by Chris Henshall » Tue Aug 10, 2021 6:11 pm
Many thanks for that; a good mate and I ran outdoor courses for army cadets (working out of what would, these days, be called a camping barn at Ffridd, ref. 613305) in the early 1980s and got to know these hills well – they are fantastically rough and your photos brought back many happy memories.
In particular, we used to run a navigation exercise from Pont Cwm-yr-Afon on the Afon Artro round three llyns (Glowy, Du and Morwynion) finishing in Cwm Bychan and, even though the total distance was only seven or eight kilometres, it used to take the cadets an entire morning, even in clear visibility. If the clag was down, they’d always overshoot Llyn Du and we used to make sure that one of us was in position to stop them heading off east towards Graigddu-isaf. We had groups camping at both Llyn Du and Llyn Hywel on numerous occasions and used to make them try and find the remains of the crashed Lancaster bomber on the northern slopes of Foel Ddu to the west of Rhinog Fawr. We also ran a couple of complete traverses all the way from Talsarnu to Barmouth (both accessible on the train) in a day; luckily the ridge gets a lot less rough south of the northern slopes of Y Llethr so you can move faster. Like you, except for on the Roman Steps, we hardly ever met another soul on the hills.
I’ve only been back three or four times since those days but your report has reminded me what a wonderful area this is; it won’t be too long before I head back up and give myself a hard couple of days over these rocky hills and finish with a pint at the Victoria Inn in Llanbedr.
Thanks for posting.