A Simple Life of Luxury

I haven’t long got back from an outdoor weekend in Wales.

First I drove to Liverpool and Anna, Morgan and I stayed in a Travel lodge for the night so that I could drop Anna and Morgan off at the airport early in the morning so that they couldget the plane to the Isle of Man. I then drove to Dinas Dinlle near Caernarfon where I met Steve so that we could go windsurfing. The wind was pretty strong and in the end we went out at Foryd Bay for some shelter, but even there the wind was too much so we headed off to the Snowdon Ranger Youth Hostel instead.

We then went for a nice walk around Llyn Cwellyn and found a few geocaches before signing into the Youth Hostel. here I realised I had lost y credit card so after a few frantci phone calls I had cancelled the card and made sure no unauthorised transaction had been made. I then had to borrow some money from Steve so that I could fill up with Diesel in order to get home.

After dinner in the pub at Rhyd Ddu we got some sleep ready for an early breakfast and an attempt on the summit of Snowdon. We had an easy walk up the Snowdon Ranger path and back down the Rhydd Ddu path before walking around Llyn Dwyarchen and then up the steep path to the summit of Foel Rudd. Dinner this evening was in the Snowdon Ranger Youth Hostel.

The next day we woke with rather sore legs and after breakfast we headed off to Dinas Dinlle for another windsurf. We started to rig but the wind dropped so we did a geocache whilst waiting around for a bit and then headed off to Betws y Coed where we had a look around the shops. We then went to Llanrwst and had a mountain bike ride around the Marin Trail. Our legs weren’t really up to too much, so we had a nice easy ride around taking in the scenery as we went.

Steve then headed off home and I went to the Betws y Coed Youth Hostel where I was staying for the night. After a chat with the others staying there, a little walk and dinner in the Swallow Falls hotel, along with a phonecall to Anna and as it was mothers day my Mum, I headed off to bed ready for another early start the next day.

Monday dawned with some snow flurries but generally cool and sunny so I had breakfast and then went to the Marin Trail again and despite the very tired legs forced myself around the trail again, before heading off to Liverpool to collect Anna and Morgan from the airport.

All in all a good weekend, the hostels were good, the windsurfing was a little frustrating but the walking and mountain-biking were top class (If I get time I shall write about these in more detail). North Wales is quite a playground really. I think Steve enjoyed himself too, and thanks for lending me some money Steve otherwise I would have been stranded!

The weather yesterday was perfect for mountain-biking, gorgeous sunshine very little wind and cool, so Harvey and I headed off to Pendam for a ride and some exploring.

From Pendam car park we cycled out past Llyn Syfydrin and along the track towards Nant-y-Moch. We saw Dave on the way so said our hello’s and then headed out along the road besides Nant-y-Moch and all the way to the top of the mountain road. We then followed the forest track to Anglers Retreat with a small diversion down a rocky, muddy trail and through a little bog. We stopped at Angler’s Retreat to check on one of my geocaches and then continued on past Llyn Penrhaeadr.

I have another geocache hidden on the shores of Llyn Penrhaeder so we decided to stop and check on this one as well. There are no obvious landmarks near this one, so I wasn’t 100% sure where it was, but then I remembered that I had loaded the nearest 100 caches to home into my Forerunner 305 the other day, so a quick press of a few buttons and my GPS watch was telling me that the nearest gecoache was 150 feet from where we had stopped…. Needless to say we soon found it and all was in good order. I know everyone has been loading geocache details directly from their computer into their GPS devices for a while now, but I didn’t have a cable for my old eTrex GPS so this is new to me. I had always had to enter them by hand, so being able to automatically add 100 caches to the device is great. It saves so much time and means I have all the caches I need to hand.

From here we headed off to the forestry and made a little detour to Pistyll y Llyn. Harvey had never approached from this direction before or seen the view from the top, so he was suitably impressed. It is an amazing place and the location of yet another of my Watery Wales 2 geocaches. If you only do one of them, then this is the one to do just for the views.

After retrieving our bikes we climbed to the highest point of the route before an undulating descent through some eroded gulleys that were good fun. Unfortunately the bottom part of the track was a little wet so we had to dismount a few times to negotiate some big puddles but overall it was a good technical little trail. From here we headed back along forest tracks towards Nant-y-Moch and then finished off the route with a bit of the Continental Trail and then back to Pendam.

20 miles in total and a nice easy pace with stops for the geocaches made for a good afternoon out. The image to the left shows the stats of our ride and here is a kml file of the route that Google Earth should be able to open.

Anglers Retreat Cycle Route (.kml file for Google Earth)

So much for the forecast of 20cm of snow, we haven’t even had a flurry yet… Lets hope we get some tonight as Brad is coming to visit and is bringing his snowboard with him!

I didn’t sit around waiting for the snow though, I went for a little run around the block and then a nice windsurf despite the cold temperatures. Funnily enough no one else was out so I had the place to myself. I didn’t stay out long though, not because of the cold but because I had taken too big a sail over to the beach with me so was a little overpowered. It wasn’t as windy as yesterday when the Borth weather station recorded a maximum gut of 54.5 knots… Yes, I was out windsurfing yesterday as well!

