Plas Newydd and Baron Hill

Neil was doing another Welsh 3000s training day on the Saturday, so he was quite up for a quieter day on Sunday. And he had a suggestion: there is a locally famous ruined mansion near Beaumaris he wanted to see. I had never been either. And I saw an opportunity: I also wanted to see Plas Newydd (from the inside), inspired by the Madfabulous film. We decided to combine these.

We did Plas Newydd first. I had been on the grounds before; they are lovely. Now we actually went in. None of the film was shot in here, but it was easy to imagine the story playing out in this setting. Glamorous rooms everywhere! And the recent addition: costumes from the film. Just a handful of them, but still very nice to see. I think the costumes department of the film company had a whale of a time with this. 

The house behind a flower border

Glamorous interior

Glamorous Bedroom 

The recreation of the most famous costume for the film

The lawn outside

We had lunch on the lawn, with the lovely views that come with that. And then we headed for Beaumaris. We parked up, hopped into the copse next to the road, and headed in the general direction of the mansion. We immediately found built-up structures. I thought they were parts of landscaped gardens. Lots of rather decorative low walls. When we found some remains of greenhouses my suspicion was confirmed. And we came across the first modest buildings.

After a while we came to sizeable building, covered in big trellises. We figured that must be it. It was quite impressive! We walked in and explored. It was extensive, and sometimes had rather industrial details. There were a bits of engine and line shaft and scoop wheel. And big slate water troughs and features we didn’t recognise. Why does a mansion have that?

It seemed to go on forever. It was much bigger than either of us could have imagined. But after what seemed like forever we saw some highly decorated window frames and an entrance with columns. I was convinced that this was the actual entrance of the mansion. Where we had entered must have been auxiliary buildings. That would explain the machinery. But crikey this was extensive!

Frankly, this part of the mansion was the most impressive. We were both quite chuffed we had finally made it there.

The trellised building we saw first

Unusual structures

This part of the building still had part of a staircase

When we had seen the main mansion he had seen it all. We made our way back and we decided to have a little ice cream stop on the way home. For parking reasons we did that in Menai Bridge and not in Beaumaris. When we were there anyway, we did a little walk around Church Island. Because we could! But then it was time to go home and eat some food. It had been a lovely day!

Finally doing 'the' bike loop, and supporting fellow runners

When I moved to Bethesda, I sort of figured straight away that there was a bike ride that was begging to be explored. The main two valleys here are the Ogwen valley, and the next one along to the south, with Llanberis in it. The whole loop is 50 km, with 730m of ascent. That's decent but quite doable!

I ended up never doing it. The thing is: if it is rubbish weather, I'm not keen on it. If it is nice weather I might want to get off the road; do a nice hike or a nice run on the trails, rather than spending 50 km almost exclusively on asphalt. So the years went by and I still didn't do it.

The International Snowdon race appeared on the horizon. This is really right up the street of the Eryri Harriers. Just not me! Racing down yr Wyddfa scares the shit out of me. But there would be many people there that I know, also from other clubs. Maybe I should go? And I could bike! I decided to go for it.

I made my sandwiches and set off a bit more than two hours before the start. I wanted to be there before it all kicked off so I could socialise a bit with the runners. Google Maps said it would take me 2:12 hours, but they thought I would take a really ludicrous route to the local bicycle path. 

I started off on what is one of my classic running routes. It is not perfectly comfortable for a bike as it is on slate chippings, and some bits are very steep, but that is ok. It's a very beautiful path. But it was nice to reach the asphalt. And it was weird to ride under the clouds again. We hadn't seen those in a while! I suppose I had been in one while marshalling the Siabod race but that had been it for weeks. 

On the running route 

Having reached asphalt 

When I reached Ogwen cottage I got back on the main road. That's alright; at no point did I feel unsafe, even though it was a summer Saturday in quite good weather. Sometimes people drive like nutters there, but everything went well.

It was about 50 minutes to Capel Curig. This was as far as I had ever biked that way. Now I would turn right and head for Pen y Gwrid. 

Shortly after Plas y Brenin I got off the road to take a picture. Two road cyclists overtook me, and they kindly checked if I was ok. A stopping cyclist might mean a cyclist in some sort of distress, but I was just being a tourist. I did appreciate the gesture! 

