Snowdonia

I’ve said it before but the welsh countryside is beautiful.
Today I went to the top of Snowdonia. The train up the mountain goes from Llanberis. I left my accommodation at 7:30am and wondered whether there’d be any peak hour traffic crossing the bridge but it wasn’t a problem.
The train up took an hour. The views were great from about the first 45 minutes then we headed up through the clouds. The view from the top was non existent but good again on the way down.
Had interesting travellers in my compartment. A couple from South Carolina, a couple from Kent, a couple who didn’t seem to speak English and may have been from Spain or Portugal and a woman from Oxfordshire who has climbed Snowdonia previously and was planning to walk down.
We’d been warned that we had to be back on the train on time there is no guarantee there’d be room on a later train.
The non English speaking couple weren’t on the train on the way down. We hoped they’d planned to walk down rather than miss the train although we did leave one minute early.
We had some interesting discussions on the way down with us all coming from different backgrounds. I met my first flat earther (that I know of). Given a lot of of his other views I didn’t try and reason with him.

From Llanberis I decided to take the Pen-y-Pass around to Porthmadog and Portmerion.
The drive wasn’t as bad as I thought it may be. It was narrow in parts but other parts it was a two lane road. The views were spectacular.

I had planned to visit Portmeirion as the couple from York I met on the boat had described it as “a totally bonkers town”. It’s actually a resort and I discovered it requires an entry fee of £20 so I didn’t actually visit.
The drive was worth it though.

I came back to my accommodation via Caernarfon. I discovered that it has an amazing castle but I’d stopped at a farm shop and bought some meat for tea and I didn’t have a cooler bag so couldn’t stop.
I may go back on Wednesday to explore it but not yet sure of my plans.Baca lagi