My Wednesday Walk in Northern Wales / Cymru

This is the first time I joined in for the Wednesday Walk. I've been trying for the past 2 weeks but events conspired against me. I have finally made it here in time...just about 😂 😍

My Wednesday walk is a composite post about one of the wonderful 24 hour periods of day-walking and exploring that I experienced in Northern Wales a week ago with my family. If you've read anything from me before, you may have picked up that my happy place is the mountains, and steep foothills make great substitutes😁

We were based on the outskirts of Holt, Wrexham, a quaint medieval Welsh market town, a short mile from the English/Welsh border, spending some much overdue family time with my husband's cousin and his family.

For context here is a screenshot from Google maps:

Our day started with a 2.5 hour Jubilee Tower Circular walk, covering 3.5 miles of steep terrain, up to the Jubilee Tower ruins at the top of Moel Famau, the highest summit in the Clwydian Range. The Tower, built in 1810 for the Golden Jubilee of King George III, has 360-degree panoramic views of the Welsh and English countrysides from the parapets, which I have shared at the start of this post.

This is the tower on approach after the steep climb.

Our walk up to the summit was exhilarating, tiring but worth it! The well-worn wide sand and loose stone path started from the car park and went past an amazingly dense area of woodland at the base which I could not resist entering to take a pic and stand in awe of its beauty and magnitude.

The main path up to Moel Famau was flanked with purple heather and blueberry bushes and the kids had great fun picking the fruits and eating them along the way.

There was also this really pretty delicate wispy "seed leaf" that I found on a bush at the side of the path. Does anybody know what it is? I couldn't resist getting a few shots of it.

The scenery is spectacular and it is no wonder that the area is designated as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Even with some haze in the distance, probably caused by the nearby cities of Liverpool and Manchester, one can still see for miles in all directions.

Manchester, the home of Premier League football teams Manchester United and Manchester City, is the city in the distance in the above pic. It is also now home once again to the best football player in the world, IMO, Cristiano Ronaldo 😍, but I digress lol.

In the image above, Liverpool is in the far left-hand corner of the photo and Manchester in the right. They are obscured by the haze. My "V" is an attempt at showing the rivalry between these two cities, especially when it comes to football!

As I said, the walk was quite tiring, although I suspect that my eldest in this pic above was stopping to see if he could get his online fix on his phone! Realising quickly that without wifi he wouldn't get very far, he was soon up again, choosing to take the steep scramble to the top off the main path and enjoying taking his own holiday photos.

We had a rather funny encounter with a lone sheep at the summit. It seemed extremely comfortable in the company of humans and made itself at home in various hikers' belongings, nosing around for food. It was pretty bossy and persistent too if you ask me! 🤣 In this pic I think he'd had enough of me stalking him like the paparazzi and was certainly contemplating all sorts of mischief! Needless to say, I was ready to scream and run...in that order 😂😂😂Fortunately it didn't come to that and he turned out to be really tame and friendly, allowing my youngest to chill out with him for a bit and even have a little chat with him.

Our follow-on walk from Moel Famau was around Lake Llyn Tegid.

We took the steam train from Gorsaf Llanuwchllyn Station to Bala and back, spending an hour and a half walking around the lake and then drove across to the Lake car park, stopped for a picnic and for the kids to have a swim.

My hubby was quite taken with this old bicycle which was part of the exterior design of the station. I was taken by the gorgeous colourful flowers hanging in the old phone box!
Needless to say, the obligatory pics were taken :-)

The steam train was a hit, especially the beautiful old steam engine that had been lovingly restored to its former glory which was used to pull the carriages along its lakeside route. I couldn't resist getting a few pics of this beautiful old lady of the railways.

Our lakeside walk was just what was required after the hour-long train ride.

Kids (my eldest at the front, my youngest at the rear with their cousin and my hubby sandwiched in between) hopping over the rocks at LLYN TEGID Lake, Llangower, Wale's largest natural lake. I was playing photographer😊

To end our 'day' of walks, we headed off to locate a hidden cave in the hills near my hubby's cousin's home.

The walk was a much easier ramble with a short scramble or two and brought us to a secret cave that wowed the kids and kept them entertained for at least an hour. I suspect they would have stayed in there forever if we'd let them.

Below are some pics of the route along the way with views of the Welsh countryside through the trees and a pheasant spotted sitting in one of them!

The actual cave was aptly 'named' by the locals as The Ravecave😂 and one could see clear evidence inside of misdemeanor activity and we had to warn the kids not to touch anything.

It was quite incredible how the cave mouth opened into a rather large main chamber with smaller chambers breaking off from it inside. The kids thought it was great fun wandering around by torchlight inside until my eldest decided to play the scary card, and 2 young boys came screaming out the cave yelling "Monsters!!!!".

Well, after a long day of many walks and being rather hungry, we chose to head back for a braai (bbq).

Being vegan myself, I think I got the best deal😍😜

This was followed by a nice tall G&T beside the open firepit to bring to an end a wonderful and re-energising 'day' of walks.

I hope you enjoyed spending virtual time on my walk with me. I highly recommend a long weekend in North Wales to get back to nature again. Next trip there I think we'll have to walk up Mount Snowden as our boys are old enough to manage it now!

For now, I will leave you with a picture of these little painted Bee pebbles that someone had left at the top of Moel Famau ...

'Bee yourself and 'Bee happy'.

All photos are my own.

The zoomed in screenshot from Googlemaps is located at the following web location: Google maps - Holt, Wrexham