Snowdonia National Park is located at northeast Wales, which is around two hours drive from my previous location Shrewsbury. Cynthia has picked a small town called Beddgelert to stay because according to her, it is the most scenic town in Snowdonia. She is right. Beddgelert is beautiful. But even with voted UK’s best mobile network Vodafone – unless it is an advertising scam – there is no mobile data access in town. Google Map is not very good in the UK either. We ended up driving up the hill, onto a narrow unpaved road, and into a farm as we were searching for our Airbnb. Thankfully, the car comes with Satnav. I still prefer Android Auto though. But to use Android Auto – whereby most of the time, it does bring you to the right places based on the postal codes – we need mobile data access. In the UK and outside of the big cities, mobile data access can be pretty patchy or even non-existence. It could be the country or it could well be Vodafone.
To view the photo album and read the captions of our day 4 adventure, click here. For this trip, I use a Nikon Z6 with 35mm Z lens.
Since yesterday’s afternoon, there has been raining in the UK. More like drizzling on and off. I am pretty used to the UK weather. My wife found it rather fascinating as compared to the weather in Southeast Asia. Our plan was to hike. Since the rain was not that heavy, I bought Cynthia a nice and warm jacket (with a hood!) and onto Snowdonia we hike.
The first trail is called Gelert’s Grave. It was a very easy trail. A very enjoyable walk. The story behind the trail is rather sad though. Legend has it that a baby was missing. And when one dog came back with blood around its mouth, the owner concluded that the dog must have eaten the baby. So the owner killed the dog.
As he went searching for the body of the baby, he found the baby alive next to a dead fox. He then realized that it was the dog that killed the fox that was trying to eat the baby. The owner was very sad and a grave was built. The trail is a short hike from Beddgelert to the grave and back. While the story was sad, the scenery was beautiful. It was a good walk.
Next, we headed to the legendary trail of Dinas Emrys. It is a story about Merlin and the dragon. My wife is really into Merlin (thanks to Netflix) so the trail is more for her. On top of the hill was a small ruin whereby underneath, the dragon sleeps. So said the legend anyway.
The last trail we did was Craflwyn circuit. The cloud broke just a little bit. It was quite a hilly climb and we have encountered pairs of sheep. The scenery was also beautiful. It was green everywhere with pink and purple flowers dotted the hillside. Occasionally the sun shone through and we took the opportunity to take some pictures.
On a high note and despite the rain, we managed to reserve a table at Hebog – during our breakfast at … Hegbog. It is quite possibly the best restaurant in Beddgelert. The lamb rump was so tender and so juicy. Dinner was delicious. One of the best I have during our holiday in the UK.