Yr Wyddfa appears on the horizon 

This part of the road is quite flat, but I had a noteworthy headwind. It took about 25 minutes to get to Pen y Gwrid. There I had to turn right and climb up to Pen y Pass. That I had done before, in the only duathlon I have ever done, and I knew it wasn't strenuous. Then I got to the top and knew that it was now going to be one long downhill to Llanberis. 

Down from Pen y Pass

Bike selfie

When it comes to road safety, this might be the scary bit, as there tend to be low walls on either side of the road. On the A5 you can generally just steer into the verge if you want to avoid some sort of disaster, but here you would have to throw yourself over the wall. That is a bit more committed. But all went well.

The sound of the race hit me abruptly when I came around a corner. I felt close now! And I got to the event terrain. The first person I saw was Arwel. The first of many to ask me if I was running today. No I wasn't! I think the whole club knows I love running uphill, and there is plenty of that going in this race. Maybe some of them are not aware I really don't like running down again. And that was the reason I was only supporting today.

On the event terrain I saw plenty of Harriers. That was nice! I was getting race buzz. And I took some pictures at the start, until one of the official photographers recognised me and said I should join the team. I was a Harrier after all. I obliged.

Club pic

When everyone actually lined up at the start I saw my friend Katie, and shouted at her, but she didn't notice me. She was wearing headphones. I decided to move a bit away from the start so I see the runners a bit more spread out. And I could shout at many of my club mates. And I managed to shout so loudly at Katie that she heard me and realised I was supporting her. Success!

With the race now underway it would take about an hour for anyone to finish. That was fine; it could be a nice lunch break for me. I was hungry by now. But I first wanted to go to the loo. And with the runners gone, they wouldn't be any queues anymore. Unfortunately there was more not there anymore: none of them had paper. I figured I might go to the public loos a bit further up the road, but I bumped into a track runner who said that the next door community centre was open and had loos. That was a good idea. I went there. And then sat down for my lunch. 

While I was sitting there our soon to start PhD student James appeared. It was nice to see him! He said we were bumping into each other at every event, referring to the open day at Bryn Celli Ddu. 

The next people I saw were Tony and Lesley. They were about to queue up for a hot drink, and I joined them. It was nice to see them! And I am generally positive about hot drinks. And while we were in the queue the announcer mention that the first runner was now nearby, so as soon as we had our drinks went to the finish line to cheer them on.

The first three runners were young Italian men. That seems to be a tradition. Good for them! And they were so fast; imagine running from a field in the middle of the town to the top of Snowdon, and back, in one hour and four minutes. That's what the winner did, and it wasn't even a course record. 

There was a bit more geographical variability in the first three ladies; they were from Scotland, England, and Italy respectively, the winner coming in just under 1:17. The first Welsh Runner was a Cybi Strider in 16th position. The fastest Harrier came in 25th, running for Wales. The fastest one in club kit was one of our Welsh Castles Relay runners in 35th position. Our own Ian was 50th. The fastest female Harrier was a 21-year-old. I think her twin sister was running as well! A very strong running family, that. 

I suppose, though, that the fun of supporting is not necessarily cheering on the fastest runners, but the ones you know the best. It was great to see Thursday Night Hill runners and track runners finish. No matter what time they did! 

You could also tell it was a bit of a demanding race; the top of the mountain had been in the clouds for quite some of the day, and I suppose it had been a bit wet there. Quite unlike anywhere else. There were many runners with big smears of mud on their shorts, so they must have wiped out. There were quite a number with bloody knees or elbows. But these were the ones who made it to the finish. There were eight runners who didn't manage. Half of these were Harriers! I hope they're ok. 

I also went to behind the finish to talk to some runners. Harrier Dylan was wondering exasperatedly why on earth one puts oneself through this. Iolo was hanging out with his mum. Katie was happy she had done it under two hours, and handed her soggy race vest to her birthday-having partner. Some of the Harrier women were socialising so hard they hadn't even made it outside the finish area. 

I was aware of my bike ride home, so I didn't wait for absolutely everybody to finish. I put my helmet back on and biked off.

