Snowdonia

25 to 29 June

Our second Forest Holidays break, following our break at their Forest of Dean site in October 2016. This one was at their newly-opened site near Beddgelert in Snowdonia. Literally, just opened a few weeks before we went. We went for a Monday-Thursday four night break the last week in June. This time we decided we weren’t that bothered about heart-shaped trivets and rented a regular Golden Oak cabin (as opposed to a Golden Oak Hideaway) – equally nice, just without the romantic frippery.

Both Ruth’s and my main impression of this short break was that it was BLOODY HOT. Despite the spell of extremely warm weather the UK had been having at the time we went, we had expected that north Wales would be reassuringly cool and damp. And then, this. On the Tuesday, the coastal town of Porthmadog, around eight miles from where we were staying, was officially clocked as the hottest place in the UK. What are the odds?

I’ve spent very little time in north Wales – my first visit being a family holiday taken with another family when I was a small child – I must have been under five as I have an idea it was before Hannah was born. I only have very patchy memories of that one, my clearest being of what evidently seemed to me an unusually large bathroom in the place we were staying. And a faint memory of a little train. My second was in my early twenties in the company of my then-boyfriend Andy – but I think we did something crazy like just go for the day and then drove home again.

Journey up

We stayed over at Mum and Dad’s on the Sunday night and set off for Beddgelert on the Monday morning. Here's our wine supply packed to go, with a few non-essentials like walking boots crammed in around it.

Wales is very pretty and all – and I’m not for a minute suggesting that a great motorway should be constructed up the middle of it – but this did seem a rather interminable journey, even though in objective terms it can’t have been. We took a detour off at Rhayader to the Elan Valley Visitor Centre for some lunch in their café – if it had been a less hot day we’d have enjoyed a walk, but it was baking. Although we initially sat outside to eat - as per Ruth in this picture - we retreated after a while to the air-conditioned café.

Elan Valley Visitor Centre

One interesting thing we saw on the way up were the striking buildings of the Trawsfynydd nuclear power station. I’d never heard of this place, apparently opened in 1965 and closed in 1991, though evidently work to decontaminate the site is ongoing.

We eventually arrived, checked in and took possession of our allocated cabin, which was lovely. We were greeted by this welcoming Scrabble board.

First full day: Llyn Llywelyn and Beddgelert

We decided to have a low-key day exploring the site and surrounds. The Forest Holidays site is directly alongside the little Welsh Highland Railway, which runs from Caernarfon to Porthmadog and is, according to this, the UK’s longest heritage railway. The site itself is directly served by the tiny Meillionen station (a request stop).

In the morning we walked to Llyn Llywelyn, a lake fairly near the campsite. Hot walk up (‘hot’ was the theme of the week). The lake was lovely, but my main impression of its surrounds were great flies landing on me and sinking their fangs in, and initially resisting my attempts to brush them off. Horseflies? I don’t know, but I was certainly well and truly bitten. I’m not as a rule particularly attractive to mosquitoes – but these certainly weren’t mosquitoes.

In the afternoon we walked into Beddgelert, a walk of a mile or so. Had a look around and a snack at Caffi Colwyn. Ruth bought some insect repellent. We walked along the river to see the supposed grave of the faithful hound Gelert, thought seemingly the ‘grave’ was created by a former landlord of the Goat Hotel to encourage tourism.

Beddgelert

Ruth by Gelert's Grave

We didn’t fancy the walk back so decided to wait at Beddgelert station for the little train – only a short trip from Beddgelert to Meillionen, but quite nice.

The train coming in

Second full day: Snowdon!

Bloody hell, this was hot.

Received wisdom seems to have it that Snowdon itself is shrouded in damp mist for approximately 362 days out of 365, and almost certainly raining, if not snowing. Not today. With hindsight, it was really too hot a day to do this walk – though plenty of people were doing it – but as we’d booked the trip specifically with the climb in mind, we were loath to call it off.

After some research beforehand of the various routes up Snowdon, we’d chosen to do the Rhyd Ddu path up and take the Snowdon Ranger path down. Ruth had insisted that the Llanberis path, supposedly the easiest one, sounded dull, but equally I wasn’t keen to overstretch us. I drove to the car park at Rhyd Ddu, only a couple of miles from the camp site, and we set off at around 7:15am up the path leading to Snowdon.

Looking towards Llyn Cwellyn

Me having a bit of a sit down. To admire the view, obvs

The walk up was a serious slog as far as I was concerned, and left me pondering my cardio fitness – on the long bit to ascend the Llechog ridge I found myself stopping what seemed to be around every few yards. Ruth had been going at the cardio a bit more in the gym just recently so seemed to manage a lot better. I had been a bit nervous about the exposed section of the route over Bwlch Main, but at least had prepared myself by watching a couple of YouTube videos of the ascent. Thankfully it was a very still day. After that it’s a relatively short stretch to the top. The views were fantastic - a completely clear day in all directions.

