Minotaurs and Travel Bugs
Hooray, he weekend again! Excellent, we were all off and able to have a family day out. It’s a shame that Anna has to work sometimes when Morgan is off school because Morgan and I get to go out and have fun whilst she is working – But someone has to pay the bills I suppose. It was now Saturday though so we had a good day planned today… Mind you, I’m not sure how keen Anna was on the prospect of geocaching and mountain biking!
I was hoping that Morgan had slept well in the little cave he had bult for himself, but as usual he woke up a little grumpy and not really wanting to go out.
If he had half a chance he’d sit in all day in his pants and ‘T’-Shirt doing next to nothing. Silly really as he loves it once he’s out doing something so I encouraged him as best I could with stories about watching Anna fall off her bike and reminding him that we had a consecutive days streak to beat whilst geocaching. Yesterdays geocaches had been our 3rd consecutive day so this would be our 4th.
After a breakfast of coffee and croissants I prepared the bikes, changed the pedals on my hardtail so that Anna could use it and loaded the car and then we headed off. Morgan still wasn’t in the mood, but first stop was just before Coed y Brenin for some geocaches and once we had stopped he soon perked up. It wasn’t the nicest of days as it was still pretty grey and damp but it was lot drier than it had been and it wasn’t raining for a change so it felt perfect to us. The drive there was uneventful and the road gets straighter each time we do it. We always say that we should venture North into Snowdonia more often and we said the same today as we always have a good day out when we do.
The first geocache we attempted was King’s Guard No.1 – I say attempted because we failed to find it so logged a DNF. We did however find some trinkets that could have been part of the cache so it could be that it had been vandalised. We’re not sure though, we may just have missed it. Undeterred we continued into the forest for the other caches in the series (King’s Guard No.2 and N0. 3). These are accessed by following the waymarked King’s Guard walking trail which takes you close to the river Mawddach and leads you through the towering cathedral like columns of the biggest trees in Coed y Brenin and on to the “King” the biggest tree of all.
We found Number 2 without too much trouble. The log book was a little damp so Anna dried out the container as best she could before replacing it. We also dropped of a ‘geokrety’ that we found last year in a forest near Northampton. I hadn’t come across geokrety’s before but they are a little like Travel Bugs – uniquely identifiable dog tags people release into the wild hoping that they will travel from geocache to geocache. This one wanted to visit forests of the world so hopefully it’ll be right at home here below the largest trees of Coed y Brenin.
We were unimpressed by the size of the trees though, none of them looked that big to us!
Number 3 of the series was a nice easy find and we dropped off the Travel Bug we had found yesterday in Aberdyfi and picked up another new one before heading back to the car and on to Coed y Brenin visitor centre. Anna went to pay in the Pay and Display Car Park but found £2 in the machine which was a stroke of luck and saved us having to pay the parking charges. We donned our cycling kit, set my bike up for Anna and we all headed off together to do the Minotaur Trail.
The Minotaur Trail is graded ‘blue’ so should be suitable for almost all levels of rider. It was fairly tame for me but perfect for Morgan and Anna. Morgan loved the series of berms near the beginning and was flying along the smooth, well groomed trails with confidence. Anna took a little bit of time to feel comfortable on a bike again so didn’t quite enjoy it to start with but was looking better by the end of the trail.
There are several iron minotaurs dotted around the trail and minotaur hoof prints on some of the rocks which Morgan enjoyed looking out for. He did fall off once but was OK and made it all the way around. In fact he loved it even though he won’t admit it! Hopefully we’ll get him out doing it more often.
We then stopped in the cafe for lunch where Anna had another lucky break. She paid for a regular soup but they brought her out a large one. I never get such luck, all I managed to do was burn my fingers on the cups of tea by spilling them as I carried them to the table!
After lunch we headed into Dolgellau to do some shopping. Morgan had a play in the playground before we headed home where I did a fairly hard 90 minute workout on the turbo trainer. By then I deserved my delicious dinner of salmon fillets with stir fried veggies and rice. A great day out for the family, some physical exercise, some fresh air, a visit to a few places we hadn’t been before thanks to some geocaches, good food, good mountain bike trails and good fun. It didn’t even rain and North Wales had once again delivered the goods.
Hopefully Anna enjoyed it too!!