As I explained in my last post, my brother and his fiance were visiting me for the first time last weekend and for our last day together I took them on a proper walk in Snowdonia.

Taking into consideration that my brother’s fiance isn’t exactly use to mountain walking, I choose Crimpiau as our destination. At around 1584ft/475m, its 500 feet short of mountain status, however it still requires a good couple of hours to climb and a has steep ascent. I’d already climbed Crimpiau once before as part of a longer ascent of Creigiau Gleision and I’d also walked around the area with my Mountain Walking Society so I knew the lay of the land pretty well. Therefore I’d hoped the walk would be a challenge but manageable for my companions.

After buying some new kit in Betws-y-Coed, we parked up in Capel Curig and crossed the road to St Julitta’s Church, we then hopped over the fence into a field and followed the path that led up into the wild of Snowdonia. Just beyond the dry-stone wall that marked the edge of the field we turned left towards a small wood.

Once past the woods we crossed over a small wooden bridge and turned right, following a slightly less prominent path which followed the length of the river. At the top of a small rise we could see the Crimpiau Plateau spread out before us, while behind us the mountains of Snowdonia were engulfed under a blanket of thick grey clouds.

From there we followed the long and waterlogged path to the foot of Crimpiau.

Eventually we reached the edge of the plateau and turned right to follow the path which now rose rather steeply up the side of the hill. We soon found ourselves on a col and had a quick rest, admiring the views that were slowly opening up before us. We could see Llyn Crafnant and the clouds were slowly rolling across the surface of Creigiau Gleision.

Pressing onward, we kept to the path which twisted slowly around the hillside, at some points the ground became so steep we practically had to climb up. When I’d climbed Crimpiau before I had lost the path and now I had no idea whether the path we were following would take us to the summit at all or how long it would take. Finally though I clambered up onto a second col from which I could see the summit, just a mere two minute walk away.

So eventually we collapsed on top of the summit, ravenously devouring our various cookies and flapjacks, while admiring the views which, despite the cloud, were still expansive.

With the help of some extra sugar we began our spirited walk back down the hillside, behind us low clouds were rolling in and we certainly didn’t want to be making our way down amidst that. Thankfully the path remained clear and we followed it among the tumbling rocks of Crimpiau to Llyn y Coryn.

From there the path extended a little way, passing a couple of old dry stone walls until we came to a split, wanting to get back quickly we took the seemingly quicker route and followed the length of a dry stone wall and headed straight into a bog. Which was….unpleasant, to say the least. The path disappeared and we had to slowly shuffle through the bog to reach the other side where the path coincidentally restarted.

From here all we needed to do was follow the path back down the hillside towards Capel Curig and the car, which was insight now. We did hit a slight snag when we seemingly stumbled into a sheep graveyard but we escaped and made it back down to St Julitta’s Church, all of us in need of a shower and some warm food.

Thus concludes my tale, if you enjoyed this story feel free to write in the comments, or leave a like and thanks for reading.

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