We recently went to Llanrhaeadr waterfall (yes that welsh name is absoloutly crazy). The unofficial website can be found here: http://www.pistyllrhaeadr.co.uk/

It is located about 30 mins from the end of the M54, however, its what was behind the waterfall that we were going there.

Prelude to a walk…

Having spoken with Adam about it the night before, you would call it planned as much as you plan to get the wife a valentines day present… you can think about it, but won’t actually do anythign about it until the very last minute. And so on the Monday morning 4^th of February i rung up Adam and confirmed he was good to walk, yeah he was. But who else was in ?

Rung up Duffy, in bed as usual (this is now 9:30am, rung up Tom Eaton, in bed as usual, spoke to both the parentals about kicking them out of their sacks and getting back into life.

10:15am - having failed to make some sandwiches, and resorted to just taking bread rolls (brown of course) and a few apples i set of to go rustle up Tom Eaton. He was in bed still, and strolled down looking half asleep… he wasn’t coming.

“The beast was awake !”

10:30am - arrive at Duffys house, the beast is up and awake. After some short negotiations he was coming, now it was up to me to push him along and get him out the door… quick play on the piano, Duffy eating some breakfast and we were ready.
At this point i realize i didn’t have my boots, only trainers, Duffy lent me his old snow boots, which i took, a decision i would later regret given the rubbing on my foot throughout the course of the day.

11:30am - Adam had by this time got his shit together and finally made and eaten a sandwich. We were of, we weren’t sure what mountain we were going to be climbing, but we were ready for any challenge mother earth could possibly throw at us.

Enough talk, now we must walk…

12:15pm - We had arrived and parked up, i remember this time after looking at my watch, with the intention of working out how long we were gone for when we come back.

“The sun was shinning down like mid-summer”

We set of heading slightly towards the waterfall, being sure to keep clear from the old womans house as we suspected she might heckle us into putting some money into the waterfall donation box. Something we’d have been happy to do providing any of had any money.

Within 2-3 minutes from setting of, it was clear, Adam was leading the pack, me and Duffy were suffering almost instantly from lack of oxygen to the body’s vital organs. The boots were already uncomfortable, only 2-3 mins into the journey.

Once coming to the first ‘crossroads’ of paths, we obviously took the easy route… We didn’t go up anymore, we stayed level and just went along the side of the hill, also having a 5 minute break to share a orange, which was pip ridden between the 3 of us.

It was now, 7-8 mins into the journey, 5 of those spent resting, we weren’t looking in good shape.

After not very long of walking along the above path, happy and merry, we spotted a larger mountain in the distance… a long distance . .. and decided that was the one we had to climb. See the below photos:

… It was at this point we noticed the glorious sun had disappeared and heavy clouds were beginning to roll in.
We proceeded up in a straight forward direction towards this mountain, hoping to walk across its ridge and experience the wonders of mother natures mountains, and sure enough, it was good.

A few styles to cross and we found ourselves in the bottom of a valley, bog free and dry to the touch. There was quite a large set of walls which comprised of some kind of sheep pen, unfortunately photos of this are limited and the only one is this enlarged one so it will not enlarge if you click on it.

It was quite a mess, lots of rocks on the floor insides the walls, and a few gates knocked over, but then on the other hand there was alot of new fencing and gates. Quite the weird setting. It was here where we could clearly see the ridge we wanted to walk, and set our route of how to get up there. We choose to follow a stream and then take the most low degree incline hillside.

“we could see our path to the top”

About 1/5 of the way up was a waterfall and clear crossing point for this small stream, also a few rocks and tree’s and shrubs, it was there we silently, without speaking, mentally marked as our first way point.

Once we arrived there we had a rest again.

We also saw quite a few interesting tree’s like this one…

After a short while, only probably 10mins, we headed on back up towards the ridge edge. I noticed a peculiar little animal / bug on the phone. He was not harmed. The enlaged version is 2000px wide for people on slow connections.

Remember those clouds i mentioned earlier on? Well the snow started coming down, here is a photo showing how dark and horrible the sunny day had gone to;

Here is a shot of Duffy making his way up, it was quite steep here and we’d been at it hard with Adam leading for about 10-15mins by now.

Now were starting to get close, here is a shot of Adam.

Duffy, looking weather beaten

At the top all the tops of the grass was like this:

Adam and Duffy when on top of the first ridge bit..

View looking out from the ridge top..

Interesting ice on the fence,

All those photos were from when we first got onto the ridge, these next few photos were from the ‘nipple’ bit. The slightly higher nipple of rock on the other end of the ridge. Saying all this ridge talk, its not much of one, gradual inclination up the one side, then steep down the other into a bowl like structure were there is a lake.. obviously.

So this photo is on the other nipple.

The bowl lake..

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See Part 2 for the descent…