Bwlch Main

We stood briefly on the cairn, where I took this photo of Ruth, and then went to the café for a cup of tea. We shared a table with a couple who’d just come up the Pyg Track. As this was my first ascent I don’t have a frame of reference as regards routes, but the Rhyd Ddu path was certainly scenic, and by all accounts is one of the quieter routes up. This piece refers to it as one of Snowdon's best kept secrets. Seemingly the paths on the opposite side of Snowdon are more popular (Pyg, Miners) – partly because you cut out some of the ascent driving to their car parks.

It was about midday as we started off down the Snowdon Ranger path on our descent, me at least quite elated at having made it to the top. That wore off a bit as the descent went on – it seemed interminable, though in fact it was only slightly longer than the route up. It was getting hot by that time and we were at least glad that we weren’t among the quite a few people coming UP at that time. About half way through the descent I swear we could literally feel our skin burning – no shade of any kind (not even a bush).

Beginning the descent, pre-sunburn

In contrast to the walk up, I managed better than Ruth on the descent, mainly because the path was uneven and rocky and I was wearing walking boots as opposed to trainers, and partly as Ruth had more exposed flesh so got worse sunburn. Also I think I had been in more doubt about my ability to actually get to the top, so to some extent the descent was still bathed in a rosy glow of success.

When planning the walk it had seemed more interesting to come down by a different route – however, that did mean that we had to wait for a rather tedious 45 minutes or so by the Ranger car park for a bus back to Rhyd Ddu. The little Snowdon Sherpa service thankfully did turn up and collected us and a couple of other walkers. By this point I had become so obsessed with the idea of having an ice cream that I made us get off the bus in the village, rather than at the car park, confident that there’d be a shop there. There wasn’t, so we just had to slog up the road to the car park empty-handed. Arriving back at the site, Ruth made straight for the cabin and I made straight for the ‘Forest Retreat’ (the reception area and shop) to purchase ice cream – duly purchased a Twister, which I sat down and scoffed outside the shop, and some Calippo Shots, which I tipped into my mouth when back at the cabin.

At the Forest Retreat, the news that we’d climbed Snowdon that day was greeted with some surprise by the girl on the reception desk, who clearly (and probably correctly) thought that it had been too hot a day for it. Another guest waiting to pay helpfully noted that her son had wanted to go up, but she’d told him he couldn’t as it was too hot. Wasn’t sure whether to feel heroic or just vaguely twattish. When I arrived back at the cabin Ruth had changed into a bathrobe and was sitting with her alarmingly swollen legs up on the coffee table. I think we concluded that we might never be the same again. We ordered pizzas via the in-cabin TV service and I had a couple of celebratory glasses of wine. It’s on record that Ruth was so wrecked that she didn’t drink anything and retired to bed early.

Surprisingly, my legs were nothing like as stiff afterwards as they had been after our walk up Blorenge in January, despite the fact that Blorenge is only around half the height. It’s possible my fitness has improved in the interim, or maybe that I was distracted by borderline heatstroke.

Third and final full day: applying after-sun

On our last full day, the original plan had been to drive to Porthmadog and have a bit of a walk along the coast. In the event, the thought of being in full sun anywhere made us both wince so we opted to stay in the forest.

I did use the hot tub once, as it was there, but I think they’re more enjoyable when the surrounding air is relatively cold. Getting into a steaming hot bath when the surrounding air is already pretty hot just gets you even hotter. The older couple in the neighbouring cabin did seem to be enjoying their hot tub several times each day though, so fair play – if you have any sort of joint stiffness I guess they’re probably quite soothing. The tubs are checked daily and come with this cute Forest Holidays duck, for no apparent reason.

Journey back

We stopped off at Elan Valley again, and this time I did take a short walk up to the dam. All looks like an impressive feat of engineering. We had a quick look around the exhibition in the visitor centre.

Verdict: I’d definitely return to the area, possibly for a week – we didn’t manage to see as much as planned on this occasion. Would have liked to visit the nearby coast including the area around Criccieth – coincidentally, Mum and Dad had a week in north Wales the week immediately following ours, and did do some coastal walking and had lunch at the seafood restaurant Dylan’s. Matt also recommended a visit to Electric Mountain. And there are also the little heritage railways, and of course the little train up Snowdon - though this does seem rather a cheat. We watched it going up and down while we were on the mountain - it looks utterly absurd. Probably quite fun though.

The little train puffing its way up the mountain

Our route up Snowdon shown in red:

And the route down:

Two autumn breaks

Couple of short trips away back in October, neither of which I have yet recorded for interested future generations who may stumble across and dust off this blog.

Love owls

Ruth and I had a 3-night mini break at Forest Holidays' Forest of Dean site – can’t remember how I came across them but I am a bit of a sucker for a) undemanding holidays; b) log cabins, however faux; c) woods. We didn’t manage to find one of their breaks that wasn’t pretty stonkingly expensive, but in fairness I did choose to book one of their Golden Oak Hideaway cabins, delightful little for-two love nests that have a hot tub, an oversized sunken bath and various twee touches including this heart-shaped trivet (left, with espresso cups) and this owl couple in the dining area. Our decked patio area did have a rather damp autumnal quality, so we didn’t spend a lot of time on it though we did use the hot tub once so as to get the most out of the facilities. The cabin itself was, in fairness, absolutely lovely, and even hard-to-please Ruth said she’d happily go again. Except we’d need to take an HDMI cable next time – it’s so high-tech that there are no DVD players as you’re expected to connect to your own technology and stream things. Luckily there’s also Sky, so we weren’t too disadvantaged by not being able to watch the DVDs we’d taken.

