Riverbed Exporations

I've been waiting for a really warm day to venture up into the mountains on another hairbrained adventure and today turned out to be just the day. Warm gales have been blowing, sending the temperatures shooting briefly up into the twenties. We packed our snorkels and set out on bikes...

It's only a few kilometres to the end of the road, but much quicker and easier by bike than on foot and even by car, as there is nowhere to park anyway. At the end of the tarmac, we left our bikes and set out onto the mountainside...

The pools I was looking for turned out to be a bit further away than I had remembered, but gave a super hike and great views.

I've dipped here before, but this time was armed with a mask, to see what was down below!

There was a surprisingly large population of fish! The water (as anticipated), was much colder than the valley lakes, but the warm air made it okay. Afterwards, we lay on the hot smooth rocks nearby and warmed back up in a very pleasant, non-shivery way.

We had the wind behind us and a downhill gradient for the way home!

Back at The Cottage, we found a little visitor!

Looking at the wind forecast, we also noticed that there was a strange lull in the wind for a few hours at sunset. After dinner, although we could both have not bothered, we travelled down to the lake in anticipation of a good sunset and calm waters. As we crossed the rail tracks, we were rewarded with both.

All was calm and we were compelled to put some ripples in the smooth lake.

It was much much warmer than the mountain river! I swam until the sun hit the horizon and Snowdon (Eryri as it's known these days!) and Crib Goch (the mountains in the back ground) all glowed red. 

A very nice finish to a day of local adventuring...