From London we took the clockwise route around England and found our way into Wales, Cardiff the capital being our first stop. This place was bustling on the “hottest day of the year” at a barmy 30deg Celsius. We took advantage of this strange sighting of the sun and found a nice spot in the heart of the city for lunch. After a wonder through Cardiff and at the recommendation of our friends in Bristol we headed out to St David stopping along the way at numerous beaches to watch the summer frenzy (still not warm enough for either of us to contemplate a dip!). St David is in the western corner of Wales with a coast covered with incredible sea cliffs, we stumbled across a great little campsite right on the cliff. The next day we set off with a stop off at St David’s cathedral and the Bishops palace which was really well done and a great place to explore. We made our way north along the west coast aiming for Snowdonia. We stopped off for a night in Barmouth, a lovely beach side town although with the one day of summer out of the way it was back to raining cloudy Wales and the puffer jackets were back on.

Next up we made our way through the Snowdonia National Park with a few stop offs, one included Europe’s longest zipline which we couldn’t drive past. This was a great few hours in gale force winds. On the first zipline I was spun around which severely reduced my speed and left me stranded quite far from the finish, Pete took great delight in photographing the experience. After a few hours of ziplining it was back on the road making our way towards Mount Tryfan, the mountain we were to attempt the next day. We spent the night at the base of the mountain looking up towards the summit that was occasionally visible as the clouds flew over it. In the morning we woke to perfect conditions, or as perfect as we could have hoped for and headed on up the mountain. With no fixed track it was a lot of fun finding our way to the top. Once on top the weather turned and we were fully in cloud and rain. We made our way down the other side carefully as our visibility wasn’t great and the weather began to clear again the lower we got. On the way down we past what the locals call ‘Lake Australia’ as the lake actually looks like Australia! We made our way back to the car and headed straight for Holy Head to catch the last Ferry to Dublin.