07
Jul 18

Skerries & Wild Camping, Wales

Saturday, 7th July

Back in Christmas 2016, we got a lovely gift from our little nephew Eban – a RIB ride excursion to the Skerries, off the North coast of Anglesey, and back down to South Stack. Unfortunately, due to us living in London and bad weather when we were actually up in Wales, the trip was somewhat delayed. Thankfully, we planned a little break away to Wales for a long weekend, and the weather looked incredible – so, a year and a half after getting the gift – we were all booked in to go on the RIB ride.

Our trip started from the Holyhead marina. We were greeted by our skipper called Olly and after we were shown around the boat and the various health and safety tips, we were off – blasting through the waters, North bound towards Church Bay & Carmel Head, before venturing out to open sea, and The Skerries.

The Skerries, [are] a unique group of rocky islands with Trinity House lighthouse, built in 1716, on the highest point. In Welsh the islands are known as Ynysoedd y Moelrhoniaid, which means ‘the islands of the bald-headed grey seals’.

This Important Bird Area and SSSI has a very large Arctic Tern population (over 2,000 pairs), Common Terns and a smaller Roseate Tern population; it is also home to Puffins and Kittiwakes. This uninhabited group of islands has a distinctive cliff and maritime grassland environment.

Trinity House lighthouse

Trinity House lighthouse & the Terns

The first thing we noticed was just how many Terns there are out here, incredible! They kept swooping in and over the boat as we made our way towards Trinity House lighthouse to anchor and watch the wildlife around us. According to the internet, there’s over 2,000 pairs on the island. Just over the brow of the crags, we could also see a handful of Puffins just chilling and coming in to land from being out feeding.

Artic Tern (left) and Common Terns

A Puffin coming in to land

We spent about 15 mins anchored to a buoy just underneath the lighthouse, surrounded by crystal clear seas. All around us, chilling on the rocks, swimming casually and making the most amazing sounds were a whole lot of grey seals. So much wildlife, and never had we seen Wales to sunny!

A cheeky Seal

Look at that face!

As the RIB Ride website says; “We then begin the adventurous nine-mile open-sea crossing to the island of North Stack. Here we explore the caves and the dramatic 100m high sea cliffs of Gogarth Bay to reach the lighthouse on the island of South Stack. We will watch the Chough, Guillemot, Peregrine, Puffin and Razorbill at the RSPB South Stack Cliffs nature reserve before we return.” – which is exactly what we did.

Along the way, we spotted a circus of Puffins out at sea – Olly slowed down for us, so we could take some great snaps.

A circus of Puffins!

Startled Puffin

Being the sharped-eyed skipper that he was, Olly also spotted a few Porpoises out at sea. Down over underneath South Stack we were met by the massive cliffs, and a whole lot of guillemot and razorbills swimming casually in the sea.

A Porpoise

Guillemot (brownish) and Razorbill (black)

From here we dipped in and out of the sea caves, all while Olly was giving us the historical information about the lighthouse, and how they used to load goods onto the island before the steps were constructed etc – all super interesting. Then, we blasted over to Gogarth, a very popular bit of rock, where we could see climbers starting their climb up to the top.

Looking back towards South Stack

And that was it… we cruised back on over to the Holyhead marina – what a fantastic start to our day!

After a quick stop in sunny Rhosneigr for lunch, we cruised over to Tesco’s to pick what would be our dinner – as tonight, we were camping in the mountains.

We packed, and got dropped off at Pen y Gwryd by Dad, our destination was Llyn Caseg-fraith, inbetween Glyder Fach and Foel Goch, overlooking the mighty Tryfan in the Glyderau.

Gina in the Glyderau

Gina crossing Nant Y Gwryd

We headed on up, and had nothing but good times – the sun was blasting, the evening light was starting to fall, and it was looking lovely! We knew once we got to the top, we were in for a great night camping.

