Nothing against the Welsh and plenty against my ignorance, but all the Moels (hills I think) and the treble lll mountain names seem to get stuck in my brain wrongly and never come back out in a sensible understandable order. I was at the bottom of some hill near LLanberis ice axe in hand and crampons at the ready.....if I ever end up on a MRT site as a statistic it'll be by drowning in a bog due to the weight of excessive kit. ill prepared? I think not.
Being as my pals were up for a seriously early start I'd spent the night at a Premier Lodge near Bangor. I only know 2 things about Bangor and if I'm being honest only one of them is certain. Bangor has a university and a racecourse (a bit of a joint effort and they really could corner the market here), Bangor is advertised on a huge signpost on the A55 as 'Bangor the font of all knowledge'. I've recently been accused of being a bit picky, but pardon me I really think they may well be overplaying their position in the history of humanity - just a touch.
So its early morning and my state of mind seems to be regressing in the general direction of excitable child this week.
Firstly there's the recent (over the last 2 years but getting more frequent) rediscovery that brilliant tunes can give you goosebumps. Not just the oh that's good chill, but flat out arms and legs goosebumps. Two songs this week! Having chatted with a couple of people about this, there are a couple of just as intense variations.
Then there's the Christmas eve sleep patterns. In my younger days Christmas was normally spent in Tennyson Street Middlesbrough. For the locals that's just of Linthorpe Road near to where the bakery used to be. The bakery was sold off and converted to a frankly unwanted and unnecessary shopping centre which has since closed down due to lack of interest. I prefer the French attitude, local production for local people.....but that's a whole other topic. Anyway the shops are now out of town and miles away from the people too.
My memory of many Christmas Eves at Tennyson Street is that all the adults leave the house at 7pm to go to the pub and I get to play with fire and watch Zulu on the tele. Bed at 11pm just before the drunken people got back and raced around the block...then no sleep till about 4am in anticipation. I'm having the same issue (just the sleeping bit) every time I'm going to go up a slightly dangerous mountain....it's really good!
Another slight aside here, but if I am regressing I don't want to play left back in the school team next time round.
So Llanberis, I would say it was in the middle of nowhere and it probably is unless you like walking in mountains, in which case it's the hot spot in downtown mountain central. Its got everything except TessCoss. (Shads given me lessons in Welsh so I can understand the easy parts, bordio Smoothio = ironing board, Tesscoss - Tesco's , cwmputer - Computer. I will give them balderdash and maybe blamanche).
Having met Pete and Robbo and me with ice axe in hand and crampons in backpack we headed up the broad (and therefore a bit safer) hill of Moel Eilio. There had been a number of recent deaths in the Snowdon area due to the snow and ice so I was fairly pleased to be walking with people with experience.
Up the hills , across the broad slopes and some spectacular views down the coast, here's some pics.
I really like the picture above -wdm (or Peter if I nicked it off his site)
The great thing about walking with Peter is that he takes loads of photos so lots of rest time.
But for a few slips and slides and the biting winds at the top we had a gorgeous pootle round the mountains. Ice axes are very good for waving in the air on photo's and crampons can increase fitness by carrying them round in your backpack all day.
And always stay away from snowy edges
Now this would be the musical interlude and album review but
its still in the cellophane so if anyone else would like to do the review and then I can listen with prejudice that would be marvellous. For anyone who doesn't know what the album is we can treat it as a new competition. All answers on offensive messages below please.
9 comments:
so we have to guess what the album is based on the square white box with a red cross in it?
Err, Genesis's new one?
I'll grant you that's a bit trickier than I was going for. Even Rich would struggle with that.
Not Genesis Andy
Is it the new one from Busted?
http://www.explosionsandboobs.com/
I think, he retired and is doing a bit gardening now - oh, I forgot and raising snails
yeah sorry about that, real life stuff getting in the way. ANd its festival season now.
Out to lunch, back in September.
That's a great website link. Does exactly what it says on tin (and not at all the pornfest I was expecting/hoping).
By the way, Craig, the comment about the snails wasn't from me. So if it wasn't you (and I presume the previous one was you...but then maybe you are having a conversation with yourself?), then maybe there really is a third reader and contributer.
Nice one Paul, although I've retired from fonejacker now due to the fact I've lost the sunglasses somewhere..I look forward to seeing some more walks on here.....sometime next year?
Thats almost an update there.
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