We didn't bother taking the cover off the hammock, mainly as it wasn't warm enough for lying around outside but also because I doubt my ability to get into a hammock successfully while holding a glass of bubbly, as per the lovely couple in the publicity photos.

Forest Holidays aren't quite such a family fun centre as Center Parcs, but they do offer various extras, for a charge. We sniggered over the 'Romantic Evening In' package, which includes rose petals. Considered requesting a bottle of wine in place of these, but it does say no substitutions.

On the Saturday we walked from the Forest Holidays site to Symonds Yat Rock, a couple of miles away, where we admired the views, which were pretty good even in the intermittent lashing rain. Didn’t see any of the advertised peregrine falcons, but in fairness they were probably huddled indoors. We walked down the side of a steepish gorge to Symonds Yat East, where we had lunch in the packed-out Saracens Head, before slogging back up the slope. We did see the hand-pulled ferry in operation, though didn’t try it.

The Wye from Symonds Yat Rock

On the Sunday we drove further into the Forest of Dean, though not having made a proper plan of where to go (nor downloaded the Forest Xplorer app, which I’ve just noticed) we ended up at the large car park at Beechenhurst which was pretty thronged with visitors. We had quite a pleasant walk on marked trails for a couple of miles, looking at the sculptures dotted around, though spent much of the time dodging families on bicycles. Ruth then pleaded to visit a town, and as Monmouth looked to be the nearest town likely to be halfway decent, we drove there, parked up and had lunch. Did the obligatory walk over the old bridge. The town itself was a bit short on shops that weren’t closed on a Sunday.

On the Monnow Bridge

Monmouth was the location of my inspiration for the red walls at the dining room at the house – Mum and I had lunch there once in a café with gorgeous chilli-red walls and I was very taken with the idea. The actual colour we ended up with is less chilli and more brick than I hoped for, but here’s hoping for next time. Ruth and I walked past what I’m pretty sure was the same café, but the walls had been painted a much less interesting creamy colour.

Forest Holidays has a site at Keldy in North Yorkshire, but I can’t tell whether this is the same site that Mum and I, Hannah and Hannah’s friend Lyn stayed at in 1989, as there’s also a Hoseasons holiday lodge site at Keldy apparently.

Had another few days away a week or so later, this time in Dorset to join Mum and Dad at a self-catering cottage they’d booked for a few days’ short break. To lengthen the trip slightly as I could only take the Monday to Wednesday off work, I booked Ruth and me into a Premier Inn just outside Bournemouth for the Sunday night. On the Monday morning we drove into Poole and parked up, and walked down to the harbour, where we spontaneously booked onto a harbour cruise via City Cruises Poole. As it was an amazingly nice day for the beginning of October, the cruise was lovely - the trip of an hour or so took us quite close to Brownsea Island, then over to the Sandbanks peninsula to ogle the luxury residences, then back around the other smaller islands in the harbour, including Furzey Island, owned by BP and apparently the site of a number of oil wells, though that’s not apparent from the views of the shoreline. Fascinating article here by a chap who lived on Furzey Island with his wife in the 1960s. We also passed Green Island and got a view of Edward Iliffe’s new luxury residence. According to this, the first eco-house Iliffe built on the island burned down in 2012, but there was certainly a house there when we went past so I guess it’s risen from the ashes.

Looking towards Sandbanks

Boats in the harbour

After the boat trip we had lunch at Banana Wharf, where it was actually warm enough to sit outside.

After lunch we drove, with only a couple of hitches, westwards via Bridport to Chapel Barn at Salwayash, the holiday let that Mum had booked. Small place but cosy and well-equipped. That evening, Dad drove us to the neighbouring village of Waytown for dinner in The Hare & Hounds, via some extremely narrow country lanes. Here's a screenshot of Google Maps tracking our route.

The next day - which was a beautiful day for October - we parked at West Bay and walked along the beach past the peculiar cliffs as far as the village of Burton Bradstock. Walked down to the beach and stopped for tea and cake at the Hive Beach Café which was absolutely rammed - the only table free was a large one outside, which we nabbed and Mum and I braved the long queue to place our order. After tea, we made our way back westwards towards West Bay - Dad and I hived off to walk up onto the coastal path for the final stretch while Mum and Ruth continued along the beach.

We returned to the cottage via Bridport's branch of Morrisons, where Dad and I raced around the shop grabbing foody bits while Mum and Ruth reclined in the car. Back at the cottage I cooked a coq au vin, having taken care to take some leftover vin with me. Ruth and I had to leave at crack of dawn the next morning as she had an afternoon meeting in London and I needed to get back to Milton Keynes for work the following day.

Chapel Barn, Salwayash

Cliffs at West Bay