Month: May 2019

Climbing Snowdon: The Watkin Path

The Watkin Path is the toughest of the standard routes up Snowdon. There may be other routes known to climbers considered more challenging, such as the haul up Crib Goch, but of those normal routes straight to the top, the Watkin is the one. It also has the greatest ascent from start to finish: 3,330 feet.
The walk start at the ‘back of the mountain’ on the south side in the valley of the Nant Gwynant, at Bethania, between the two long lakes of the valley. A short walk in leads first through lovely woodland, then it begins to mean business as you walk up a dry valley carved into the mountainside, where Snowdon was heavily quarried for slate.

The Watkin Path is the toughest of the standard routes up Snowdon.  There may be other routes known to climbers considered more challenging, such as the haul up Crib Goch, but of those normal routes straight to the top, the Watkin is the one.  It also has the greatest ascent from start to finish:  3,330 feet, or 1,015 m in French.

It has been several years since I climbed the Watkin, so I have no photographs of my own for this own.  I had it easy:  my wife climbed with me in spite of a bout of flu, but we wanted to climb it before moving on and so we did.

The walk start at the ‘back of the mountain’ on the south side in the valley of the Nant Gwynant, at Bethania, between the two long lakes of the valley.  There is a convenient car park (with few cars when we were there, but if it were full I cannot think where else you might stop).  A short walk in leads first through lovely woodland, then it begins to mean business as you walk up a dry valley carved into the mountainside; here a theme of the walk appears as this is a side of Snowdon heavily quarried for slate.  There is a large monument here marking a speech by Gladstone:  what days they were when people would travel to a remote valley to hear a political speech, unless he just spoke to quarrymen off their shift.

The incline of a slate tramway crosses the path, while the path itself winds first beside the Cwm Llan river, then splits from a path across the flank of the mountain (which goes to Rhyd Ddu as it happens), crosses the stream and begins to climb in earnest, and when the path begins to climb, it does not stop.

The path has a haul up to the craggy ridge of Y Lliwedd (though not to its summit) before following the ridge north-west directly toward Snowdon’s summit.

One high section of this climb I distinctly; remember clambering with my hands and finding the foothold for us both on a narrow, very steep section, with the slate breaking away as we trod on it or held.  The weather was closing in too at that point.  Somehow in spite of weather and influenza we reached the ridge and the climb was still not over as we worked our way up to the summit.

I am told that this upper section has since had work done to it to make it less of s death-trap.

It was late in the season and late in the day for a climb and for once, I think the only time, the summit was empty.

Waterfall on the Cwm Llan River

We were unable to go back the same way after that break-away section and my wife’s state of health but we found instead an easier downward route, along Bwlch Main – a ridge on the other side of the quarried valley, down to the flank track from Rhyd Ddu, whence back to the Cwm Llan, and a feeling of a job well done.

I may have to revisit, this time with a camera, to see what has been done to the route.  It was fascinating as a side of the mountain not so frequently seen, and to encounter just one other walker, and that on the Bwlch Main path, is unique in my experience of Snowdon.

Maps

The best maps for Snowdon are of course the Ordnance Survey maps; the ‘Explorer’ at 1:25 000 and the ‘Landranger’ at 1:50 000:

Route map

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Downing Street to Maidenhead walk

It is too enclosed for the mind to breathe, too urban – why seek to walk to Downing Street, when it is best sometimes to shut the door and walk away from it, to a quieter, riverside town where there is rest to find and less trouble.  So, while many have started looking towards that street, and we have provided a series of ‘Downing Street Walks’ to assist them to find the way, what of an escape for rest, to a gentle town beside the green reaches of the River Thames; a place such as Maidenhead?

The back way out of Downing Street westward opens onto St James’s Park, with little paths by the lake leading to Buckingham Palace, but here it is time to bid farewell to the pomp of power and splendour – there is a walk ahead.

The mapped route follows through the Royal Parks, by the river, by the canal with is a monument to the industrial age, and into the beauties and otherwise of southern Buckinghamshire and eastern Berkshire, all to reach the refuge from the unforgiving town which you so need.

Main articles:

Maps

  • Ordnance Survey Explorer (1:25 000) series:
  • Ordnance Survey Landranger (1:50 000) series:

Route

See also

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The Rickmansworth Canal Festival

I have written of the Grand Union Canal as providing the path for many a good walk, but it is not all about walking:  there is the wet bit in the middle, the canal itself, and the canal is abuzz with life.  Last weekend was the annual Rickmansworth Canal Festival; a celebration of the life of the canal, also with land-based stalls, events, live music stage and funfair.  It is on the canal though that the festival comes into its own, and the narrow water throngs with colourful boats.

This is a celebration of the outdoors, if not a walk, but a life in the fresh air.

You would not know until you see them, or if you are of the fellowship of boaters, how many canal boats there are, and the variety of them.  Some canals are very narrow, as on the Aylesbury Arm just 7 feet wide, and the narrowboats built for it are narrow.  The main line through is a broader water, and by Batchworth they were moored three abreast with still ample room for passage past them, and here they gathered, brightly coloured in the canal-art style, or duller, working boats, and broad-bottomed boats that once hauled coal from Birmingham to London, restored with loving attention.  Some are boats turned into floating stalls selling paintings, artworks, books and more, and others to remind us of the rescue services, including the canal chaplaincy.  There is fellowship here and a unity despite the ill-matched types.  All celebrated, bedecked with bunting.