The obvious route home is over Fachwen Road; this is quite a direct route but it is brutally steep in places. This road, however, is currently closed. And that meant I had to do a more gentle, but less scenic, route. I started on the bicycle path, ended up at the end of the lake, and biked back to the main road past The Caban. From there I took the route I normally take my car. None of that was punishingly steep.

Bethesda in sight again

In about 50 minutes I was home. I had done the entire loop! And it hadn't been particularly gruelling. And I had got some race vibes in the middle of the ride. Altogether a good day! And something taken off my wish list…

Next kitchen cabinet gets makeover

I felt really good about having stripped and painted two of my kitchen cabinet doors, so my hands were itching to do it again. And the obvious next target would be the kitchen cabinet above the oven. Because of the heat of the oven, its veneer had suffered a bit. But my thinking had already evolved a bit from the initial attempt.

The first difference was the yellow paint. I had initially used some leftover paint I had used on the bathroom wall, and some wall/ceiling in the kitchen. But it was probably a good idea to use paint a bit more suited to this particular application. A bit more durable, and more easy to clean. I could still use the same colour.

The second difference was how I would go about it. I had painted the first two doors in situ. I had been a bit nervous about being able to hang them back afterwards. But Neil recommended I try it anyway. He figured it would be fine.

The third difference was the handle. I don't like the handles the kitchen came with. When I was at it anyway, I might just as well change them. I had a little Google and bought a few hand-wrought replacements. They were not the same size; I could only use one of the drill holes. I would have to drill an additional one, and fill up the redundant one. But that shouldn't be too much work.

With that in mind, my first step was to go back to B&Q, to have some paint mixed for the purpose. The next step was to take the cabinet out; I put it down in the conservatory. And this time I applied again two layers of primer, and three layers of white paint, but only one layer of the yellow paint. That would not be enough, but I figured I would wait with the second layer until I would replace the handle. Hopefully, painting the second coat over the filled-up hole would make that invisible.

My plan is to also put a layer of this new paint over the yellow paint of the first cabinets, but again I am going to wait until after I have fitted the new handles. I only bought three; I will see how I like them. I am painfully aware of the contrast between hand-wrought iron and MDF. They would undoubtedly look better on old oak! But it might work. I will have to see them fitted to know. If I am happy with my choice I will buy them for the remainder of the doors and drawers as well. 

If you don't stand too close to this last door you don't notice it is missing a coat of paint. It is helping making the kitchen look a lot better than it used to! I am quite excited about this whole project! Watch this space to see it develop...

Progress

No trace of damaged water pipe anymore

It has taken a long time, but the work is finished! I had already blogged about the electrician drilling into a water pipe, after which the whole pipe had to be extracted from the wall and replaced. That obviously left a big gaping hole in my wall. And the first step of doing something about that was packing it with wood. Then the work stalled. Then I filled the remaining depression up with filler. The next step was to sand the filler down, but it turned out the sandpaper I had wasn't up to it. But by now I have bought new (coarser) sandpaper, sanded it all down, touched up the paint, and then put the light switch back. And now you can't tell anymore that an emergency took place! You can still see a bit of a scar in the wall, but this wall is full of scars. It's just the nature of the wall. I'm happy with the result!

Watching football

Yes you read that correctly. I have been watching football. Why? I am not interested in football. I am also in a relationship with a man who is not interested in football. But. He actually is marginally interested in football, and he figured that now that his national team was in the World Cup semi-final, this would be the moment to watch. He also says that by the time it gets so spectacular that he watches again, England loses.

After our walk we went back to Llandudno and had some pasta. And then it was time to watch the game. I watched the first few minutes, and then I sneaked away to phone my mum. I was perfectly comfortable not watching everything. And when I came back, there still were no goals.

I am hardly a football expert, but the game struck me as not particularly pleasant to watch. It looked tense on the field. The players didn't look like they were enjoying any of it. It was a bit scrappy.

I wasn't too focussed on the game; I had a lot of water to drink, and I had Neil to my left and his cat to my right, so enough other things to deal with. But I was involved enough in the game to get quite some admiration for the English goalkeeper. If I remember correctly, the Argentinian goalkeeper didn't have an awful lot to do. The English one did! And I was very impressed with how he kept almost everything out. But almost everything is, of course, but not necessarily good enough to win a game. And they didn't.

