ridge walk – Walks With Olly

The Aran Ridge (Snowdonia)

Tuesday 29th March 2022

My inspiration for this walk came from a trip to Snowdonia in May 2019. A group of us were camping at Bwch yn Ychaf in Llanuwchllyn and very close to the Bala Lake Railway. We spent much of the weekend looking up at the ridge but, with other plans on the table, not one of us quite decided to venture up and explore it (even fewer of us could pronounce its summits).

It’s been on my mind ever since. I had to wait almost three years but I’m pleased to say that I have tackled and conquered the Aran Ridge. My walk starts in the small car park at Llanuwchllyn, after a forty-minute drive from Ffestiniog.

Returning to Hay Bluff

Saturday 18th August 2018

All the way back in December 2017, I led a group walk in the Black Mountains that I soon grew to regret. One weekend after snow had fallen heavily across the region, I found the mountain tops were covered and we were struggling through depths up to our knees for much of our day. That’s without mentioning the rain waiting for us before we had a chance to put our boots on and the gale-force winds arriving from the east.

I’d thought about repeating the same route but have always held reservations over the small car park at Black Hill. So, for this outing, I decided to park elsewhere and lead a longer route along different paths.

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Snowdon via. Crib Goch

Tuesday 17th July 2018

Forty-eight hours earlier, we’d conquered Tryfan and the Glyderau. A day of scrambling and hiking across less-familiar terrain. It’s almost as if that was in preparation for our final adventure in North Wales.

This was our last full day, ahead of our final night and then, heading home on the Wednesday. We drove in to Snowdonia for the second time in three days. We were destined to climb Snowdon. Not only that, we would journey there along the perilous knife-edge ridge of Crib Goch!

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