Monday 31 March 2014

A Surprise Birthday Weekend

A jolly lovely weekend was had in Wales, staying in a gorgeous 200 year old cottage just outside Porthmadog. Gorgeous garden filled with birds singing away in warm weather which we were very fortunate to have for most of the weekend. My other half had been keeping the whole trip a secret for some time, I didn't even know what country he was taking me to! It was so lovely to get back to Wales though and we were certainly blessed with the weather!

On arriving we had a bit of time to spare before a couple of our friends were due to arrive so we went and explored Porthmadog to find an OS map of Snowdonia. Naturally I wanted to visit the estuary so we parked the other end of "Y Cob" and I was chuffed to find a little bird hide with the comfiest bench! Late afternoon it was and there wasn't much to see, I wished I'd brought my spotting scope. Just a Heron and a pair of Shelduck to be seen from the hide. As we drove back across Y Cob embankment I got a bit too excited about a bird of prey flying across the estuary - an Osprey! My first this year :)

View from Y Cob
The comfiest hide bench ever!


So the plan for the next day was to climb Mount Snowdon which I was very chuffed about as it's been on my to do list for some time...despite having climbed 6 other peaks (Cadair Idris and Pen Y Fan twice!) during my 3 years at university Snowdon (the highest Welsh peak) had eluded me on 3 separate occasions but better late than never! We had hoped to climb the Crib Goch ridge but on arriving at the visitor centre conditions looked a tad too windy to attempt it and with 60 mph gusts predicted it was decided to give it a miss - this time. We headed up the Pig track and back down the Miner's track. Blue skies and sun for the hike up, the tracks were certainly busy with plenty of people. A Sea King chopper roared about the summit for a good while and gave us amazing views.

View down the Llanberis Pass, a route I absolutely have to re-visit on my motorbike!
Snowdon Summit
Coming down the Miner's Track




We made it up and down in good time, back to the cottage for a homecooked meal of spaghetti bolognese, garlic bread and a couple of bevvies :)

These lovely old plates were in our bedroom, reminded me of my time on Skomer, such a shame our coastlines are no longer home to the Great and Little Auks.




So all in all a great success of a weekend! Art-wise, my original Gorillas drawing is due to come back from the framers in preparation for it's trip down to that London! I've a busy week ahead what with one thing and another so  not much drawing is going to get done until the back end of the week but the Puffin Study is really coming along now, I'll be posting up another progress blog post shortly :)

Meg x

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