Gina on the gamfa

Fantastic evening light

We arrived at Llyn Caseg-fraith, a small lake that’s nicely located above Tryfan just as the sun had started entering its golden hour. Much to our surprise, we weren’t the only ones up there wild camping. There was another tent on the other side of the lake, and soon another guy arrived, hiding his tent behind the rocks nearby. Everyone minded their own business though, and it was very quiet all around. We pitched the tent without a bother – and began our plans of chilling to-the-max.

Our tent, overlooking Tryfan

Gina about to chill with a book

Iest, chillin’

And yeah, this was the scene pretty much for the whole evening. We ate our picnic, did some time-lapse photography with my iPhone, Gina read her book and hit the sack. It was super pleasant up there, not a whisper of wind – awesome.

The evening colours

 

Sunday, 8th July

We awoke to another beautiful, cloudless sky morning. We had a leisurely breakfast, chilled some more, before packing up the tent and sleeping stuff. The goal for this morning was to head up Glyder Fach, over to Glyder Fawr, and down into Nant Peris the other side of the mountains – where Dad would then pick us up in time for lunch.

Everything on the way up to the Glyderau went super well, we were cruising – enjoying the views.

Morning Gins!

Looking back at Llyn Caseg-fraith

Unfortunately, on the way down the slippery scree of Glyder Fawr, my knee (which I’d been having physiotherapy for for the past 3 weeks) totally gave way. I went down and yep, this was agony. It took me about 2 hours to get down, whereas it should have taken about 30mins – this wasn’t good – as Dad was down in the valley waiting for us. Dad suspected that something might have been up, but he continued to wait until Gina went ahead and met up with him, while I took my time getting down safely. Damn knee!

We got back home, I iced my knee for a few hours, and went over to meet the newest addition to the family; little baby Erain. Then headed over to Pant Du for some lunch and apple juice – which was great! We then decided to take a trip to our fave beach, Llanddwyn for the evening, to chill in the sea (legs only) whilst the sun gently went down.

All in all – a pretty awesome trip back home for the bank holiday!


12
Jul 14

A short Welsh weekend

As Gina has recently moved to London (!!), it’s now going to be a lot easier for us to head to Wales when we feel like it. This is pretty much exactly what we did over the weekend. I took the late ferry from Dublin, and Gina caught the train up from London – and we’d be meeting in Holyhead around midnight. Perfect!

The train ride, and boat trip went without any hitches, and we met bang on time in Holyhead, where dad picked us up and took us home to Groeslon.

We got up super early, and after some hearty breakfast and catch-up with Mum and Dad, we decided to head up to the Welsh mountains – the Carneddau. The weather wasn’t particularly favourable – from down in the Ogwen Valley we couldn’t see the tops of the Carneddau, but we decided to head up anyhow, to stretch our legs, and because we’re cŵl like that.

We started from Llyn Ogwen, and belted up the steep slopes of Pen yr Ole Wen. The fog was thick from around the 600m mark, so just before heading in, we took a few snaps, as I had borrowed a friends Wide-angle lens for the weekend.

Gina & Cwm Idwal

Gina & Cwm Idwal

 

What followed was a really refreshing 5 – 6 hour walk into the thick cloud, from Pen yr Ole Wen (978m), across and up to Carnedd Dafydd (1044m) across the ridge to Carnedd Llewelyn, a wee bit of scrambling before heading up to Pen yr Helgi Ddu, and then descending the road-path that leads from Ffynnon Llugwy down to the car. There was a few people up on the hills, as there was a ‘Vegan 10km’ race on – but me and Gina marched onwards, enjoying being out together in the hills.

Directly afterwards, we headed to one of our favourite eating places (especially after a big hike): Pete’s Eat. We had the usual Veggie Grill, with a massive mug of tea, and hot chocolate for me.