On day 1 of Herts Embraced I crossed the Wendover and Aylesbury Arms, and saw the Wendover Arm cut off; dry and empty up to a dam, then brimful of water and ready the other – that is a tribute to the work of volunteers that still continues – that dam will be driven back as the work goes on until the Wendover Arm is full and operational.  It is an artificial waterway, so it need maintenance or it decays, bursts and empties.  that is worthy work, but I have not volunteered my arm yet.

The boats are shaped by their owners and maybe the names give a clue to eccentricities:  plenty are named for wives and sweethearts and others, well, I did not see “Fat Bottomed Girl” nor “The Slowness of Cows” but I have seen each ply the canal.  I am a walker not a boater, but I can give a cheer for those who take the tiller in order to enjoy the unhurried flow of the fields past them, and the slowness of cows.

The Grand Union

The Grand Union Canal has been a thread through many episodes of my life. I was not brought up anywhere near it nor educated nor until twenty years ago did I live by it, but it was always reappearing.  Today, its towpath provides a route on many a walk I have made and others I have planned.

It is a manmade imposition in the landscape but amongst all the less sympathetic concrete intrusions it is a pleasing line of cool water and opens a corridor through jarring modernity. The ducks do not know the difference between a river and a canal, and nature reclaims all it can, so if you can ignore the ruler-straight sides, the concrete edges and the lack of current, it can become a country river for you.

As I child I helped my gather to help a family friend move his canal boat up the Grand Union, which seemed to take all day but was, looking back at it, a short distance as these boats are slow vessels. I took a job for a while in Birmingham, and the canal towpath provided a route for evening runs, and a short, safer route for cycling between the city and the suburbs, and at Birmingham it is part of a network of industrial canals which allow the walker to disappear from the groaning cityscape. It was on a canal adjoining it that I used to run down to Bourneville and take in the chocolate-flavoured air, when the Cadbury factory was venting (the railway bridge over the canal was painted in Cadbury purple-and-gold, I recall).  I would escape to the villages and in places like Henley in Arden the canal had followed me.  I was told that they used to hold there an “Alternative Henley Regatta”, where boats would be hauled through the street before being put on the canal.  I took another job, in Milton Keynes, and there was the Grand Union, the one purposeful water in an artificial landscape with man-wrought lakes.  In other places too I met the canal as I travelled the Midlands, until by coincidence I moved to a village on its course, and now I often cycle the towpath as a practical way around the area.  It shapes the landscape in more ways too: the Ruislip Lido, where the children play and which is on the path of the Middlesex Greenway, the large, man-made lake is a reservoir built to feed the canal.

The canal was ‘officially’ created in 1929, but that was just the nominal grouping of other pre-existing canals. The Grand Junction Canal, which forms most of the main line, was begun in 1793.  In addition to the main route from Brentford or Paddington to Birmingham, there are seven branches off, or ‘arms’, of which I have walked along the Aylesbury, Wendover and Slough Arms, at least, and will do so again.

It is a ubiquitous canal. (The canal has also featured in number of ‘Downing Street Walks’ as a way to pass through the conurbation at ease.)

Looking back, many of the posts I have made have featured sections of this canal. The advantage of a canal walk as against a river walk is that the towpath provides a reliable path.  Perhaps a few articles are needed specifically on canal walks.  I may follow that up in the summer.

Snowdon by the Rhyd Ddu Path

The Rhyd Ddu and Snowdon Ranger Paths snake up Snowdon’s western slope.  These are routes less taken but are rewarding ways up.  The paths are both three and a half miles long, and reckoned at 3 hours’ walking, if you are fit:  always allow for more.

Rhyd Ddu, the starting point for this eponymous path, is just south of Snowdon Ranger and like it is a tiny hamlet in the valley beneath the western slope of Snowdon.  Its name means “Black Ford”, and like its twin it is clustered about a station on the exquisite Welsh Highland Railway (about which separately).  The railway then provides an access.  (You can just pay to park in the station car park and walk, but it is a good excuse for a ride on a beautiful steam-hauled, narrow-gauge line.)

What I most remember about Rhyd Ddu is the torrential rain, and being barely able to expose a map or any paper to the open without its dissolving.  The path is signposted at least, and the destination clear above – except that it was not that day as I could not see more than a hundred yards ahead.

Descending the Rhyd Ddu Path
Descending the Rhyd Ddu Path

There is more to Rhyd Ddu than a station and the way up Snowdon, not much more in terms of the village itself, but it can be used as a spot to visit other heights and sites.  Rhyd Ddu stands at the head of the pass, the Colwyn flowing south and the Gwyrfai north.  Westward is the Nantlle Ridge, marking the end of Snowdonia, and the Nantlle Valley, to the north Llyn Cwellyn, and to the east the towering presence of Snowdon.

To Snowdon then.  The Rhyd Ddu path is a straightforward route at the start, ascending across fields and wood, on a good track through the Cwm Caregog and up to the crags.  The promise of a sudden incline looms ahead.  The path becomes less one of meadow and bog and more rock and slate.

The path heads up Bwlch Main (‘Narrow Pass’), which is a strenuous section, and as it grows steeper those strong calf muscles will be needed.  It climbs to the edge of the cliffs which form a corrie dropping away northwards, then round the cliffs up the bwlch straight to the summit.

This last section makes the Rhyd Ddu path, which begins so gently, one of the toughest of the main Snowdon routes.

Maps

The best maps for Snowdon are of course the Ordnance Survey maps; the ‘Explorer’ at 1:25 000 and the ‘Landranger’ at 1:50 000:

Route map

Please donate to the Stroke Association: click here.