Cheeky Trip to Wales

This is, yes, one of long overdue posts that I will gradually upload in my blog. My last post was almost two years ago and literally lots of things happened in between. I will share, of course, only the nice parts of it. And it will always involve me travelling :D

Tonje was a classmate of mine, I'd known her for five months until realising that she was a member of hiking club. I'm not a crazy fan of hiking to be honest, but I enjoy the activity really! SO, at some point we mentioned about it and Tonje said she wanted to go a place called Dolwyddelan, somewhere in Snowdonia, Wales (yes yes you can click on the links if you didn't know about it). We invited a couple of friends and called it "cheeky" because.... we had to skip a class so we could go! Oh, I often skip classes when completing undergraduate study; but here, as international students (Tonje is Norwegian), our presence in class was important: I might got deported if I skipped it XD

You read it right :) "the weather will be beautiful". As Friday and Saturday that week would be gloomy, and there would be no train on Sunday. Seemed like other students in the invitation were good students (or just not into hiking) that it was only two of us actually went to Dolwyddelan.

We took train from Manchester Piccadilly to Dolwyddelan at 7.50 in the morning, the table below shows the detailed schedule. Cost me 30.30 pounds (really, I couldn't find the symbol in my keyboard), a bit expensive because I literally bought it the night before! We left at 7.15 from our house (we were neighbour somehow), winter was almost end and it was still dark and misty around then. Tonje was standing in front of her house with her coffee; I thought I was around 2-3 minutes late and she was like "Come on, we don't wanna be late!"

If you somehow want to know how Manchester - Llandudno - Dolwyddelan are connected, this map may help you a bit.

I didn't really expect anything: I knew we were going to a castle (but this was not very popular, so I knew it would be small somehow), lake, and? And? I didn't even know how hard the hike would be. Tonje showed me that map with hiking (or even walking?) trail, with the latitude thingy, and it seemed okay for a casual hiker (does this phrase exist?) like me.

Dolwyddelan was a small station, we arrived on time and walked following the map to the castle. I didn't take too much picture around the station, so I take google street view here :) Pretty awesome right haha. LOVE this kind of British countryside view.

We could see the castle after around 15 minutes walk!

We saw a little bit snow far away, but we didn't plan to go there. Not enough time hehe. The walking path was quite easy until we decided to get into private lands through wooden fence; we could literally open it, close it, walk through it, and it wasn't only us. Most people used the path too. The private lands were usually used to shepherd the sheep SO just be careful not to step into their shits. PLUS, it was raining the night before (it's always raining in the UK as well so..) so the path could be muddy.

This is Tonje. Sarahi was so happy hehehehe

Getting into smaller path

And deeper...

And we could see a fence there

Small waterfall could a be a nice distraction! It was soooo cold though.

Tonje and the sheep!

I love them, they're cuuuuteeeeee <3

After some walk (Tonje said I did more of taking pictures than actually walking haha), we arrived at the castle yeay! It was on the top of small hill (?), the castle itself was small anyway, having just a tower in it. I didn't really know what the castle for in the past, but of course you can read it in the link I've shared. No admission needed! There was only a handful of other visitors, and we decided to have lunch there.

Lunch.

I really missed it. I didn't bring anything for lunch, really thought there would be a restaurant or supermarket or anything around (of course there wasn't, silly!). Well, there was a convenience store close to the station but I wasn't so hungry that time! Now we've walked through a hilly landscape and we would do it in next couple hours, I realised I was a bit f*cked up. Happy I had a bread and a banana in my bag, had to be happy with that.

We spent time taking pictures and exploring the tinyyyy castle hehe. SO, here I share some pictures of the castle.

My favourite picture from the trip!

The tower

What we expected about the tower before it became ruins. Twr Cadard means A Tower of Strength in Welsh. Don't ask me how to read it ;)

Lunch with scenery made us happy!

Sheep were around. They need lunch too.

View from the tower.

View from the tower. This picture is probably over saturated, there should be hill as background picture.

Peeking!

We decided to go to a lake afterwards. I didn't know the name, I think we were just looking at the map and pick the closest lake around. Later I knew what it was called, but I forget it by now. Looking at the map, it was probably Llnau Diwaunydd (I can't be so sure though). I spent some time looking back at the castle after leaving and took these beautiful pictures!

Pretty much this was our route.

The walk from the castle to the lake was harder, especially because we decided to follow the smaller path while there was actually clearer and bigger path haha, I forgot why we did that but it was funny! We had to cross a river through a fallen trunk of a tree (no no I couldn't take picture here although I really wanted it!), passed through a forest (at some point I couldn't see any path to pass), sunk one of my leg to mud (literally! Tonje had to pull me from it), blocked by some other fallen trees, I almost thought we were lost aw! Thanks to experienced Tonje, she kept calm hahaha.

Tonje reading the map.

Me just following her.

Open space is somehow relieving!

Cheers!

After a bit tense situation (at least for me!), we arrived at the lake and I was soooooo haappy!

Can you see the mountain covered in snow at the background?

Latest path right before arriving at the lake.

Yeay!!!

I don't know what ruins was it.

Took rest a bit.

Filthy pants. It was a knee-deep sunk.

Looking at my dirty pants, I did the "smartest" thing I could do right afterwards. I opened my shoes and washed my socks in the lake, put my feet and washed it too, which felt SOO GOOD at the time because it was so fresh and clean!

Relatively clean socks

I walked around barefoot until we got ready to leave and I put my wet socks and shoes on. There was a father and son passed the lake right before us leaving and I asked them to take our picture!

I didn't know yet what was heading me.

Tonje said we could actually climb the hill at the behind us to get the view of snowy peak of Mount Snowdon, but we didn't have enough time. She also then said that there was actuary train route to the peak itself! The route was closed during winter anyway and open spring to summer OMG hahaha. "We don't need to do all of this if we wanted to go to the peak, Sarahi."

Nice troll, Tonje!

But it was all great! I mean, the trip itself was the best thing. We decided to take the "normal" route when getting back to the station when I realised that .................

My feet were numb. Yes, numb. So numb that it was painful. (Can anyone explain this?) I barely could stand and walked veeerryy slowly. Stupid Sarahi dip both feet into winter water! Luckily Tonje brought another pair of socks, wool socks, much better than my own wet socks.

We spent our way back to the station with this beautiful view :)

I promise to get back to England and explore more of this kind!