A Day In the Life Of Me!: Our Diamond Jubilee Walk Up Snowdon

For the Queens Jubilee this year, we decided as a family to walk up Snowdon. Now we had done this a couple of years ago and had wanted to go again for a while but the weather makes it very difficult as if you go up on a really cloudy day there will not be a very good view and that's what I walk up there for. Luckily i can see the top of snowdon from my bedroom window, so we can check before we go.

I took the kids shopping for our picnic stuff, managing to buy lots of great food, sausage rolls, savoury eggs, eggs for our egg may sandwich's and my other faves tuna, cucumber and onion. yummy.

Then i went hunting for waterproofs and walking shoes. Luckily i had bought the kids some great walking shoes in the recent sales at Millets, got some great Berghaus Shoes for my son Matty for £20 total bargain and great for this type of walk. I packed up the kids backpacks, picnic, drinks, waterproofs (we do live in Wales! ) I told them to choose a tshirt, a thin fleece for easy packing etc. Then went to make sure i had everything needed.

Now people forget that it may be nice and warm when you start the walk, but as you climb higher it can get freezing cold, so separates are the way to go. i wore shorts and packed some leggings just in case and i had my great waterproof coat.

So off we went, my 2 teenage boys, my boyfriend and his cousin and I. we parked the car at Rhydd Ddu, i hadn't been up this way since i was a kid and had wanted to walk up this way for a while now, its a great walk with brilliant views of all sides of the mountain. The only problem is there is a very narrow ridge at the top that you have to walk across so if you are afraid of heights etc then this may not be the best way to walk up. there are currently about 7 official routes up Snowdon. we walked up no. 7's route of the Rhyd Ddu and then down the Snowdon Ranger Path - remember if you do this that the ranger path comes down about a mile away from where we parked the car for the Rhydd Ddu path lol not good after a hard days walk lol

The Llanberis Path (up and down)

Snowdon Horseshoe (5 'nails' possible!)

Via the Moel Eilio Ridge and down Llanberis path

Yr Aran and the South Ridge down the Rhyd Ddu

The Miners and Pyg Track

The Watkin Path and South Ridge

The Rhyd Ddu and Snowdon Ranger Paths

a great link here for all the official routes which shows the routes and gives all the info on times etc

We started walking and we took pics on the way up, the kids loved it, not a single moan. We had only been walking for about 20 minutes when my boyfriend found some car keys, they were for a Mercedes, so we assumed someone had lost them not long before us as it was about 8.15am so we took them with is and anyone who passed us we asked if the kids belonged to them, unfortunately all the way up and back down we never came across the owners. more on this story below.....

The weather wasn't too bad, it started to rain half way up so we all got a chance to wear our waterproofs as we got very wet very quickly, luckily it slowed down to a drizzle after a while, it took us about 4 hours to walk up, only due to the fact we kept stopping cos i was so unfit lol when we got to the top, it was packed! the cafe which has recently been remodelled, was very busy, and the top where u stand for pics was hectic, there was a queue to take your pic, but when i called out for my son, i noticed he had climbed up for me to take a pic. I had to laugh, so i snapped one quick. i saw that anyone who tried to walk past the queue was quickly told THERE IS A QUEUE U KNOW so we couldn't be bothered queueing just to take a pic of a silly stone so we all stood on the edges and took our pics.
We found a nice place at the top to eat our picnic, take our pics, have a quick trip to the toilet and then we started to walk back down. what made me laugh was the fact there was so many people walking up past us as we tried to go down. All the paths converge at this point so its like a huge traffic jam and walking on the tube kind of thing.

The walk down was a little harder and made my legs ache, its very jolting. Thew views are amazing tho and the weather was great, it started to get warmer as we got lower. although it felt like we had walked for hours, it was only 3 hours. Unfortunately as i mentioned earlier, we hadn't realised that the Snowdon ranger Path actually ended 1 mile away from the car park we had started off at, so my cousin actually walked along the main road to the car and drove it back to pick us up. Bless him he was an angel cos i couldn't have walked any further lol

Back at the car park, we looked to see if there was a Mercedes still there, and yes there was a lovely Mercedes convertible just sitting there with no owner anywhere near. We could see there was a bag under the wheel so we knew the owner want that far away so we went down to the local pub to ask if anyone had been asking about their car keys. no one had so we waited around a while, then decided to leave a note with our phone number on home and mobile saying for the owner of the car to ring, and we hid the car keys above the tyre - cow we are in the middle of nowhere here, even mobile phone signal has gone! so not sure what else to do. About 20 mins after we got home, i got a phone call, it was the guy for his keys, he had been to the pub and phoned me direct for there, i told his where he could find his keys and he was sooo happy. he had been up and down Snowdon, then gone up again. he was so glad we had found his keys as he lived In Oxford or somewhere and it was gonna be a long way home without the car to get his spare set of keys. So luckily it all ended well.

We intend to walk up again when the weather is ok, this time we will go up the Watkin Path.

For more info about walking up Snowdown please visit Visit Snowdonia's website here and The Snowdonia National Park here