Trip to Wales

Saturday 1^st October 2011, 2.00pm

I guess climatization for me waking up later, can’t believe I woke up at 10.45am today..must be the hiking trip yesterday to Snowdonia in Wales that exhausted all of my energy, I returned with a aching lead and a broken shoe. But trust me, it was worth it, the fun of hiking difficult terrains as well as the wonderful scenery of the lake was enough to offset the setbacks.

Well, yesterday we went to Wales, probably a 2 hour drive down from Keele. One thing good about Keele is that it is at the central part of UK, so it’s really easy to travel around UK from here, if I had not woke up so late, I would have joined my friends in Edinburg today, now, I missing out on all the fun. Sigh…

The trip I guess was organized to fulfill Valarie’s wish of seeing a Castle and Michael Spicer’s request for his favourite hobby – hiking (Oh no…). If you ever go the Wales, you might want to learn Welch, then you can prably read the signs there without looking at the translations below. So the 2 places we visit were the Beeston Castle and Woodland Park as well as Llwbr Pyg Track.

Beeston Castle

If you love ruined castles, and very windy places, this is the place to go. Well, I probably tell the experience using pictures, because a picture speaks a thousand words.

This is the structure of the castle itself, made out a the castle itself, and it's outer walls and the gateway as well. There were two enclosures, the Inner and Outer Bailey, each having a massive gatehouses with a strong defense plus a high curtain wall with D-shaped towers which allowed effective crossfire along the exterior wall. The Inner Bailey had the extra defense of wall cut ditch running around the curtain wall.

Well, this is what remains of the curtain wall, the D-shaped towers which is half demolished, leaving behind ruins of this mighty curtain wall.

One thing's for sure, getting to a castle is rather difficult since it's located on a hill. The curtain wall is already located high up the hill already, and getting there is already quite tough.

I believe this is the ditch which they build to shooting arrows from. It's a very effective design. You can cover a large area just shooting through this small hole without getting shot, because you are only expose to arrows through a small slit. Amazing design indeed!

Walking up to the castle is another uphill road. I actually tried running towards the castle but I found myself really, really slow...it's kind of demoralizing as well, having used so much energy to run but moving so slowly. I guess this road was deigned to demoralize enemy troops attempting to charge towards the castle, imagine having to travel this route with arrows flying all around you, in the state where any moment you may get shot dead.

So this is what remains of the castle, wait till you see the back part of it...I think one of the vulnerable areas of the castle was at it's back, because it hardly had any defensive walls, people coud catapult rocks from the land below and destroy it's structure easily...

Caution: Sheer Drop. This is what is left of the Moat, imagine water with crocodiles swimming in them, I actually wonder what they feed the crocodiles with...

This is what remains at the back of the castle..pretty much ruins and totally expose to the land behind. you can easily see the farmlands across the horizon. Shows that the enemy who devastated this structure had really good strategy.

Irfan asked: "Where did they store water?" I guess this is the answer. Using Valarie as a reference, you can tell that this is a huge well, and yes it's deep as well. How deep? 3 seconds reverb when you clap, and if you were to drop a stone, it would take I think 12 seconds till it reaches the bottom. I believe it would be deeper than that since many have probably thrown stones down this well. It would probably be full of rocks the next time we return...

And well, interestingly we found a great vocal booth for us to record vocals in here. surprisingly, even though this was made up of stones (of which I would expect slap backs), it is actually quite tight. I wonder if they used to record vocals here...

Llwbr Pyg Track

Well, if you love hiking treacherous roads and love sceneries and stuff, this is the place to go. The Llwbr Pyg Track is said to be the most challenging route among the six hiking roads in Snowdonia. I guess for Michael Spicer it was simply 'no kicks'. One thing about this place is that you have to carry your litter around the park, they have no dust bins one the way because they fear that litter may destroy the environment.

The roads here is pretty steep, almost all the routes we walked in our direction was uphill. So many of uswho weren't used to hiking had to stop for a rest. It's really tiring when you first start but once you gain momentum, it gets easier.

It is best you get proper hiking shoes for this expedition. The route here is not like the normal walk in the park with furnished stones pieces or pavements but it's more like pieces of rock, of which some of them are insecure and can break off easily due to erosion and weathering. It can get slippery at times - I slipped a couple of times in this route because I wasn't wearing proper shoes.

It is good you carry as little thing as possible on this route, and empty your pockets, you will need to stretch your legs out quite a distance to reach out for the other rocks. The steps here are pretty steep at times. I certainly had to empty mine because it proved difficult to climb up rocks such as this.

Although the walk was pretty much a very painful massage, it was still very rewarding because the scenery was just majestic, plus the weather was cool and windy, perfect for someone sweating from the hike.

Walking from the big view of valleys...

To the smaller streams...

Seeing sheeps along the way...

We reached our main destination - The Lake

A beautiful sight indeed! Well, we actually planned to continue to walk the route down to the stream as some of us actually wanted to swim in it...but because it was another long walk, and majority of us were already exhausted. We decided to turn back and walk back..

Walking back felt much faster when we first came as usual, because you are used to the distance you traveled and it's also down hill. Though it was less strenuous, it was actually more tricky because you had to choose the right rock or otherwise you might end up sliding and rolling down. Well, that was also where my sole broke off and caused me to slip. So the moral of the lesson was to get a better shoe next time.

Well, after the hike we had a strange craving for chips, so we went down hill to search for a place to eat..as soon as we smelled chips (because we opened our windows), we pulled over at the nearest carpark. Mike and Cass then went to search and trace where the chips smell came from, while we waited around the carpark area.

So while walking along the grass area, we saw a dandelion, and since valarie has always wanted to blow a full dandelion, she picked it up and tried to blow it...but things didn't turn out the way we expected...the video will explain why..

Well, I guess that's all for now, going back to my room to sleep first...I think fatigue from the hike is taking over me..sigh, hopefully a nap would do the job.