Brad is bringing his mountain bike with him, so even if we don’t get any snow (I’m not expecting much) then we shall have a day in the hills whatever.

Living on the beach with a large, flat salt marsh behind us means that there isn’t any great mountain-biking on our doorstep. We do of course have some really good trails nearby, but most of these are a 20 minute drive from the house and it would be really nice not to have to do that drive. So, yesterday I set of exploring on my bike.

I headed inland to Tre-Ddol, which involces a 4 mile slog along the flat road across the bog, once in Tre-Ddol I simply picked the nearest hill and cycled up it… And what a hill it was, brutally steep and I wasn’t quite ready for it. In fact I have to admit to being beaten by it, despite it being tarmacked and me being on a mountain-bike I was forced to get off and push the top part… I shall beat it next time! From here I cycled along some nice quiet country lanes amongst some nice scenery and some great views of the Dovey Estuary and then onto some nice rocky double track. next was a big climb along forest roads towards Moel y Llyn Towards the top I stopped and spotted a little trail through the woods heading down into Artists Valley. I thought I’d explore it ans seemed to stumble upon a trail that other bikers n=have been using. Towards the top were some half constructed boardwalks and then a tricky, rocky and rooty descent that got a little too steep and a little too technical for me in places… Again, i shall complete it one day.

This brought me out into Artists Valley where I follwed the road alongside the iver before heading back onto some nice double track and back towards Tre-Ddol. I finished off with some single track through the woods above TreDdol where there is some more constructed jumps and such like, most of whcih looked far too dangerous to attempt, athough i will be back to explore a little further up the hill to see if there are any easy options.

Then it was just a four mile slog back along the roads into the wind. Nothing amazing as far as the terrain goes, but a worthwhile ride all the same that I shall be repeating in the future.

I had a tough day at the office yesterday… Started work at 4am and worked until 10.30am, stopping to help get Morgan off to nursery and Anna off to work, then the fun began. A good windsurf session off the beach here at Ynyslas. The windsurfing itself was good, lots of wind and some decent waves, and then the weather got interetsing too. First the sky went very dark indeed and we were surrounded by thunder and lightning (I got off the water as a 4m carbon mast is likely to attract the lightning and I don’t fancy finding out what happens if it hits it whilst I’m attached!), then some really strange looking dark clouds swriled overhead and we were hit by a massive hailstorm, then the wind dropped off, so I packed up and headed home.

As soon as I got home the sun came out and the wind picked up again - typical. A little more work, collected Morgan from nursery and went to watch the cranes at the estuary where they are doing some directional drilling to install a new electricity link beneath the estuary.. I’m not 100% sure what the cable is for and if it will affect our electricity supply, but we’ve been having more than our fair share of power cuts again recently (common at this time of year), so some improvement wouldn’t go amiss.

I then psyched myself up to brave the weather and go out for a night ride on my mountain bike. Only a short one, but it was good to do it. I won’t bore you with the stats from my GPS Heart Rate Monitor again, but as with every training session I’ve used it for so far, my maximum heart rate was 172bpm again!

Just for James (as he requested it in his comment), here are the summary stats:

Seeing as James asked for a daily updates as far as my attempts to get fit are concerned, here are the stats from my Mountain Bike Ride around the Pendam Trail at Nant-yr-Arian today.

First the route itself, My Speed and Heart Rate graph… Max 172bpm once again! And the summary stats.

After the first lap I then did another lap of the most northerly loop, and on the way checked in on a couple of my geocaches to make sure they were OK. Both caches were fine, but the tree hiding the cache at Blaenmelindwr has been felled and a few people have had problems with the coordinates for the cache at Syfydrin, so I took some new readings with my Forerunner 305 which has a better GPS receiver than my old eTrex.

I was impressed with the performance of the Foreunner, as it seemed to keep GPS reception even through the forested parts of the trail and looking at the route in Google Earth, the trail made by the second lap was perfectly on top of the first time around so accuracy seems to be good… Shame my fitness isn’t quite up to the same standards!

I seem to be becoming GPS enabled in all walks of life these days. It started with a Garmin eTrex that I originally bought to see how fast I could go whilst windsurfing and then started using for geocaching.

I had a TomTom One XL for my birthday which has been working well and is good fun in the car and now I’ve recently ordered a Garmin Forerunner 305.

Well, as usual at this time of year loads of people decide it is time to get fit and shed some of that Xmas excess, and I’m one of them so I have started running and mountain-biking in an attempt to regain some of my fitness. I thought if I splashed out on a GPS enabled heart-rate monitor to track my progress then I would have to keep at it in order to justify the expense.

It hasn’t arrived yet, but I shall write a little report on it here when I’ve had chance to try it out.

