Hey guys.
So I'm still a couple of days behind but I thought it was time to try my own topic. Regina has given me great tips on how to begin and now that I kind of know what I'm doing I think I'll contiune with the optional topic part of the challenge from now on.
As my potential future business will revolve around hikking and outdoor activities, I thought I'd start off with one of my favourite hikes back home in Wales.
A friend of mine that's from the Netherlands that I actually met in New Zealand was visting the UK. He had a few days in London before I met up with him, he stayed at mine in South East London for a couple of days and then we caught the coach up to Wales. A work friend of mine also joined us as he had never done a proper hike but loved going for walks in the country.
People that visit the UK, most just stay in London and never experience Wales, and if they do visit Wales they just go to Cardiff. Now Cardiff is a great city but Wales has way more to offer than it's capital city. So I will always offer to take people to Wales.
When I take someone with me to Wales I kind of turn into a tour guide. I love my country and I want others to love it. Everyone knows about Ireland, everyone knows about Scotland. They all know it for it's celtic past, most people don't know anything about Wales, most people think that Wales is a city in England, most people don't know Wales even exists, this annoyes the hell out of me, especially considering that Wales has the same if not more rich history as Scotland and Ireland. At one point the language that was spoken in the British isles was the same, it evolved differently in each area over the years but that language was closer to Welsh than anything else. We also have a story similar to Breaveheart, our William Wallace was "Owain Glyndwr". Please have a quick read.
So because we are always forgotten, when I speak about Wales, I don't hold back, most people I know get quite annoyed by it, but I don't care, it's who I am. If I don't tell the sories of Wales, who will?
So back to the point at hand :).
When we arrived in Wales, we arrived quite late in the evening so I took them to a few nice spots to see the sunset and spoke of old tales, which they seemed to enjoy.
The next day we got up early, we got dropped off in town to get the early bus to the start point which was at the costal town of Llanfairfechan.
It was my first time doing this hike as I wasn't from around this area but have been told that it would have been a great day. The plan was to start on the famous 14 peak hike, there wouldn't have been enough time in the day to do the whole route so we planned to come off the track early and skip through to the peaks in my area so that getting home would be easy.
The day started great, weather was clear, sun was warm. I had my map with me, it was actually the first time I used one.......
We walked to the edge of town and started on the trail.
After about 30 minutes we were in the hills with the first peak of the 14 just in front of us. We were still on the coast at this point, so from one side you could see the Irish sea, and on the other the Carneddau (Cairns). The Carneddau is the name for the strech of mountains in that area. We were to be walking over most of the peaks, including Carnedd Dafydd, Carnedd Gwenllian and many more.
Although the weather was great, the first 3 or 4 peaks we hit was covered in clouds. We were able to escape them quite easily by just descending 200-300 meters.
This hike was amazing, it took a lot out of us to keep ascending and descending all day but it was worth it. When we reached Carnedd Gwenllian I just stood in awe. That view represented Wales for me. The wind whistled by, using the curved edges of the mountains to pick up speed, the sky blue lake rippled along with it. The green hillside glimmered from the shining sun. The strory of Princess Gwenllian, the last real royal of Wales played in my mind. Hiraeth!
I felt alive in this scene. From here we should have followed the path you can see in the photo above going to the right, but the path going forwad/left involved some scrambing and at this point I was so pumped that I just wanted to keep going. So thats what we did. I scrambled up using the little climbing experience that I had. I loved it. Using upper body as well as lower just makes you feel alive when you concider where you are. To be out in the hills, to be out there in the thick of it.
Part 2 will be added soon.