When it finished, Neil wasn't overly disappointed. But he hadn't liked how the Argentinian had played, and he spontaneously became a Spain fan. And he had another data point in line with his expectation of England losing when he watches. In case you wonder: no he didn't watch the game against France. 

I remember having watched football when I was in Norway. That gives me an approximately once in 20 years frequency in which I watch football games. I'm sorted again for 20 years! Suits me fine…

Anniversary hike and swim

 In July last year I went on the first date with a guy called Neil. Two dates later he made his rather muted debut on the blog. And I suppose the rest is history. And now it is July again. I thought it would be good too do something to commemorate the anniversary of that first date. It has been in the middle of a heatwave, and we had gone for a walk, with a little swim in a lake to cool down. 

Last year, the lake in question had been Geirionnydd, but I prefer my lakes a bit less busy and polluted. I suggested  Cwm Lloer this time. Neil was up for it. And because of where it is, we could take the bus in. So Neil came to me first, and then we went to the bus stop together.

It was quite nice walking weather. Warm, but not scorching! And we walked quite leisurely up in the direction of the lake, along the stream. I was trying my hybrid shoes as hiking shoes. I was wondering if that would be more comfortable on my feet, while still being sturdy enough. 

By a stile Neil suggested we have a little break. He was a bit warm. I was up for that! We didn't intend a huge walk, so we had all the time in the world. And after a while, a lad appeared, and decided to have a little break there too. He was from Wolverhampton, and had fairly recently started to explore North Wales. We had a really nice chat.

Then we went on. Not a lot later, we came to the lake. There was one small cluster of people already there, but that wasn't very surprising. On a day like that! And the lake is big enough to accommodate two small clusters of people, and still give everyone a sense of privacy.

Lake selfie

It is such a gorgeous area! You look right at the cliff of Pen yr Ole Wen. It is quite quiet. We put our bags down and decided to go for a swim first. And the other cluster of people was so far away, and there was no sign of any additional people, that I went in the nip. Neil was too British for that. It was lovely!

Our view (pic doesn’t do it justice)

We had our lunch there too. We took our time. And when we finally got onto our feet again we hadn’t decided yet we would do after reaching the summit of Prn yr Ole Wen. We would see.

When we go to the summit I figured I preferred to go straight down to the road, and catch the bus back, rather than walk all the way back home. I just didn't expect water to materialise anytime soon. And I didn't have a lot left. Neil was fine with that, so we accepted the descent. 

The top of the descent 

It is quite a steep descent, and some of it has a lot of loose rock. That is a bit trying, but the shoes did a fine job. I did wonder if the main issue here was that I was wearing them out a bit quickly. Might be worth it though, if it is better for my feet.

When we were right by a steep cliff I suddenly spotted a bag. A bag? There was no accompanying person anywhere in sight. We called out, but no one materialised. Sometimes finding a bag in the mountains is really bad news. It might mean that someone has come to a sticky end. But this was absolutely not a dangerous part of the route. What would have happened? 

We decided to leave it there, but make a note of its location, and take a picture. We could notify Mountain Rescue.

We continued our way down, and got to the road without issues. We still had a bit of time before the bus would come, so we checked if there was a water station by the visitor centre. There wasn't, but there was a National Trust warden's office there, with the door open. Neil stomped inside, and asked the person in there, a young man called Rhys, if they perhaps knew anything about someone missing a bag. Strangely enough, the answer was yes! 

We heard the whole story. A bloke had been in the mountains, and put his back down at some point. Unfortunately, it wasn't stable, and it started rolling, and fallen down a cliff. He had been looking for it, but never found it. That was a problem, as apparently, his wallet, phone and car keys had been in there. It turned out that he had had to have his car towed home. And that was quite some distance away. Rhys had his contact details. 

Where we had found the bag it wasn't conspicuous, simply because it was muted green, but it was on the main path. We wondered if someone else had found it and put it in a more obvious location. I suppose everybody is hesitant to remove a bag just in case the owner is coming back for it. But now we knew that the owner had gone home. We could safely remove it.

