Monday 16 May 2011

Another Welsh mountain tarn - 8/46








Llyn Morynion - Mayday!



















And so to the last day in North Wales, the brief was... a fairly decent walk, within half hour of the house, a mixture of terrain/view and obviously near to or ending up near water. After pondering for a while and lots of checking of maps we decided on a yomp in the Rhinogs.

The walk started with a fairly level tramp through some stunning pine woodland, following a sign for waterfalls - I was getting excited by the thought of a swim under a natural waterfall! After about half an hour we found the falls - wow, they were huge, there was no way I was going anywhere near them - actually it was a trickle over a boulder, apparently it's payback for all the warm dry weather we've recently enjoyed. Anyhow we carried on to a three-way path junction, this was my chance to show just how good my navigation skills were - after all, I kept saying, I micro-nav when doing mountain marathons, this is a piece of pish. So we carried on down a track overlooking the whole valley, we came to some ruins that weren't on the map so I made a note to get in touch with Ordnance Survey to let them know of their omission, then realised we'd gone the wrong way... bloody maps! We turned tail and retraced the past half mile (!) before heading up the correct path, which took us out of the woodland into a huge mountain amphitheatre. We xould now see both Rhinogs in all their glory, and the sun was even trying to break through the clouds.

We climbed, and climbed then climbed some more before coming to another path junction, we then decided to go 'off-road' up and over a moorland saddle towards where the lake should be. It was tough going as the heather was thick and the marsh was, well, marshy. We made it down to the Llyn and by now had quite a sweat on, so we thought we'd make the most of our internal heat and go for it straight away.

I was first in and as ever it was bloody freezing, again no chance of a distance swim. Then Morgan showed how to enter the water with style, as the photo above can testify. We splashed around in the water for maybe 20 minutes, swimming down the length rather than attempting a crossing - I was to afraid of the cold getting to me :(

The water was deep, dark and murky. When you looked down while treading water you couldn't see deeper than your waist! It was quite unnerving actually, not knowing what was down there - pike, crocs, sharks or monsters!

So after messing about we got out, dried off and had lunch. Morgan and I chatted about the merits of doing these swims, saying how the diving in seemed easier the more we did. Even though this tarn was as cold as the first one we did, we felt more able to actually swim and chat while in it.

So that was North Wales, I have no idea when my next swim will be, nor where - one thing I do know is that I need to do as many as possible during the coming months, I REALLY don't want to have lots to do by October.

Cheers for reading - Tony.

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