On the drive home on Saturday, I noticed that we might be in for a fantastic sunset, as the clouds were breaking up just above the horizon, so after quickly changing from our wet-hiking clothes, we dashed on down to Dinas Dinlle to catch the epic, fantastic pink sunset, which gave me an opportunity to play with another borrowed lens, a 60mm Macro lens which I’ve fallen in love with, while Gina took epic snaps with my iPhone for Instagram (something we’ve both adopted very well):

60mm Pebble shot

60mm Pebble shot

And that was it for Saturday night! We were both blasted by the day’s hard work, so we had an early night.

Sunday bought with it, much better weather, so after another super early start and hearty breakfast, we decided to go to Gina’s fave place in Wales: Ynys Llanddwyn, and as it was a super nice and sunny day – this was a great idea!

We jetted over in the van, blasting some sweet music from my younger days, to a fairly looking, busy Llanddwyn. Armed with an ice cream (and a chat with the ice cream vendor about my family – Wales is a small place) we made our way towards the island and lighthouse. Thankfully, the tourists were all crowded along the main entrance to the beach, once we past the first 100m walk, the tourists were no where to be seen, which was great.

Wide angled Gina, gallivanting

Wide angled Gina, gallivanting

60mm flowers, sea and mountains

60mm flowers, sea and mountains

We made our way over and across towards the lighthouse, where we sat and chilled, and enjoyed the sun together. I (probably) burned my face because of the sun, but it was nice to be by the fresh sea, relaxing with Gins.

Macro Ynys Llanddwyn

Macro Ynys Llanddwyn

Gins.

Gins.

From Llanddwyn, we decided to head on over to Rhosneigr for a spot of lunch. Our main priority was pancakes (clown ones!), but the wee cafe was closed, so we decided to have some proper seafood – Gina went wild and had some lovely Rhosneigr Mussels, while I had traditional Fish ‘n chips – with mushy peas! It was fantastic.

And that was it, our short weekend had come to and end – we had to head back to Groeslon to pick up our bags, and catch our trains and ferry, back to London and Dublin.


06
Apr 13

Wales Easter

After a long absence from this blog (note the gap on the right between April 12 and February 13 – loads of stuffs happened in that time btw; but if stuff happens and nobody blogs about it, has it really happened? I might still be able to reconstruct some of it and backdate it), I think it’s time to clean up the spiderwebs here and update the journals a bit.
Easter came late this year, and even then the winter was still having a tight grip all over Europe. Freiburg had been insanely grey, depressing, cold and gloomy for four months straight, and the sun hadn’t been showing any signs of reappearance. It was tiring and made me grumpy almost non-stop. I was looking forward to having a week off over the Easter of course, but wasn’t having high hopes for seeing the sun along that time, as the UK was reporting loads of late snow, killing the sheep in Wales and Scotland. And on top of that it turned out that I would have to fly to Helsinki for some work meetings straight from the vaycay. But anyway, vaycay is vaycay, I grabbed my new book, and packed a suitcase (which had to have work clothes in it, so was very jam packed, and was getting progressively heavier along the trip somehow – objectively verified by all the airport check-ins).

Wednesday 27th March
Train to Frankfurt, flight to Dublin, no special events. In Dublin Iestyn picked me up from the airport and the day got better. Amazingly, there was sun in Dublin! I don’t think I saw Dublin otherwise yet. (It was still very cold though.) At Iestyn’s place, there were loads of pressies waiting for Gina, just because she likes getting pressies – now that’s my kind of man! We went for a lovely dinner in this noodle/sushi place, can’t remember its name. (Yamamori Noodles). Real cheese cake served for dessert! (I have to say this, because here in Germany they have a “cheese cake” that’s not actually a cheesecake, more like quark cake. It’s not bad, especially now that I know what to expect and not get my hopes up, but I still wish they called it something else.)

