Clwb Golff Brenhinol Dewi Sant (Royal St David’s Golf Club), Harlech, North Wales

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I’ve mentioned a few times before that the main reason I don’t post as often these days is due to joining the above golf club when I came back to the UK and therefore playing a lot more golf than I did in Switzerland. Well, the weather has been glorious for the past week, so I thought it was about time I took my camera down to the club to show you why I’m so distracted…

Yesterday there was a regular “Monthly Stableford” competition and, although I didn’t play very well, I did manage to capture a few photos (if not birdies), including one of an orchid while searching for my lost ball! (Every cloud has a silver lining! 😊)

With thanks to my playing partners, Roy, John and Barry for putting up with me wandering off to take these pictures!

Please note that if you page through the gallery, each image has a caption, which explains each hole.

Isles of Scilly, St Martin’s (Part 5 of 5)

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Jude and I had a fabulous time staying on St Agnes, but I have to say that St Martin’s was probably my favourite, certainly of all the other islands. Like St Agnes, it had a very relaxed and unhurried atmosphere but it had the best beaches of all those we visited.

I hope you’ve enjoyed your virtual journey around the Scillies. 😊

Isles of Scilly, Tresco & Bryher (Part 3 of 5)

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I said I wouldn’t post any pictures of Bryher but, in the interest of fairness and balance (since I don’t want you to think it never rains in the Scillies), I’ve added a ‘bonus’ gallery at the end. Not that you will see much. I’m sure it’s a beautiful island, we just caught it on the wrong day, because…

As I think I mentioned, St Mary’s is the main hub of the islands, so when you stay on one of the other, outlying islands, you are known as being “off island”. When you want to travel from one “off island” to another, you are at the mercy of the boat schedule, in our case, the St Agnes Boat company. During our stay, they only went to Tresco once and Bryher once, so we had to go on those days. In both cases, it rained and rained – less so on Tresco thankfully… (It was a beautiful day when we went to St Martin’s, so don’t worry…)

The pictures (in the first gallery) below are therefore mainly of the Tresco Abbey gardens, which incorporates the Valhalla museum. Amongst other things, it contains 30 figureheads, collected from the various masted sailing boats which have been shipwrecked off the coast since the 1830’s.

Bryher…

Isles of Scilly, Cornwall, England (Part 1 of 5)

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At the beginning of May, Jude and I went on holiday to the Scillies (or the Isles of Scilly to give them their full title). You can fly there by small plane or helicopter, but our preferred method was by boat from Penzance. The crossing is notorious for being a bit rough, to the extent that the ferry is often cancelled, but we were very fortunate, going both out and back, as the sea was perfectly calm.

The Scillies are made up of numerous small islands, (see detailed map pic 18) but only 5 of them are inhabited (6 if you include Gugh, when the sand bar linking it to St Agnes is cut off by the tide). We stayed in a pre-erected tent on a campsite at the beautifully named Troytown Farm, on St Agnes, but we managed to visit all of the other 4 main islands.

In this series I’ll be posting some pictures of St Agnes & Gugh, Tresco, the main island ‘hub’ of St Mary’s and, finally, St Martin’s. We did also go to Bryher, but the weather was so bad, I only have a few vague pictures of some coastline in the mist! (I’m told it is very nice there though!)

However, I thought I’d whet your appetites with a few pictures of our journey, which was made all the more comfortable by the luggage transfer system: After dropping off our 4 bags at the quayside in Penzance, suitably marked with yellow “St Agnes” stickers, they were loaded onto the Scillonian III. Upon arrival in St Mary’s they were transferred to the inter-island St Agnes boat before we all boarded and, as soon as we disembarked, it was taken by tractor and trailer to the side of our tent by the campsite owners. (See luggage transfer, pic 11). With no tent to pitch, nor mattresses to inflate and all cooking facilities provided, it was the perfect start to our 11 nights under canvas. 👍👍 😊

Snowdonia Tour, Day 4 (of 4), The Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel to Beddgelert, North Wales

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The forecast for day 4 was for light rain from mid-day. This was not great news when we were planning to go over Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales at 1085m or 3,560ft. It had to be done though, as Pete and I had been to the top of the other 4 highest peaks in the UK and Ireland on previous walks – the first being Ben Nevis (@1,345m or 4,413ft) in 1997 when Pete, Tim, Liam, Colin & I did the West Highland Way. That was in the clouds too!

For the record, Dave joined Pete and I on a trip to the English Lake District the following year and we did Scafell Pike (@978m or 3,209ft). A trip to southern Ireland followed in 2000 and another friend, Paul, joined Liam, Dave, Pete and I on a 4 day walk, which included Carrauntoohil (@1,038m or 3,407ft). And it would be 14 years later that Tim, Liam, Pete and I completed most of the 19 mile Mourne Wall Walk in Northern Ireland, which included an ascent of Slieve Donard (@850m or 2,790ft). So Snowdon was long overdue…

Although low cloud covered the top 250m or so of the summit, we didn’t actually get rained on once all day. Indeed we had no rain on all 4 days – which must be some sort of record for North Wales!

