{"id":3431,"date":"2014-01-07T19:13:22","date_gmt":"2014-01-07T19:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/?p=3431"},"modified":"2022-04-11T21:33:00","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T20:33:00","slug":"new-year-shenanigans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/new-year-shenanigans\/","title":{"rendered":"New Year Shenanigans"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent the last three New Year periods in Scotland desperately hoping for nice weather, and instead looking at the inside of clouds all day. So I changed tactic this year, and headed for Snowdonia instead. First I met up with Gary and his venerable camper van in Bala, and we pitched up somewhere south of Llanuwchllyn for the night. The following morning dawned… damp and a bit grey, but at least it wasn’t raining. We took my car south to Bwlch Oerddrws – not the logical start point for a planned traverse of Aran Fawddwy, but Gary had a cunning plan to take in a Hewitt<\/a> on an extended excursion.<\/p>\n

\"Looking

Looking south from Drws Bach. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

Two hours later, and having rescued a sheep which was stuck in a fence, we reached the start point of the standard route. By this point the cloud had cleared and we had great views over unfamiliar territory.<\/p>\n

\"Aran

Aran Fawddwy; not a bad looking mountain. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

As we approached the summit, the main ridge stretched out before us under a cosmetic dusting of snow, and a very amenable descent back to the camper followed. We then de-camped to the pub, with Gary blissfully unaware that we’d been within a couple of hundred metres of another Hewitt that we didn’t bother to summit. Oops.<\/p>\n

\"Chilly.

Chilly. \u00a9 Haydn Williams 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

The following day I met Chris and Lou, with the plan being to go for a run. The weather forecast was a bit wrong, and so we sat in their van planning low-level routes as the rain lashed against the windows. In the end we settled for a lap of Idwal and then over Bwlch Tryfan. It was soggy from the start, with the view from the Gribin Facet revealing just how much rain had fallen in the past 24 hours.<\/p>\n

\"Wowsers

Wowsers – Nant Ffrancon doesn’t normally look like that. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

A rather-more-deep-than-usual crossing of the outflow of Llyn Bochlwyd led up to Bwlch Tryfan, where there was still a little bit of snow plastered to the rocks. With no appetite to head any higher into a howling wind, we dropped down into Cwm Tryfan.<\/p>\n

\"Chris

Chris (top-left) approaching Bwlch Tryfan. \u00a9 Haydn Williams 20143<\/p><\/div>\n

With a slight improvement in the weather, we decided to finish up with a quick circuit of Llyn Ogwen, which proved to be a bit of a pain as everything was under several inches of water. We found a way round nonetheless, and were treated to a real spectacle at the end of the lake where the Roman bridge was pretty much submerged, and the volume of water running down Ogwen falls was phenomenal.<\/p>\n

\"Break

Break out the scuba gear – the path turns into lake. \u00a9\u00a0Haydn Williams 2013<\/p><\/div>\n

The following day was a rest day, with New Year’s Eve spent with friends and family on the coast. I dashed back later that evening in preparation for the Tour de Llyn Llydaw<\/a> race on New Year’s Day. There were some familiar faces, including Chris and Lou again, and I made it around in about 50 minutes, putting me at 12th place out of 67<\/a>. I was quite pleased, but Chris definitely put in more effort than me, and reaped the rewards with first place! A great way to salvage some fun out of a wet start to 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve spent the last three New Year periods in Scotland desperately hoping for nice weather, and instead looking at the inside of clouds all day. So I changed tactic this year, and headed for Snowdonia instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3433,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[998,420,309,372,376],"class_list":["post-3431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-outdoors","tag-aran-fawddwy","tag-fell-running","tag-snowdonia","tag-walking","tag-winter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3431"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3431\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3433"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.haydnwilliams.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}