Thursday 28th March
We got up early, caught a taxi down to the ferry docks, and yes, it was snowing. The sea was calm though and whilst on the way between Dublin and Holyhead we actually started seeing blue skies and sun from our premium window-based seats! Because the wifi was slow, I started playing with my new compact camera, which I brought for the trip, to get familiar with the settings and such. I also made a trip up on the boat deck, which was in the sun, but extremely windy, and there were no white recliners or parasols or anything like that you would expect. It was cold too.
In Holyhead we caught the train to Bangor, and in Bangor the bus to Caernarfon, and in Caernarfon the bus to Groeslon… it was all very very tiring. But at the end we made it and got a bit of rest. Iestyn decided though that he needs a new pair of shoes (he’s a little princess like that), so we headed to Betws-y-Cwwd (or whatevs) for him to get hiking boots in the outdoor store (as his heavy ones are still in the ‘burg, and he wanted a lighter pair anyway). He also got there a new hat, just like my riot red, except his is bittersweet brown. He flirted with the sales guy a little and got a 10% off the shoes – I could learn something here!
As it was Thursday, pub quiz was on, which I was looking forward to, although it was in a whole different place than usual (and by usual I mean when I was last in Wales a couple years back). Neil and Michaela and her friend joined us, and it was fun, except for the picture round which was crap and was not actually a picture round. Unfortunately, they took ages between the quiz and the results, so we gave up and left, and don’t know how we did.
We watched something from bed, I cannot recall exactly what it was, but I totes watched the whole thing until the end.

Caernarfon

Caernarfon

Pub Quiz at the 'Ship and Castle'

Pub Quiz at the ‘Ship and Castle’

Friday 29th March
I woke up, despite Iestyn sneakily having pulled down the blinds on the window the night before when I was not looking (I had just closed the curtains), so that no daylight would come in in the morning. It was SUNNY! And I mean proper sunny, with no cwmwl yn yr awyr, complete delight! I jumped up and down on the bed until Iestyn acknowledged the day started, and crawled out of bed to toast us bagels for breakfast. After a hearty breakfast we made tea into our respective thermoses, and set out on a nice hike.

Might Cnicht

Mighty Cnicht

Retro Iestyn

Retro Iestyn

Gina heading up Cnicht

Gina heading up Cnicht

We selected Cnicht, even though it’s a bit overdone (I mean we had been up there several times, we even camped up on the top one New Years a couple years back), but we decided to take the long way down, going up Moelwyn Mawr on the other side of the valley as well, making it a nice full-day walk. About last third up the way on Cnicht we hit the snow, but there was not much wind and the sun kept blasting, so it was a nice stroll. Once we were up on the ridge, the wind actually picked up, and it became unmistakably colder. There was plenty of snow up there, and it had a solid crust of ice over the surface, so once we begun climbing Moelwyn Mawr on the other side, crampons might not have been completely out of place. We didn’t have them, so we just sucked it up, and Iest did the work of blasting trough the ice with every step, so it was quite easy for me to just follow in his path. Eventually we made it on top of Moelwyn Mawr, where the wind was especially strong, freezing and biting mightily, so we didn’t linger for long, and started descending on the other side.

Iestyn ontop of Cnicht

Iestyn ontop of Cnicht

Gina looking over towards Moelwyn Mawr

Gina looking over towards Moelwyn Mawr

Moelwyn Mawr

Moelwyn Mawr

Coming down Cnicht toward Llyn yr Adar

Coming down Cnicht toward Llyn yr Adar

Gina, Llyn yr Adar and Snowdon

Gina, Llyn yr Adar and Snowdon

Gina Moelwyn Mawr summit

Gina Moelwyn Mawr summit

The whole loop back to the car took us about six hours (no rush) but towards the end I was already quite tired, my feet were wet and I was starvatious. It was a good opportunity to go worship Pete in Llanberis, provided he’d be open for business, which we weren’t sure until we got there, but open he was! So we made it two huge hot chocolates with whipped cream for starters and two veggie grills as per usual (not able to finish). At that point I was ready to just take a shower and drop dead in bed, but I mightily managed to watch whatever movie it was that we watched in bed, and didn’t fall asleep prematurely. Uncle buckle (utterly abysmal)!

