Geocaching in the Arenig Hills
We’ve just had another action packed weekend here in Wales. On Saturday Steve and I headed off to the Arenig hills for some geocaching while Anna looked after Morgan and took him to a birthday party in Aberystwyth.
Steve and I met up in Bala and then headed North on a little road to the south of Llyn Celyn. From there we set off towards the summit of Arenig Fawr. There was a geocache at the summit, but I also noticed whilst researching the local caches that the final cache of the famous five puzzle series was located near to the shores of Llyn Arenig that we would be passing on the way to the summit. Of course having not previously done the famous five series we wouldn’t have the final coordinates for this cache.
The walk to the lake was easy and once there we had a little nose around the bothy and also looked out for any obvious hiding places for a cache, but there were so many in that area that we really had no chance of finding it without the coordinates so we headed off around the southern side of the lake and up onto the ridge that would lead to the summit.
The walk to the summit was lovely, not too strenuous as the path gradually worked its way around the side of the hill and then up towards the summit. We had great views back down towards Llyn Arenig and onto Llyn Celyn and south towards Bala. As we neared the summit we could also see NW towards the hills of Snowdonia proper and off to Cadair Idris and the Arans… The views from the top were fantastic.
We found the cache, had some lunch and then headed down the north side of the hill, skirting the steep crags before walking through some quarries and back onto the road. We then walked up another smaller hill that overlooked Llyn Celyn and found a second geocache before a mad scramble back down the hill through waist deep bracken.
After this we drove a little way towards Trawsfynydd and did a third easy cache by strolling along the route of the old Bala – Ffestiniog Railway and across a spectacular viaduct. As usual, a good day in the hills with some nice views and some lovely weather.
