After a long lay off the camping thing we headed off to Bala for elevenses on Saturday. After filling our bellies we headed South a couple of miles to the end of the lake, booted up and headed out. We got a little impromptu Welsh lesson from the local park ranger on the way up onto the Aran ridge. As I have a CSE Grade 4 in the languageI think he had a bit of a cheek…

We didn’t quite get the solitude we’re used to around these parts as there were plenty of people around. It wasn’t crowded like the Lake District would’ve been though. It’s still mighty chilly this time of the year at the high point of 907m, especially when the wind’s gusting around 40mph. After 6 hours or so we’d bagged a couple of peaks and done the obligutory squelching through a forest. Unusually for a Welsh forestry though the path had remained almost navigable.We arrived at the designated camp spot high up just off Y Gribin at around 600m. We had a restless night as it was still very windy and flippin’ cold. A touch below freezing, brrr. This is the spot,

It was sometime during the food prep process that we found the limitations of an unsupported MSR Pocket Rocket and a decent sized pan on a grassy, uneven surface. We lost alomst 50% of our luke warm chick peas to the slugs. It was a particularly gutting moment.

An early start the next day dropping right down into the valley just to climb back out through this basin after the cloud had cleared.Would be nice to live here, just to ride that track!
We climbed this track …
Via this rubbly section, if this was Scotland we’d be back down here with bikes in a flash.

This up and down routine carried on for the next few hours, up and down another couple of 700m hills. The downs are always hardest. Knee killers.

Managed to hit Bala for mid afternoon tea after a calmer time trotting through the valley back to our start point. Great to be out tromping across pathless hillsides again. Now planning a faster and lighter Rhinog traverse…