We arrived in Liverpool after midnight on Thursday. By time we walked to our hotel and got into bed, it was 2 am French time, 1 am local time. We had 4-5 hours of sleep before we had to be up again to pick up the rental car.
Because we had a tight schedule for meeting the rest of Eric's family, Eric made us get there 30 minutes early to ensure we'd be the first in line to pick up the car. We waited...finally the employee showed up at 7:30. She looked at our booking. "I'm sorry, your car is not booked until 9. I have 13 other car rentals before yours. Come back in an hour and a half."
Never mind that we were the only people there at the moment. We had to wait our turn.
The kids were super hungry, so we walked back to the airport and bought food at a small grocery store. Each of us got a "meal deal": sandwich, snack, and drink for 5.50 pounds, which in an airport was actually not a horrible price.
We were on the road shortly after 9 am in our toaster van, a litttle box of a Vauxhall that has about 6" of luggage area in the back. Even with us just having one backpack each, the car is overcrowded!
Our destination on Friday morning was Llanberis, a little village at the base of the highest mountain in Wales (Snowdon Peak or Yr Wyddfa). Our objective: to hike the mountain! The rest had already started on an alternate trailhead, but we chose to start in Llanberis itself on the Llanberis path.
I hadn't done any research prior. I was expecting an easy-to-moderate hike because we were going with other family members who aren't really big hikers. But no! It was a proper hike that even kicked my butt at times.
Length: 14.5km
Anticipated Duration: 7 Hrs (it took us 4 hrs 15 min, including a lunch break!)
Ascent: 3,199 Feet (975 Metres)
We were in short sleeves for the first half or more of the hike. 3/4 of the way up, we hit wind, clouds, and rain. I was so sweaty that I delayed putting on a jacket until the last 30 minutes before the summit. And then I went from being too hot to really, really cold. My fingers were numb and my head and ears super cold (I was the only one who didn't have a hood of some sort). We had very little visibility on the last part of the hike, which is really a shame. All that hiking and no view from the summit.
We pushed the kids really hard and didn't stop to eat on the way up, even though we had gone well past lunch time. I think Eric kept expecting we'd be able to eat the summit or something...but it was so cold and windy and wet up there that we just turned right around. Inga hit a wall: she as so hungry and cold and crying and wanting to stop. But it was so cold that stopping wasn't a great idea.
We did find one place for a few minutes. But then all we could do was keep on going until we were low enough that we were out of the wind and clouds.
It took probably 45 minutes of hiking down before we found a reasonably sheltered place to stop and eat.
After that late lunch break, the rest was great. We were back in the sun, out of the wind, and going downhill. We kept a very quick pace--some of the group running, the rest of us keeping our feet light and fast as we descended from rock to rock. Layers came off until we were back in short sleeves again.
I was definitely not expecting such a dramatic change in weather and temperatures! If we were hiking on the coast near Nice, even in the winter, a similar elevation gain wouldn't make that much of a difference in temperatures.
When we were well over halfway down, the clouds lifted and we saw the peak for the first time! (See the blue arrow)
We were the last ones to start and the first ones back and we took the longest path. We sat in the sun at the Llanberis train station and enjoyed not moving. Some of us even put our heads down on a picnic table and napped.
It was dinnertime once everyone had reached the bottom and we were SOOOOO hungry. Our family hurried off to check into the youth hostel and then came back to order Indian takeout and eat it along the shores of the lake.
Ivy and Eric brought swimsuits and yes, they went swimming! I was very happy to stay warm and dry.
I think we all ate too much too quickly, but we were so hungry after that big hike. As soon as the sun reached the horizon, we all headed out. We were tired and needed to get settled and into bed. We had two rooms in the youth hostel, one with 4 bunkbeds for the kids and one with 2 bunkbeds for us. I took the top one because I don't tend to get disoriented at night. (Eric....well...let's just say there's a lot of sleeptalking and/or waking up and being convinced that something from his dream is actually real, etc. Best to keep him off of a top bunk!)
I read a bit once I was in bed, even though I was so tired. I'm reading the Murderbot series, which is quite fun. And then I got a good amount of sleep despite the not-super-comfortable bed and the other inconveniences of a youth hostel (noise of other guests, having to use a communal toilet in the middle of the night, etc).
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