ARS in Snowdonia

The Long ARS (Audlem Ramblers Society) Snowdonia walks from Rhyd Ddu up Mynydd Mawr provided an entertaining day for all 13 walkers. Planned by Will Williams, it's a beautiful part of Snowdonia.

The longer of the two walks, led by Will, was quite lengthy and did take in, I believe, an excellent alehouse at Waunfawr. The alleged 'B' walk, led by myself, was supposedly a straightforward 7 mile circular walk – the first part of which was common to both.

The relatively good weather meant that we had excellent views across the Llynn Peninsular and Anglesey, with Holy mountain clearly visible to the North.

I knew that my return route was not an official path, but the description I had gave no clues as to the challenging nature of the descent. The map did suggest steepness, but the seven of us that took this route had our hearts in our mouths for about 1.5hrs of very tricky descent through heather, scree, rocks, waterfalls, before eventually accessing the lakeside forest with its gentle tracks.

Whist everybody finished safely, at some stage we all had to do a bit of rear-end slithering – either accidentally or deliberately!

What everyone did agree (afterwards) however was the fabulous beauty of the Cym that we had descended – it was desolate and impressive.

Peter Kay found me an excellent description of this route – albeit describing its ascent:

"The transformation from the scenery of only a few minutes ago is remarkable. Gone are the valley flats, the green pastures, the lake. Now you are in a world of malicious overhanging cliffs where the thunder of the falls drowns all else, a world from which the only escape is a slithery scree track that climbs damply beside the falls."

A very memorable walk – although I'm not sure that the other six people will ever come with me again!!

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