Grade 3 scrambling course

We drove up to North Wales this weekend, leaving Friday morning because we needed to get up there by Friday afternoon. In reality, we ended up getting stuck in the worst traffic ever so the journey took nearly 10 hours rather than the 5.5 or 6 that it should take. Oh well. Since the motorway was at a standstill, we headed into Birmingham and took quite an educational route through the inner city! There are no sari shops in our part of Sussex - that's for sure. Anyway, we eventually made it to Nain and Taid's house and were treated to a lovely dinner.

Saturday morning Rhodri and I headed for the hills to meet our Instructor for the day - a man called Graham. It was a little messy getting going because we took two cars and had a really hard time finding a parking spot along Llanberis pass, and the day was wearing on. But we got going eventually and hiked up to the cliff that is in the top right of the photo below (the one with just Rhodri).

Today we learnt about Grade 3 scrambling. I didn't know this was an actual thing with a name, but its what Grandma Bucky would call going through a "tricky section" of a path in the mountains where all of a sudden you have to use your arms and your legs in order to get from A to B. These are the sections that can be pretty dodgy unless you have ropes and harnesses and all that. And all that is what we had on this day! In fact, the whole point was to learn how and when to use ropes and belays and protection. In other words, how to get from A to B through tricky sections and sometimes even scary little cliffy sections while protecting yourselves from getting hurt.

Rhodri and Graham

 Although the morning was pretty overcast, the weather improved as the day went on, so while we were on Crib Goch ridge near Snowdon, it was just stunning landscape around us.

Looking down at the cliffy section that we scrambled up

On the Crib Goch ridgeline looking across to the other ridge

Back down the mountain, done for the day

Once we got back down to the car, we drove over to Beddgelert to have dinner at the Saracen's Head and we met Nain, Taid, Rhiannon and Tryfan there. Perfect end to a great day!