busyMiles travelled on Sunday: 3.25
Miles travelled so far: 87 (1751 from Bag End)
Miles still to go: 491
Percentage complete: 15%
Point reached on journey: We have reached a small stream and turned north. Merry is riding with Théoden.
Where I really went...
Llyn y Gafr which lies below Cadair Idris. This is probably one of the few occasions where the real walk was more spectacular than the LoTR scenery. :)
This was another expotition in connection with the geological town trail. The town where I live is remarkable for almost all the buildings being entirely built of stone. What is more, some of the stones are very large. The idea is that there will be a leaflet guiding the interested person around the town, pointing out rocks embedded in the walls and explaining what, exactly, they are. Then there will be further walks in the surrounding countryside to enable people to see the rocks in their native habitat.
It's all coming along nicely and phase one (identify interesting rocks in the walls of the buildings) is complete and we are now moving on to phase two (find these rocks in the surrounding countryside).
Sunday's walk was to find a good route to the quarry that is the source for the rocks used to build the church, plus some of the other identified stones. In fact the exact route we walked cannot be used in the leaflet because it involved climbing over 3 fences, and you can't tell the general public to do that! Everything has to be on proper rights of way, but we can easily get around that by splitting it into two shorter walks. One up the quarry and back and the other up to the lake and back.
This is the old incline which was built to take slate from the quarry on the slopes of Cadair Idris down into the valley. The remains of the supports for the winding gear were just behind me as I took this shot.
There were just three of us, me, G and our friend P. Here P and G descend from Llyn y Gafr ahead of me.
Though the lake was in shadow and therefore looks a bit cold and gloomy, once we started to descend, we were back in the beautiful early evening light. However, it wasn't quite as warm as it perhaps looks! There was ice on the path in places.
A typical Welsh sheep on Cadair Idris. These small hardy sheep live outdoors all year round. Lambs won't be born here until April when the warmer weather arrives.
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