There’ll be a welcome in the hillsides…
Cracking weekend, glad I’m back in work now so I can recover.
The fun started on friday night - Rod’s 30th birthday bash and our last chance to see him and Rachel before they headed out for the second leg of their round the world trip. Given that, I overcame my natural reluctance to visit Manchester and drove in. Not an auspicious start to find that roadworks had closed our access to the pub - after driving round for a while we eventually found an NCP car park that I recognised and knew I’d be able to find again so we parked, quicky found the pub and were rather annoyed to see two empty parking spaces outside it - but then I’d never have found it in a car.
Nice to see people again, even if the only halfway decent beer was boddies from an electric tap - nice taste of soap, there, yum. Highlight of the night was spotting McKinley deciding to be lazy and use the disabled loos next to us - once he’d gone in I noticed that I could open the lock from the outside, so I did and we swung open the door as he was in mid flow. Well it seemed funny when we’d had a few anyway 
Saturday morning we went to wales for some biking - we’ve not been to Coed Y Brenin for over four years so it was long overdue a return visit. Set out at 9am, called in at Rhug organic farm for a quick loo stop and some nice bacon butties, then back on the road. We arrived at 11.30 and set out around twelve on the karrimor route - at one point it crosses the entrance road and we saw Nicola and the two Andys arriving at about 1 pm as we crossed, talk about timing!
By that time I’d already taken two falls, but not had the submission. First up I’d jammed the front wheel against a rock while a little over the front of the bike and found myself balanced on the wheel, holding the bars, seated and clipped in. A hasty unclip allowed me to step over the bars and run out of the way while the bike crashed behind me. Ten yards later I lifted the front wheel over an obstacle, and when I put it back down I was leaning the bike over for a corner. The front wheel just washed out from underneath me and off I came, tumbling into the ditch. I didn’t get off so lightly second time, cut my knee and bruised same knee and a couple of fingers. They’re still sore now.
Despite the tumbles, we carried on and took just under 4 hours to do it, but we did cheat and miss out that boring long fireroad loop just after the caff half way round (straight from Hermon to the Addams Family bits on this map ). Really quite odd then, as we went back under the road along the only two-way stretch we bumped into John & Caroline who’d just arrived! That was about the only place in the whole forest where we could have met them. Not having made plans, they ended up joining us at the campsite in Maentwrog. Before camping though, we had a snack at the Caff - glad we did as by the time we reached the campsite it was raining and we didn’t fancy a BBQ.
Nice enough campsite, dead quiet - bit short on showers though! A nice night under canvas in the rain (via a chippy in Blaenau Ffestiniog as the rain didn’t stop) and while we had breakfast the next day, the tent dried nicely. Tip for the day, don’t use a track pump to force the flames on a throwaway BBQ. It will melt, despite normally having to use electricity to melt aluminium!
After packing away off we went to Betws-y-Coed for the Marin trail - not been for ages and didn’t remember a lot of it, but I was really pleased by how much the trees have grown to close in at the side of the trail. Just under 3 hours for the ride meant we left at about 2.30pm - fairly quiet and uneventful journey home in time to fall asleep in front of the England footie game (or the second half at least).