Pete’s Eats Walk – Saturday 7 January

Well, Llanberis locals Joan and Guto had been anxious about a long wait in Pete’s Eats and us walking back to Waunfawr in the dark, but they can rest easy. Despite nineteen of us arriving together they worked through our orders very quickly and we were back in Waunfawr in daylight (well, just!). The only delay was because of the amount of food on some of the plates. Mickey took top prize when, having been told that all the soup had gone, he asked for a ham salad. Ten minutes later the biggest plate of food most of us had ever seen was put in front of him, and he was still ploughing through it when we all left. He had decided to opt for the bus back to Caernarfon, unable to face the steep hill out of Llanberis after his ‘feast’.

The 8.5 mile walk went well, muddy in places, misty at times, but mainly with good views and plenty of happy sounding chat. The route up to Bwlch y Groes from Betws Garmon was new to nearly everyone, and the descent through the very old quarries to Llanberis as interesting as ever.

A thanks to the fitter walkers, who were patient as we adjusted the pace to suit a neighbour of ours, Ann, on her first walk with the Ramblers, when she found the one in four hill out of Llanberis a challenge (didn’t we all!). A good long distance walker when younger, with no car and used to walking everywhere, at 80 she could put a lot of 18 year olds to shame!

Most of us finished the walk with a drink of some sort in the Snowdonia Parc Brewpub, great ’brewed on the premises’ beer, an enjoyable ending to our first C&D walk of 2017.

Dave