My thanks go to all the boys for making the effort to come over to ‘my’ little corner of the country and for all the usual banter and fantastic memories (& beers) that we have shared. 😊

Snowdonia Tour, Day 1 (of 4), Beddgelert to Blaenau Ffestiniog, North Wales

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Regular readers will know that I often go on walks with my old (and getting older) running mates. Last year it was a section of the South West Coast Path in Cornwall. This year, it was my turn to ‘host’ something in North Wales and I planned a 4 day circular walk from Beddgelert to Blaenau Ffestiniog, from there to Betws-y-Coed, thence to the Pen-y-Gwryd Hotel and, finally, back to Beddgelert. Each day was between 11 and 12 miles (18 & 20km) long.

Unfortunately, Colin couldn’t make it, but Tim, Pete, Dave and Liam were all up for the challenge, which included taking on the highest mountain in Wales, Snowdon, on our last day. Day 1 was no walk in the park either with an ascent of Cnicht – The Matterhorn of Wales!

The forecast for our trip wasn’t good, with light rain expected sometime on 3 of the 4 days, but we were actually very lucky and didn’t get wet once! We even had some sunshine!

I hope you enjoy this stroll around the hills and valleys of Snowdonia (which we finished yesterday btw).

Cadair Idris (descent) Walk, North Wales

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Nearly 3 weeks ago now, we had a gloriously blue sky day forecast. So I decided to walk up to the top of Cadair Idris (which was a first for me). At 893m, or 2930ft, it’s the highest mountain in southern Snowdonia.

After parking near the Minffordd Hotel, I took the very steep Minffordd path to the top and had some amazing views of Llyn Cau and Cadair Idris itself. And I would have had some equally amazing photos to show you but, about half way round, as I started my descent from Mynydd Moel, I discovered that there was no SD card in the camera! (Doh! 😖) Thankfully I had my mobile phone with me and had already taken a panoramic photo from the summit (see pic 1), so I started to use that on the descent.

On the way down, I noticed a row of people with cameras. (See pics 8 & 9). I assumed they were twitchers looking for a rare bird, but they were obviously looking for a much faster ‘bird’, as there were some jets doing practice circuits along the valley and they came roaring through about 3 or 4 times. I managed to capture one reasonable photo, (pic 10), but I decided to take a video to give you a better flavour for what was happening. However, I suggest you turn down the volume for the video added at the end, as it’s rather loud!

If we ever get a blue sky day again (and I’m free of golf) I plan to return and take some photos of the ascent!

Footnote: For some reason I couldn’t transfer my photos to my laptop, so I downloaded the images and video using the Jetpack app on my phone (hence there’s no watermark nor image texts and the panorama pics are a bit wonky!) and I added this text on my laptop. 😀

Alnmouth to Warkworth Walk, Northumberland, England

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For my last walk while we were on holiday, I left Jude pottering around Alnwick and drove down to Alnmouth railway station, (where, most unusually, there’s free parking 👍) to do an out and back walk along a section of the England Coast Path. As you will see the weather wasn’t great, though it didn’t rain and there was a small incentive to get to Warkworth (other than the golf course – pic 16 in case you hadn’t guessed). 😋

I was equally puzzled and amused by the signpost in picture 11, indicating north and south, and I wondered how anyone walking the path would not know which way they were going when they got to that point. 🤔

The Royal Yacht, Britannia, Edinburgh, Scotland

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As mentioned in my previous post, our main reason for going to Edinburgh was to see the Royal Yacht, Britannia. The ship was ordered in 1952 and launched by Queen Elizabeth II herself on April 16th 1953. It was decommissioned in 1997 and is now moored as a visitor attraction in the port of Leith in Edinburgh.

As you will see it was a pretty wet and grey day for, certainly external, photography, but hopefully the images give you a flavour for what life must have been like for not only the Queen and Prince Phillip (& their family, when on board) but also the officers and crew.

Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland

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While we were in Northumberland, Jude and I went for a day trip to Edinburgh on the train. Our main aim was to see the Royal Yacht, Britannia, but our appointment wasn’t until the afternoon. So with drizzle in the air, we opted for a wander around the Scottish National Gallery (at least one part of which is free to enter btw).

I’m always amazed by the skill of any artist, but some of the paintings (shown below) just blew me away – particularly the level of detail on some of the larger works. You’ve got to love the look on the dog’s face in the last image.

Note: For the best ‘gallery’ experience, please click on the first (or any) image and page through… (The title of each piece and artist is noted underneath each image, though I’m afraid WP doesn’t like to include capitals and apostrophe’s, etc).