Trip to Tryfan

This Monday my man Medhi and I agreed to go to Tryfan, without much planning as usual and not knowing what to expect. So we just had a look at Trail magazine for a map and a route near there, that was about all the prep we did. So we got up early on Monday morning without having time for breakfast before we left. On the way not too far from north Wales we decided to have some heavy fuel for breakfast, hence decided to go to McDonald for breakfast(that was an extremely good idea).

We arrived a couple of hours later and then I realised why I always wanted to go to north Wales. It was very beautiful, one can see in
 this photo that I posted on my google+, not much photoshopping there, if any.

So here we are parking the car and getting our rucksack ready and up we went. As we got up this small path, we had one of the most spectacular and beautiful view(possibly the best amongst any trip we did).

 

Amazing!!



 

The one surprise that me and my friend got, was that it was littered with massive Rocks everywhere, making it exciting for trying out scrambling. Here I started fooling around climbing those gigantic rocks:

  I must say it was it was our first time scrambling and we loved every second and pain of it and guess what it really was not easy with our camping gear on our back. We were blessed with a nice view of lakes nearby:

 

After resting near this small lake and fooling around we continued our way up Tryfan, with plenty of scrambling, I'll let the photo do the talking from here:

 

 

 

Here is Medhi jumping on Adam and Eve, which I was to scared to do due to my knee(chickened out basically). After all this we gruellingly and painfully came down to go and camp overnight near the lake.:

We had a really nice evening resting and staring at the lake and in the morning we got up early, packed up our gear and went back to the car. We went for a short drive not too and here is what we saw:

In the end this turned out to be the nicest camp we ever did, especially that we were very lucky with the weather. I hope there will be more to come around this amazing area of Wales.



PEN Y FAN

Once again I've dropped off the radar for quite a long time, due to work commitment. At some point I will have to reign that in and try to get out more. Since the being of this year I have been on 2 camping trips. The one I'm going to post here is the Pen Y fan trip. Which is probably one of my nicest one due to the breath taking view.

 

Again this is something that was planned 2 days before the trip pretty much last minutes. My friend came over to my place and of we went and luckily we did not encounter too much traffic on the way and the cat park near there was not too hard to find.

 Off we went and started our ascent, which in actual fact was pretty hard at the beginning and ended up being easier as we continued. 

we did somehow stop a lot to admire the beautiful scenery and tried to not get too carried away about taking photos. 

As we kept on walking we started noticing the top, but at the same time the wind was getting stronger, up to the point where you would be able to lean against it (similar to MJ in Smooth Criminal). So as it was getting late we decided to go down on the side of the mountain and put the tents up. Pitching the tents that evening was a bit of pain, due to the strong wind changing direction and it was really due to the wind chill. The strong wind was a good excuse to try my new Berghaus Ramche, which felt really nice and warm within a minute or 2.

In the morning we got up had some coffee and some Nakd Bar, which I must is one of my favourite due to the fact that they don't contain much crap. Then off we went back to the top.

 





  Once again we could see the top and we did not have much to cover. As we got nearer to the top we could see patches of snow, remnants from the previous weekend snow shower. It was a bit slippery to climb up to the top, but we got there in the end. The view was really magnificent and it just reminded me what I like going up mountains and hills.

 

 

 

 

 

 



Hello people,

It has been a while since I last wrote anything on the blog, again due to work commitment, but here I am. I have been walking still, did some nice walk right outside London: Box Hill(Lycra Hill you’ll know what I mean) and The Devil’s Punch Bowl, both highly recommended. I must say these walk were really nice, I didn’t even expect these to be that nice.

But let’s get on my last proper wild camp, which was last weekend, me and my friend Mehdi have been thinking to try Wales more as it is nearer to drive to. This trip was supposed to have happened the week before but Mehdi got really sick and was on antibiotics. But anyway he kind of recovered a bit before that trip, but was still on antibiotics. So we met at his place and from there decided what we would do, Pen Y fan, Rhinogs or Sugar Loaf. Due to his health we decided to do Sugar Loaf, which seems much less strenuous compared to the other places.

So there we started quite late around 2pm, especially knowing that we would have much daylight and the weather was pretty rubbish.  But we decided that we were not going to chicken out and drive back home, but I had to keep an eye on Mehdi. So we kept on walking until we had about 30mins of daylight left and by then we were quite near the top of the hill, so we thought we’ll leave the top for tomorrow, hoping we would get a nice view. Hence we just started pitching our tent and settle down as well it was raining a little a bit and it was pretty windy.

We got cooking pretty much straight away as we finished pitching and I thought it was time to put something more comfortable and it was the first me wearing my Alpkit Filo on a camp and god what a pleasure it was. It was so warm and a nice feeling to the skin, as well I was so eager to unpack my new sleeping bag the Rab Neutrino 400 End. As soon as I unpacked it, you could see the lofting happening right in front of your eyes. So after eating I thought it was about time to go to lie down while listening to some music as this was going to be a long night as it was still only around 5-6pm. I kinda succumb to the comfort of the neutrino bag, it was soooo smooth that I dosed off. Somehow I got up at around 9pm plus, due to overheating in the bag and it was about 4c(and dropping due to wind chill). So me and Mehdi chat for a while to kill time and tried going back to sleep. Later this evening it started raining more and the wind was even worse. We got up in the morning, with sub zero temp and parts of my tent had frost, which I didn’t expect at all. But hey the weather was starting to look pretty good.

 

It has been a while since I posted anything, this is due to work commitment, but I thought let me take a breather and start writing again. So I thought I would post about the recent social meet I have been to at the usual Monsal Head(as the basecamp). Well as part of the tradition I got stuck in a some heavy traffic, but it was nowhere as bad as the one before.

Arriving at Monsal Head I pitched my tent, which I somehow still have problem with, then meet up with everyone. It was very interesting meeting new faces like Geoff, Shaun(Rosenrott) Shaun and Tony(Sawyer Filter), all interesting to chat with and enthusiastic as well. We had out dinner on the camping ground and then went for a drink at the pub. I must say I was completely knackered with the driving and soon started nodding off, but it wasn't before having a couple of pints of apple juice and a whisky. After that we went back to the camp and I probably had the best sleep of my life.



The next day we got organised and off we went for our day hike at Stanage Edge, which was decided the night before and as well due to the low level it would suit my dodgy knees. As you can see from the photos we were lucky with the weather, as it was not really good the night before. I must say that I had been itching to hike at Stanage Edge for quite a while and it sure did not disappoint me. It is truly a beautiful place to hike and camping as well. As the saying goes, a photo is worth a thousand words, Peak District keep surprising me all the time.