Saturday 30th March
Sunny again! Could not believe it. Iest was still a bit overwhelmed by the walk of yesterday, so we decided to go to the beach. I wanted to go surfing, so we looked up the webcam surf, which Iest thought was not good enough. I think he would not know a good surf if it bit him in the tushy (mmm, tushy). Anyhoo, we went to Anglesey, because I like Anglesey a lot, it has first class beaches and epic view of the snowy hills.

Crepe times!

Crepe times!

First we hit Rhosneigr, a nice (if a bit run-down) little surfing town, where we had coffee and crepes (Iest has the “Clown” variety with M&Ms and ice-cream, sometimes I really wonder…), I bought the Guardian, which of course I began reading in the car and got carsick, always happens. But we arrived in Llanddwyn, my fave beach of them all, even if there were quite a few people due to the beautiful weather. It was so epic, we walked around to the lighthouse, around the dunes and the horses, in the sun sun sun… One distressing event cast shadow over the day though, which was the painful discovery that there was no film in my lomokino!

Minature Sea Shell!

Minature Sea Shell!

Yes, it happens even to the best of us… Iestyn of course took the opportunity to rub it in my face for the rest of the day (and week), just to make me feel bad and have some laughs at my expense. Not cwl! I miniaturised him in return. But even so, the day at the beach was lovely and fun.
Lovely Indian for dinner.

Miniaturized Iestyn at Llanddwyn

Miniaturized Iestyn at Llanddwyn

Sunday 31st March
Sunny again, unbelievable! Decided for Mr. Ellis loop, as we had to be back at some reasonable time for Easter lunch/dinner. The sun in the snow truly was blinding, and given the fact that it was a Sunday, Mr. Ellis was a bit of a tourist highway. But never mind  lovely little walk anyway. The stone hideout on the top had a beautiful thick layer of ice on it, and it was cold and windy up there. Beautiful views towards the Snowdon ridge and all around. Went the second valley down from there, and finally saw a cute little oen bach close up enough, all fluffy and confused.

Heading up Moel Eilio

Heading up Moel Eilio

Ice on Moel Eilio

Ice on Moel Eilio

Snowdon from Moel Eilio

Snowdon from Moel Eilio

Oen Bach

Oen Bach

Easter lunch/dinner was yum, and included mushy peas (I took Iestyn’s too), and once again on this vaycay, we overate and topped it up with ice cream.

Monday 1st April
Cloudy but still sunny patches. We decided to go to Chester, which btw is already in England (didn’t know this!). Chester was nice, even if a bit crowded, as it was a holiday and everyone went shopping. I bought a nice top myself and also a couple of dvds (turns out that hmv didn’t actually close all its stores!). Also, I bought Bon Jon Jovi’s greatest hits for the car! Ahh, memories.

Tuesday 2nd April
Already time to go. We found a schedule on the internet of bus and train to get us to the ferry on time, but then we were done packing an hour before time and just went to the bus stop blindly, to see if we can catch an earlier one. Amazingly, one was going in about three minutes to take us to Bangor. In Bangor, the train to Holyhead arrived about five minutes after we bought the tickets, again totally unplanned. With all this, we ended up in Holyhead a long time before our ferry was supposed to leave. It turned out that we could just about catch the earlier one! We just had to pay a bit extra, and run a bit to actually catch it. Given that it was the faster boat (our original tickets were for the slower kind), we were in Dublin hours before originally planned. We spent the rest of the day leisurely in Dublin. Also, I brought awful cough from Wales, which was then haunting me in Helsinki and for more than a week still in Freiburg.

This is the final video from our Easter trip, including sea, mountains and the ferry:

Wednesday 3rd April
Sad, sad day of Gina leaving. Helsinki was pretty as ever (sunny until Saturday when I left!) but I was coughing and lonely.

Helsinki

Helsinki