The barn we stayed in was a cold, dirty hole when we first arrived. My sister and her husband also live 80 miles away from it, so they're very much absentee landlords. If we'd paid for this we wouldn't have been happy. Still, once the fires were switched on, and we'd cleaned up the shit that the last occupants had left behind, it became much more warm and cosy.
We'd anticipated the barn being pretty much a base, but ended up spending quite a lot of time, particularly during the evenings, sitting in a nice warm living room. Internet access, via a mobile broadband dongle, was a frustrating experience. It would take ten minutes to load up google, if it would load up at all. So I spent much of each evening playing games, either with the family, or computer based stuff like civilisation2. It's been a while, and I'd forgotten just how repetitive it is.
Snowdonia can be breathtaking. The bridge at the bottom of the lane is a place where we'd always stop and look. Us and everyone else. That point on google earth is a mass of little blue squares.
Anyway, we're back. We've brought all the stuff in, but not really unpacked, and I feel like I need a holiday.
Some piccies to finish...
This is Lake Padarn, a few days in. Taken from the bridge of photogenaity. On the right is Snowdon. On the left is Glyder Fach. Or Glyder Fawr. Not sure which. This particular photograph is now my desktop wallpaper.
This one was taken a day earlier. We got up early, and saw mist over the lake, so took a walk down to the bridge. It was lovely. The big snowy mountain on the left is Glyder Fach or Fawr again.
Not sure what this mountain is, but it looks like a grand place for sledging.
One walk we did was up a track behind the barn, through Padarn country park. After slipping and sliding through the remnants of snow, we reached civilisation of sorts. This old tractor caught my eye.
There are quite a few different officially signposted walking routes in the area. the walk I did around lake padern was indicated by posts with white stripes on them. This picture was taken by the Llanberis slate mining museum, where many paths meet. The dark blue takes you to flooded quarry where divers can dive. The yellow follows the white but veers off into the higher hills. The green one takes you back to nature. The red one leads to either Hell or Anfield. The light blue one leads to the sky.
This also taken from the southern end of Padern, near the slate museum. Most of the snow was gome by this morning. The mountains almost always get covered in the winter. Up until a few years ago, the snow would lie in the valleys too, but these days, it rarely stays for long.
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