Trekking > Articles > Snowdonia and the Lakes: Surfing and Hiking

There was something not quiet right about this. In two days time the clocks would go back, winter would ‘officially’ be here and it would be time to stock up on firewood and bring out the winter duvet.

Yet here I was sitting on the roof of my demountable beside Tywyn Beach in Snowdonia National Park, drying off after a surf in a warm (ish) southerly breeze and watching a clean swell pound the shoreline. Proof, were it needed, of global warming – and proof that every cloud has a silver lining (ie we may be wrecking the environment but at least we can enjoy it while we do. Just too bad for future generations…).

Tywyn Beach is not a place normally associated with surfing, although it is a very fine stretch of sand, backed by dunes which provide good shelter from the wind and running four miles south all the way to the attractive little town of Aberdyfi and the even more attractive Dyfi Estuary.

However, surf will hit the beach after a big storm has pummelled its way over the UK, as had happened the night before, and now a clean groundswell was running up the Irish Sea, giving me a good excuse to make a detour on a trip to the mountains of Snowdonia and the Lake District and surf a few Snowdonian waves.

The idea had actually been to meander my way to the summit of Snowdon, then join up with a friend and stroll up Scafell Pike, thus ascending the highest peaks of England and Wales over a long weekend. But I have lots of ideas that go nowhere – and what’s the point of having the freedom of a campervan if you don’t make full use of it and change your travel plans on a whim?

That said, two sessions in the surf at Tywyn was enough for one day, after which I headed inland and parked up just outside the busy and colourful market town of Machnylleth. Tomorrow I would hit the mountains as originally planned…

Needless to say, having postponed my ascent of the hills to go surfing in the sunshine, I awoke next day to find low cloud and showers scattering themselves across the mountains. Snowdon was out – since I couldn’t see the top of it I had no intention of going up it. Instead a gentler ascent seemed just the job, so I opted for the short, three-hour round trip to the top of 2,861-foot Moel Siabod, above Capel Curig. The views from the summit were also obscured by mist, but before I poked my head into the clouds I was able to enjoy grand views across much of Snowdonia.

And with a long drive to the Lakes to meet my friend Tim, who was driving down from Scotland in his own camper, a short walk left me in much better fettle for navigating the crammed lanes of the M6.

I arrived at Langdale campsite in plenty of time for a couple of pints in the Old Dungeon Ghyll with Tim, both of us reminiscing about under age drinking here back in the 70s on our first exploratory trips to the mountains as fresh faced teenagers. In fact I don’t think I’d been into the Old Dungeon Ghyll since about 1979, and what a relief it was to find it relatively unchanged.

The following morning in Langdale broke in truly magnificent fashion. Not a breath of wind, a few wisps of mist rising from Oxdendale and Mickleden Becks, and the Langdale Pikes, Bow Fell and the Crinkle Crags poking up into an eggshell-blue autumn sky – short of a dusting of snow on the summits I doubt Nature could have made a better fist of this last gasp of summer.

Breakfast in Tim’s van was followed by a magnificent tour of Crinkle Crags. I was into shorts and t-shirt within a few hundred yards climb up The Band, the long, evenly angled bluff that carries you up above the far end of Langdale and provides ever more inspiring views of what is surely England’s loveliest and wildest valley. Indeed, the wild and mountainous head of Langdale is more Scottish Highlands in appearance and appears to have been shuttled down from the Ben Nevis region.

Not surprisingly the fells were quite busy on a day as splendid as this, and the warm sun and tremendous views had everyone we met in general agreement that there was nowhere else we’d rather be right now. Once at the top of The Band on the small pass by the tiny Three Tarns, we took a break for lunch and to enjoy the panorama beneath us. Only the Crinkles and Bow Fell rose above us, and we looked out across much of the Lake District and northwest England. A couple of miles to the north west Scafell Pike, the highest point in England, loomed like a huge, bulky wall and blocked our view, but everywhere else, from the distant glint of the Duddon Estuary trickling into the Irish Sea to the purple shadowed peaks of the Dales in the far distance, we were seeing the British countryside at its best and most beautiful.

As we continued on our eight-mile or so circuit of the Crinkles the panoramas that unfolded were never less than inspiring, and with the afternoon sun at the low angle of impending winter the light grew ever more glorious. By the time we reached the summit of Great Knott, our penultimate ascent of the day, the fells were bathed in the kind of warm golden glow that no doubt inspired Wordsworth and his peers to ordain the word ‘sublime’ as the only one fit to describe this kind of landscape.

Our final climb was a stiff 600-foot slog up the loose rocks of Pike o’ Blisco mainly due to the fact that, as Tim admitted himself, he couldn’t resist one more ascent on such a brilliant day, and we scrabbled down the painfully steep trail into Langdale with perfect timing – half an hour before dark and just right for a quick pint in the Old Dungeon Ghyll before returning to the campsite for a hearty dinner of pasta – and lots of it.

I scrabbled out of my bed on Sunday grateful for the extra hour’s sleep I’d had as a result of the clocks going back, and hopped quickly into Tim’s warm van for breakfast – no gas in mine, no heat. Or breakfast. Tim duly obliged with both, and then we set off up Stickle Ghyll on what, for Tim at least, would be a short day, as he had to return home to honour Halloween commitments to his children that would see him wandering the streets of Perthshire a few hours hence dressed as Elvis. A literal case of from the sublime to the ridiculous.

As we clambered up beside the cascading waters of the ghyll, mist began to swirl around in the valley below us, making an already spectacular landscape appear even more dramatic, and I felt sorry for Tim being unable to accompany me on my planned ascent of Jack’s Rake, an easy scramble up the dark, shadowy cliff of Pavey Ark. Tim walked with me to the bottom of the climb, then headed back to fuel rumours of Elvis being alive and well and living in a small croft just outside Newtown of Pitcairns.

I clambered up Jack’s Rake on a climb I last did at the age of 17, feeling pleasantly surprised that the intervening three decades and their associated beer and general tomfoolery hadn’t had quite the debilitating effect it might have, eventually making my way from the top of Pavey Ark to the summit of Harrison Stickle. From here you get an eagle’s eye view down Langdale towards Windermere, and as I continued on towards Pike of Stickle I could make out the full route of our walk from the day before.

A cold wind was blowing, and as I was still in shorts despite it being officially the first day of winter I kept moving at a brisk pace, heading out across the bleak expanse of Martcrag Moor where people were few and far between, before eventually dropping back down to the head of Langdale at, according to the map ‘Pile of Stones’, although there appear to be a lot of places in the Lakes with this name…

By now the sun was shining, and that lovely autumn light was bathing the valley in a golden glow exacerbated by the russet of the bracken covers fells and the leaves wavering in the breeze on the few trees in the valley. I was sorely tempted to stay for another day if the weather was to remain like this – a Monday on the fells in November would mean I had them all to myself – but a prior commitment called work beckoned. Along with a nine-hour drive home. No matter, this had been a weekend to remember anyway.

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