The three Moels!

What a day!

An 8 hour walk today including a climb of around 1300 metres, but what an experience. 

We started the day with the intention of climbing the 3 Moels as I mentioned yesterday. So we parked the car at the start point and set off at 1010. The weather was reportedly set fair and as we climed into the mountains the sun was shining and the temperature must have been around 20 degrees - it was lovely. 

Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn fairly early on and instead of a left turn and a pleasant walk along the base of the mountain which would eventually lead us through a forest to the 3 Moels, we headed straight up a mountain (no idea what it was called and within half an hour we had climed over 200 metres and were thoroughly knackered. We took some time to find the right path but poor old Tim thought that although we were on the wrong path, he assumed we were already on the first of the 3 Moels - oh dear - I pointed towards the 3 Moels ( the next photo) and his language turned blue!! 

I'm not sure the photo really does them justice ( although as you can see, Moel Hebog is the beast on the left covered in cloud standing at 2565 ft above sea level - not to be sniffed at). So down we climbed and eventually made our way to the right path and through the Beddgelert forest towards Beddgelert village. Here are some views of the journey. 

We eventually dropped down into a valley and happened upon a deserted slate mine - I mean this thing was huge, the pieces of slate which had been left behind were huge, some as big as 15 to 20 long, there were ruined houses, ruined sheds, mine shafts, tunnels, you name it, this place had it, it was awesome! 

This photo (above) gives you an indication of the size of one of the pits - Tim is stood on its rim to the right. 

We continued out of the slate mine and then on through the woods towards Moel Hebog. The going was slow because there were loads of downed trees blocking the way, it took us over an hour to walk about a mile!

So eventually we reached the foot of Moel Hebog, the first and biggest of the 3 Moels and it was just beautiful to behold, blankets of bluebells and mountain streams underlined its majestic ruggedness - take a look. 

So we sat at the base of Moel Hebog and had our soup and sandwiches before setting off to climb - and what a climb! Although the internet info described this as a straight forward climb, I shit you not when I say that this climb really stretched the limits of mountain climbing. It probably reached the limits of this discipline without the need for crampons and ropes - it was a really steep climb for over an hour followed by a precarious scramble over vertical rocks ( at over 2000 ft) for another half hour. If someone said why don't you relentlessly climb a ladder straight up for an hour and a half, this would give you some idea of what it took to climb Moel Hebog! 

This was the only photo I took whilst climbing because I dared not take my hands off the mountain!! Here's the views on the top. 

This next one shows the steep descent with Tim climbing down in front of me!

And so we moved on to Moel Yr Ogof where, as I mentioned yesterday was the hiding place of Owain Glyndwr. 

So then we descended Moel Yr Ogof and headed to our third and final Moel, Moel Lefn, but as you can see, the weather closed in and within 30 seconds - I kid you not - we couldn't see a thing. I took these photos within less than a minute. 

So just goes to show how careful and well prepared you need to be in mountainous areas, the temperature dropped considerably in those few seconds and within minutes we were soaked and couldn't see a hand in front of our face. That said, within ten minutes the weather improved and within 20 minutes we were back to normal. 

So that was the day - an 8 hour really tough walk, but hugely enjoyable and exactly what we came here for. We're back at Camp Talysarn now, we've had our dinner, we 're all having a beer or wine, I'm blogging and Jacko and Tim.......yep you've guessed it, snuggled up watching the next exciting (yawn) episode of 'Pacific'. 

See you tomorrow. 

Russ