I thought it would be silly to leave it on the mountain knowing what we knew, so I created a quick plan. What if one of us would take the bus home, and the other one would go and retrieve the bag. We could bring the bag back to the National Trust office, and the person who had gone home by bus could pick the other one up by car. The bus only goes every two hours, and we didn't want to wait that long. And with Neil blocking me in, it had to be him who went home. He was OK with that. 

Rhys offered me some water, but he only had it in a water cooler, and that gave me a massive brain freeze. Neil let me drink some of his leftover water. That would have to do. I gave him my bag, as I didn't want to carry two of them, and went back up the hill.

It only took me some 25 minutes to get back to the bag. And a similar amount of time to come back down. When I came back to the road, Neil was already waiting for me. When he had got back with his car, he could see a little dot descending the mountain, and had come to welcome me. With a full bottle of water in his hand! He knows me a bit. This water wasn't brain freeze temperature.

We brought the bag back, had an additional little chat with Rhys, and then went home. I hope the owner of the bag is glad it has been retrieved. He might have some more adventures with it now. But I think he will be more selective where he puts it down.

I could tell I had done that last bit of the adventure with not enough water, but it has been worth it. Even if the bag never finds it way back to the owner, at least it is not confusing people in the mountains anymore. And if it would stay there for too long, it would become litter and that is not good either.

It hadn't panned out as I had expected, but it had been a worthy anniversary walk! Onward, to the next year with Neil!

Marshalling 18 youngsters

When I was at the Pentir fun run, Arwel approached me. He said he had a race that Sunday. He still needed people to help him out. Was I available? Neil was going to go into the mountains with a friend, so I said yes. It turned out that the race was the Junior mountain running championships in y Fron. I thought this was the same event as one I had marshalled with Neil the year before, but I wasn't sure, as that had been in September, and championships don't tend to move around the year too much.

It wouldn't be a big commitment! There were three races initially planned, but they had decided to combine two of them. So there was one race starting at 12:00 and one at 12:30, and neither of them would be more than 7 km long.

He had suggested I explore the course before it would start, but time moved faster then I could keep up with, so by the time I got to race HQ, it was too late for such shenanigans. Oh well. 

Ann teamed me up with a local lady called Sheila. When she appeared we headed into the hills together. Along the way we chatted a bit. She was almost 80 and a fell runner. She had been an Eryri Harrier in the past. Her partner would also be marshalling, but he would appear later.

We would be a bit spaced out as marshals. I suppose I would have preferred to have a three people where there was only me. There was some ambiguity in the route on both sides of me. I figured I would have to be a bit dynamic. Make sure I was in full sight of the runners when they started to run away from Sheila, so they knew they would have to run towards me. I also had my Siabod cowbell, which would help.  That would sort the ambiguity before they would get to me. But then I could run up a bit with them, and also point them the way just after my station. There was a steep hill and a sharp turn straight behind, so you couldn't really see what was ahead from my marshalling station. And once the first one was pointed in the right direction, the rest could just follow.

The first race, which was for 12 and 13-year-olds, only had six runners. Would parents have withdrawn their child because of the weather? We were still in the heat wave, even though this day it was quite breezy, so I wasn't overheating. My marshalling strategy worked. And the kids, who were in club shirts (not national shirts), looked as grumpy as last year. I have marshalled several junior races now, and you don't actually see a lot of smiles! I do look very happy than I'm racing. Probably because I am.

View from my station

Soon after these six were gone we got the second race. This one only had 12 runners. This was the combined race of the 14 and 15-year-olds, the 16 and 17-year-olds and 18 and 19-year-olds. I was a bit confused when I saw 13 people running. The 13th wasn't a junior, though. I understood from Sheila that this was a Welsh Athletics official who just got carried away cheering the kids on. And the kids were still in club shirts. So probably regional championships, unlike last year's national championships in September. And still few smiles.

With all the 18 runners of the championships having gone past we could take the markers down and return to headquarters. Unfortunately, we did have to walk past one of the runners who hadn't made it to finish. One of the youngsters had collapsed in the heat. By the time we got to him, he was surrounded by people looking after him, and we heard him say he was feeling ok again. I have faith he would be fine.

We put the markers and hi viz vests and whatnot in Ann’s car and that was us done. A nicely brief marshalling experience!