Today was a walk of variety, walking from Dolgellau to Trawsfynydd. More up and down than yesterday and a little shorter, we had still clocked up 15.8 miles by the time we finished, after about seven hours.
Coming out of Dolgellau, we began with some narrow wooded paths along steep hillside with occasional views. There was a grey haze eerily obscuring the more distant views, but it was clear that once this lifted it was going to be hot day once again.
After the narrow hillside paths, we descended to the road and then followed some tracks through Forestry commission land at Tyn y Groes, popular with mountain bikers .
As we left Forestry commission land and entered commercial forestry , felled trees opened up the views, it got hotter, the path rocker underfoot and the path steeper. While the weather added to the beauty of the landscape, typically the hottest part of the day proved to be the part with the steepest climb.
The final part of the walk proved the trickiest, with a complicated route on public rights of way across farmyards, through gates and over some stiles (one in particular in a drystone wall that had collapsed on one side needed care). A mother cow and her calf bolted in front of us from one of the barns, and we crossed some lumpy fields where you had to watch every step to avoid a twisted ankle. But a beautiful open hillside all around us, and the prospect that we were nearing the end of the walk spurred us on. Finally we emerged onto a lane, where a typical Welsh scene of sheep scampering across greeted us.
In front of us we could see the lake of Trawsfynydd ( and its defunct nuclear power plant), before we descended to the village of the same name to catch our bus back to Dolgellau, where were staying another night.
Across the Alps to the Adriatic 