Snowdonia weekend

We spent last weekend in Snowdonia with six women from Team Glow doing a 52-mile circular ride Nantlle - Llanberis pass - Prenteg - Nantlle, taking in

3784 feet of climbing

 

Drizzling when we woke up after a wild night. By good fortune, and the fact that everyone was up late last night, we didn't get off till 10.15 and the rain had stopped.  But the wind was still severe, blowing and gusting.

It meant a tailwind up Llanberis pass, easy to negotiate. Snowdon and Crib Goch were in cloud as we descended the other side.  It was hard to keep steady against the cross-wind, we couldn't get up any speed, pushing against the force of it.  Pedalling downhill is a strange feeling.  We sheltered from the Welsh summer at our favourite cafe in Nant Gwynant (butternut squash soup, venison burger, chocolate chip cookie) then pedalled alongside a blowy lake, waves flowing, remembering my New Zealand trip in 2008,  nine miles along a lake with black swans against a head wind thinking  "I can't do this", but I could and did.

We decided to head for Prenteg and up one of Simon Warren's  "Another greatest cycling climbs" graded 8 out of 10 (Llanberis was 6 out of 10). Shocked by the steep 1 in 6 at the beginning.  The whippet-thin Simon claimed to have done the 2-mile climb in 9 minutes. Heather had done it last week on the Etape de something with other Glowies, and her and Nadia chased his example, whooping at the top.  I got off 4 times, worried that I'd topple off  in my clipped in feet, so then tried one free foot unclipped, but had to stop again when my front wheel left the ground, it's dangerous when there's air between the wheel and the road.  To my credit I got back on each time and faced the twists and turns in the road, charging into the headwind. I was so far gone that I just thought it was refreshing to my over-heated head rather than a barrier to progress.

At the top we were triumphant - who cares whether we walked some of it - Team Glow rules for bagging the 100 climbs state that we can claim the peak regardless of how we got there.

From there we pedalled along the top, emerging from the hills onto a plateau populated by sheep with fleeces hanging half off them - where are the shearers? - looking quizzically at red- , and yellow-clad speedsters silently sprinting across the landscape past a tempting dew-lake (not tempting at all in this weather).

Descending back to roads with traffic (well, one yellow mini) we decided, bearing in mind the strength of the wind which was still a real challenge, to take the fast way back to Nadia's: main road then Lon Eifion cycle route then back through Penygroes where people socialise on the corner by the Co-op and down past the vineyard and the piles of slate back to Nantlle.