For my vacation this year I went on a 9 day hiking and cultural trip to northern Wales. Like all the other trips I've done, this was a great trip in many ways. This is a trip and an area that I would recommend to anyone interested in somewhere different to go.
I left home on Thursday, 9/11 and got home Monday, 9/22. My travel was almost identical to my trip last year doing the Coast to Coast trip in England. I flew from Indianapolis to Chicago to Manchester, England and came back by the reverse path. The trip officially began and ended at the Manchester airport. This was pretty convenient since I already knew the area a little bit from last year.
The organized trip itself ran from Saturday 9/13 to Sunday, 9/21. So I arrived in England a day early to give myself a little time to get over jet lag before the trip started. Coming back there are almost no afternoon or evening flights to the U.S. from Manchester so I stayed another night before my flight back.
Like any hiking trip, weather is an important factor. Before leaving I had heard that the British Isles had been having an unusually wet August. This was confirmed when the trip got going. Bryn, our leader for the 9 days, said that they had one of the wettest Augusts on record. He said he knew it was bad when he heard a little old lady in the village store say "This weather is shit."
In our case, the first two days were overcast with haze, fog and generally poor visibility. The next two days were rain and as we went up the pass or up the mountain, we ended up in the clouds. These were not great days. But unlike recent previous trips we heard about, it wasn't pouring rain and there weren't high winds. So we were able to deal with the poor weather. But then it cleared and the last 5 days were beautiful. People were coming out and dancing in the streets. (Well not really but you get the idea.)
One of the enjoyable aspects of these trips are the places we stay. For my two nights in Manchester I stayed at a Holiday Inn which was ok because it was convenient to the airport. But after that we stayed in very nice small hotels. I would guess that the largest one had around 15 rooms or so. We were there at the end of the usual tourist season so none of these places were busy. In the 8 nights of the organized trip we stayed 4 different places, two places two nights, one place one night and one place three nights. Between being off-season and usually staying multiple nights meant that we got a chance to get to know the people running the hotel. All this just made it that much more enjoyable.
One of the things we did on the trip was to go up Snowdon. Bryn, our trip leader, say that this was the highest point ... I asked him to complete that comment because I knew the qualifier. Snowdon is the highest point in Wales and England at 3560 feet. However Ben Nevis is the highest point in Scotland, Wales and England. I knew this because Tom Baugh and I have been up Ben Nevis when we went to Scotland a number of years ago.
We went up Snowdon in the worst weather of the trip. On getting up that morning it was raining. By the time we got in the car to be driven to the trail head it was only drizzling but still coming down. As we hiked up, we hiked into the clouds and sometimes visibility was only 20 or 30 feet. As Danny, one of our group, said, "I took off my glasses, wiped them off, put them back on and realized that the problem wasn't with my glasses."
As noted in the weather section, the weather wasn't horrible, just not good. We weren't getting blown off the mountain or anything extreme like that. We just weren't able to see much and not having a lot of fun.
Later in the trip I asked the question, "Why did we go up Snowdon?" Everyone laughed. One response was "Because it was in the itinerary for that day." But given the weather I think it was a valid question. I didn't even think about not doing it until the question occurred to me a couple days later. So why did we go up in that poor weather? I decided that the answer is that it was a small challenge and I didn't want to back away from it. But another answer was also valid - you never know what the weather is going to do. It might have cleared up and we might have had great views and eventually a great day. Still, even with the poor weather, it was a good day - mission accomplished.
Although I had been to England and Scotland, I had never given a lot of thought to the United Kingdom (U.K.) and the relationship of Scotland, Wales and England. I had thought that it was a little like the U.S. with the U.K. corresponding to the U.S. and England, Scotland and Wales corresponding to states. But I learned that until recently that view was incorrect and in fact is still not fully correct.
Basically England ruled Wales and Scotland, sort of like the Illinois state legislature telling Indiana and Ohio what to do and how they should spend the tax money reallocated to them. For example here are some dates when Wales was granted certain rights by England:
We had a chance to see the oldest, largest elm tree in the world. In fact there's a plaque there certifying this. It is estimated to be 1400 - 1800 years old and is currently 49 feet around. Before receiving treatment, it had been 53 feet around. Treatment included removing some dead portions and putting a band around it for additional support. However don't go to Wales expecting to see it. It's on private land and for this reason is not publicized and is not generally accessible.
If any one remembers the short run TV series "The Prisoner" from the early 70's, we visited the place where most of it was filmed. If any one saw the 2nd Laura Croft movie, there were some scenes of riding motorcycles in China. That portion of the movie was actually filmed in the Snowdon area. And finally Demi Moore was in Wales a few years ago filming the movie "Half Light."
The title of this report "The Invisible Mountain" refers to Snowdon. The day we hiked up it we never saw it. But we never saw it any other time either. The day before going up it and every day after we went up it, we were told, "If it weren't for the [rain, haze, clouds], you'd be able to see Snowdon from here." It became something of a running joke within the group which was a sign it would make a good trip title.
In truth we did get a glimpse of it one day as it was sticking just above some clouds surrounding it. But I decided not to let truth get in the way of a good title.