The first stop was at the old slate mine on the south facing slopes of Cader Idris. The waste tip gives away the fact that there is an old slate mine here.
As you can see, the weather wasn't too bad. The forecast had not been very promising but G must have made the usual sacrifices to the weather gods because though I heard it raining as I was lying in bed, by the time we set off it was dry and the weather steadily improved all day.
Over in the distance, looking splendid in the sunshine is Pared y Cefn Hir. This is the ridge where G took this group on their previous field trip to the area about 3 years ago.
Here is one of the entrance tunnels to the old slate mine, carefully secured against casual explorers.
We only had to climb over one barbed wire fence and one wall. We took a sheet of thick plastic to make the fence climbing easier and fortunately the wall was very solid and well maintained so climbing it was tricky but doable.
This was as high as we went. As you can see, there is still some way to go to the summit of the mountain. I scrambled down this path once when I was a student many years ago. The experience completely put me off this route, but according to a hill walking website, the path, which runs to the left of the scree slope is perfectly doable as long as you take care.
There were some people on the summit which the zoom lens on my camera could just pick out.
Llyn y Gader was the final location to learn about before turning back and descending via a slightly different route to the car park. Here is a very rare photo of my husband.
And here is the view looking north from the highest point reached on our walk.
