After my exertions yesterday I wasn’t up for a long walk but the dogs and Paula fancied getting out somewhere and I’d been eyeing up a large lake, right on the top of the hillside in between Dollgarrog and Trefriw, which I’d only spotted on the map. By now you may be thinking I’m a tad obsessed with lakes… I’m not really they just give you a focus to go to and walk around – or something to focus the camera on as you walk past them, plus the whole water shimmering in the sun, reflecting clouds and landscapes – OK I’m a bit obsessed. It’s actually a dammed reservoir called Llyn Cowlyn. The road up to it seriously steep – even the map has >> signs on it, which means “Gradient: steeper than 20% (1 in 5)” which even on the tarmac bits tests out the Landrover and its driver!
You have to park up a fair way from the dam because the track has been closed off to traffic – the houses around the lake are deserted, presumably bought off with Compulsory Purchase Orders, and the landscape is about as flat as you get anywhere around here!
In the bottom right of the picture above you can just make out a black line which is the massive pipe coming out of the reservoir – it’s the first thing you see when you come over the brow of the hill. The other thing you see are millions of sheep so the dogs were on their leads most of the time.
The dam is about a mile from where we parked the car but our route was taking us higher, up around the north side so we got a decent view of the lake as a whole.
About now the weather forecasters’ predictions actually became true and it started to rain for the first time over the weekend – only lasted ten minutes though. Keeping the dogs on the lead, a spot of rain and a really quite boring lake were enough to make us give up even though we’d only been walking an hour or so. Walking back along the shore of the lake did mean we could let the dogs off their leads because the sheep didn’t like the lake either… but they did like the dam!
The drive there and back was by far the most interesting part of the trip and offered some pretty stunning views.
And overlooking Trefriw
To round the day off we were planning to have lunch in the Ship Inn in Trefriw – great little pub with a nice beer garden we can let the dogs off their leads in but they have recently changed their lunch menu so it’s small starters which weren’t quite enough or large mains which were more than we were after – and they’ve even taken off their really nice ploughmans! Disappointed we drove to Dolwyddelan to our local pub and got just what we were after – burger and gammon – although just as it was getting brought out to us the heavens opened and it absolutely pelted down completely soaking the serving people! We were under a parasol and stayed perfectly dry, reading the papers and not moving until it stopped raining. Although just as we were leaving Megan decided further investigation of the premises was required and Paula found her coming out of the pub kitchen following the chef!
