Cragging in Sunny North Wales

Cragging in sunny North Wales

This weekend we headed across to North Wales to celebrate Simon's birthday with a couple of days of camping and climbing. The weather was great, wall to wall sunshine both days....in fact it was a bit too hot to think about climbing anything too hard!
We met up with Adam, still recovering from his 3 peaks yacht race adventure, and after a couple of beers in the pub on friday evening, decided upon the Cromlech as the venue for saturday's climbing.
Unsurprisingly, it was baking hot up on the south side of the Llanberis pass, so a couple of easy multi-pitch routes was all we got done in between lounging in the sun on the path below the crag!

Adam on the first pitch of Dives/Better Things

The mighty Dinas Cromlech



Reaching the belay

 

Saturday evening was spent at the campsite enjoying vast quantities of barbecued meat (cooking time halved thanks to Gareth's experimental use of the MSR stove to heat the portable bbqs!), lots of birthday beers, and avoiding the millions of midges that descended on us as soon as we moved out of the bbq smoke.



With a few slightly sore heads on sunday morning, a plan for the day evolved that included climbing somewhere with a short walk in, and next to a lake for a post-climb cooling swim. Clogwyn -y-wenallt seemed to fit the bill perfectly! Gareth and I climbed the 2-pitch classic "Oxine", a brilliant VS that finished up a steep wall littered with enormous surprise holds.

Jo belaying Simon on the first pitch of Bovine

Gareth reaching the belay on pitch 1 of Oxine

Steve and Gareth sunbathing below the crag

Deciding it was too hot to climb any more routes after this, we headed down for a swim in the surprisingly warm lake, followed by a huuuuuge ice-cream in Beddgelert.

All in all a great weekend spent with friends in the sun :)