The prices of GPS enabled devices is dropping all the time, already the One XL that I got just a month ago has dropped in price by about 20%. Kind of annoying, but I guess I’ve had a months use out of it and technological gadgets always drop in price pretty quickly. Next on the list of GPS enabled devices will be a handheld with mapping capabilities… Maybe not or a while though!

The weekend just gone was the date of our annual family pre-christmas get together and rather than go ‘Xmas Tree Hunting’ near Bristol most of the Cole family met up at Coed-Y-Brenin for a walk in the woods. My parents arrived here on Friday evening and then on Saturday morning we all headed off to Coed y Brenin where we met Jay, Megan, Harry, Charlie and jack (Jennie couldn’t make it), Brad (Eloise couldn’t make it) and Trudi, Kia and Shaun. We also met up with a small Ynyslas contingent of Simon, Sarah and Josh and Dave and Sarah.

It was a cold crisp and clear day so once we were all together we headed to the visitor centre before deciding most people would go off for a walk in the woods and to see Santa whilst Dave, Sarah and I had a little mountain bike ride. The ride was only a short one but the weather conditions were perfect and the going easy so it was pleasant rather than challenging. The others enjyed their walk and saw Santa and his elves so the main mission was accomplished.

We then caused chaos in the cafe for lunch before playing the playground for a while and then heading home. Brad and Trudi went straight from Coed-y-Brenin whilst Jay and his lot came back with us for a couple of hours at our house before heading off…

All in all a successful day, but I’m not sure how enthused everyone was with the amount of driving involved… maybe if they planned to stay overnight it would be a little easier.

Sunday was another gorgeous, but cold day, so I first tried to mend the weather station…More on that elsewhere and then we set off for lunch at Heathers in Capel Dewi. Unfortunately they had forgotten about our booking and also failed to tell us that it was a Xmas special lunch today, but they soon found us a table and apologised and all was well. the dinner was nice once again. We then had a little look around the Garden Centre before heading into town to buy a battery for the weather station (which we hoped might fix it). After that we headed to the estuary for a quick look only to find someone had got their car stuck in the soft sand. I don’t usually have too much sympathy for such people but as the guy had his very cold looking partner with him and a small baby in the back of the car I towed him out.

Back at home we had a quite afternoon. My dad helped put the loft ladder up (at last) and then we continued to (not) mend the weather station and then succesfully managed to break a PC as well, although it has to be said we did fix it first for a while!

My parents stayed Sunday night as well and left around midday today for their journey back to Gloucestershire. It feels as though Xmas should be upon us now, and it will be soon but unfortunately there is a week of work to fit in first.

It was good to see everyone though and I guess we should start planning the Xmas get together for next year soon!

I had another nice day in the hills today mountain-biking with Reg, Shem and Martin. We started at Pendam where I met Reg at around 10am and had a cup of tea, Shem and Martin turned up, Shem with his brand new bike. A Giant Anthem which looked really nice and was pretty light too. We had a little ride around most of the Pendam Trail then stopped for a cuppa before heading of towards Nant-y-Moch and back.

Nothing too strenuous, just a steady pace with lots of little stops. Shem’s new bike didn’t quite make it though as a seal on his front forks blew with a nice pop-shhhhh kind of sound so he will be sending the bike back to get it repaired/replaced.

I’ve decided that I usually do a days gardening for local OAPS each week just to get myself away from my computer and my usual job as a web-designer, so during the winter whilst the gardens don’t need any attention I shall send that day out in the hills on my bike… OK, it doesn’t bring in any money but it keeps me fit and keeps me sane… That’s the plan anyway, lets hope work doesn’t get in the way!

I actually remembered to take a few photos before the others arrived this morning as well…

I’ve had another action packed weekend here in Mid Wales. Enjoying the best that the area has to offer, all thanks to Anna who of course had Morgan to contend with on Saturday whilst I enjoyed myself.

Steve arived at around 9am and we headed off to Pendam for a mountain bike ride out to Angler’s Retreat and back. I had done this route a couple of times at night whilst following others from the Ystwyth Cycling Club, but hadn’t done it in the daylight or found the route on my own.

The route finding was fine and if anything it was easier at night, but the route itself was good with a good variety of surfaces and technical difficulty and not too much sustained climbing. It was pretty cold and wet up there and the wind was picking up so we only did the one route of about 14 miles so that we could head back down to the beach for a windsurf session. Steve managed to fall off a couple of time and I managed to find one really deep (probably about waist deep) puddle that I cycled through. Steve saw me disappear into it and thought better of trying to ride through it himself. needless to say I got pretty wet.

Back at sea-level and there was enough wind for a decent windsurf session at Ynyslas. I tried out my new wheel-barrow as my previous one has rusted away and met Steve, Impi and a guy from the south coast over there. We had a good session in what is now beginning to feel like winter conditions.

This part of Wales really does have a lot to offer for those who like the outdoor lifestyle and a bit of adventure.

Anna and Morgan meanwhile had been busy sorting out Morgans toys and cooking soup.