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March 28, 2016

Bank Holiday Monday – an uphill walk

Filed under: chinks — Tags: — Trefor Davies @ 8:59 pm

killer walk to Clogwyn Station

Final prep for our walk today. Headed up the Llanberis Path to Snowdon. We won’t go all the way up as the weather is not good but at least for the moment it isn’t driving rain as it has been over the weekend.

Rhys and family are on their way over for an 11am meet. Was originally planned for 10am but that was a bit ambitious so I called (using Anne’s phone) and pushed it back.

Bit of a cold but ah well. It never deterred Mallory, presumably.

Had a nice roast beef dinner last night with the 6 of us around the table, Tom having left for London. As usual with fan assisted ovens I couldn’t get the timing and temperature right so the joint ended up being more towards well done than rare. I’ll never get that right.

Seven of us, me Anne, Hannah, Joe, Charlotte, Rhys, Iwan and Elen, set off shortly after 11am. The uphill bit was a total killer. The downhill bit was tough but not the same level of killer. We stopped for a cuppa at the Halfway House which rejuvenated me somewhat and I was able to soldier on to above the snowline. We had been told by a warden not to go further than the bridge at Clogwyn Station, the penultimate train stop. Tbh it took an effort for me to get that far. No way was I going to make it to the top with a particularly steep bit yet to come. The warden also told us it was a 35 minute walk from the Halfway Caff to the Clogwyn Station. This was bull and must have assumed a high level of fitness. For me it was a good hour or more – see the table in the featured image.

snowdon walkAs it happened the spot we turned around at corresponded with the highest point I have to climb to on the coast to coast so i’m not too unhappy about it. The map suggests this is 780 metres. Fitbit said 2,267 feet elevation gain. This is probably right as we didn’t start at sea level.

At least I’ve now climbed the highest climb on the coast to coast. Wouldn’t do me any harm to shift another 10Kg in the next month aka the weight loss so far.

The video was taken by Charlotte from the turning point. My phone is kaput. Still managed to upload my Fitbit data when I got back. I assume the fitbit Surge can still talk to the phone app.

clogwyn_stationThe biggest problem I have with the Fitbit is that today’s walk used up all the battery when in GPS tracking mode. 5 hours isn’t good enough. I’m going to need a whole day. The Fitbit Surge was very generously provided to me by Fitbit themselves. I’m going to continue with it for the moment but largely without using the GS function.

Does anyone know anyone senior at Garmin who might want to comp me one of their watches for the coast to coast? Runkeeper will still do the job with an external battery boosting the phone. Once I have a working phone. The Oneplus 2 isn’t particularly reliable for this though and periodically freezes.

We ended up at Pete’s eats where I had a pint of tea, haddock, chips and peas and a couple of bottles of welsh cider. Huge portions – Anne finished off my chips!

Quiet night in…

Vid from Clogwyn Station (thanks Charlotte)

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