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Monday 5 September, Llandudno, Snowdonia, Lake Vyrnwy

Great Britain 2005 - part XVII

Elisabeth & Teije
2006-08-28 17:42:31

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It is raining cast and dogs when we wake up and it doesn't look very promising for the rest of the day. We first go to Llandudno, on the north coast near Conwy.

Alice Liddell, the girl that inspired Lewis Caroll to write Alice in Wonderland, often stayed in her youth in Llandudno on holiday and later her father build a house for their family where they lived for 11 years. The Alice in Wonderland center is a small house where several stories are being depicted. It is very nicely done and part of the stories are being told in several languages.

When we step outside it is dry and we can sit outside to drink a cup of coffee. We make a short walk through the town and then take a steep road to the nearby coppermine which was ecploited already in prehistoric times. We look around in the visitor center but we have seen enough mines the last few days and skip this one. We drive on to the highest mountain of Wales, the Snowdon.

A very good road takes us over the Llanberis pass where mist is covering the mountainsides. We are curious how it will be on the Snowdon and if it will be even worth to go up with this weather. When we arrive in the village we are relieved to see that it is much quieter than last week when there were long waiting lines before the railway station. But this time the price of a trip scares us away: 20 pounds per person to for a trip of 2½ hours! That is € 60 for us together, 130 old Dutch guilders! We decide we feel quite happy also without this experience, especially since the mountainsides of the Snowdon are also covered in mist.

We turn around and drive further to the south to see more of the Snowdonia National Park. Naturally, we take the smallest roads we can find and we come through very different sceneries: bare mountain tops, prairie-like plateaus, but also very green meadows or very rough landscapes. Even the sky is alternately blue, misty or full of dark clouds.

The sheep here have very long tales, almost touching the ground, a different kind of sheep than we have seen in other parts of Great Britain, very funny since it looks as if they have 5 legs. From Bala we take a narrow road through a high pass with breathtaking views and then go down to drive around Lake Vyrnwy which is surrounded by woods. This area is of exceptional beauty and we are glad it is relatively quiet on the roads.

Near the south point of the lake we suddenly see a castle tower, the Twr Hidlo Llyn Efyrnwy (no, don't ask us how to pronounce that, Welsh is still quite incomprehensible for us), or the Straining Tower. Would it be a water tower? It is owned by the waterworks. Whatever its purpose, it is beautifully situated on the edge of the lake, alos seen from the nearby bridge.

And so we drive on for many more hours through this great scenery. In Dolgellau we stop to have dinner and Elisabeth gets real spinach soup, which I may finish eventually. Only a pity the spinach is still raw... the sun is still shining and we sit outside, but it gets colder quickly now. It takes us two more hours to return to the campsite where we stay in our warm and comfy car to read a bit.