be honest - were now perfectly visible and glowing in the morning sun. I decided to take us to the Glyders, a group of mountains to the North East of Snowdon whose peaks reach about 950m. We started off with a nice walk up into the base of the first mountain, and climbed up a steep path that lead its way up a ridge and was at times a very steep path. From here we walked the top of the mountain range, descending and ascending from peak to peak. The famous canter lever rock was about 3/4 of the way into the walk and a steep descent down the side of Glyder Fach left us standing at the bottom of Tryfan, which i did attempt but was too windy and would have taken too long to summit in the short period of time we had left of the day (one for next time). From Tryfan it was another half an hour or so to the car. We walked about 8 hours that day.

It was Saturday morning when for the second time in this little holiday i was awakened by words which described the amazing blue sky above our heads. Today we were going for Snowdon, the highest mountain in England and Wales which stands at 1085m.

After finding a suitable spot to park the car - it's extremely busy on Snowdon - we made our way up the "miner's track". It starts off long and fairly flat but eventually takes you to the bottom of the North Ridge where you have a steep climb up to the top of the ridge. This leaves you just 90m from the summit which is an easy walk up. We made the climb in good time, i decided on more than one occasion to skip the zig-zags on the path and a climb straight up - a move which can be quite dangerous at times, but faster and certainly more enjoyable if like me you prefer the "off the beaten track" style. The summit was ridiculously busy, we're talking about 200 people up there. Not my idea of a nice mountain and is a clear disadvantage of climbing easy mountains, but the astonishing views all over and the perfect weather more than made up for it.

After eventually reaching the car, and driving back to our campsite we concluded that this had been another fairly long day, just over 7 hours.

Sunday was our last day and we had to make our way back home. We had lunch by a lake near Capel Curig, laid in the sun for an hour or so then drove back along the busy motorways.

It was an excellent holiday, everything turned out really nice and it was a great success, but for me it was more like a mere drop of water to someone who has just walked across the Sahara desert. I think it's safe to say i am more than looking forward to my next visit to the mountains.