GLSW Network Snowdonia Award Hike 2003

Meet the Group! They are from left to right... Katie, Francis, Daniel, Stuy, Becci and Duncan. The team was made up of people from four of our five local Networks, thrown together to try to complete their Queen’s Scout/Duke of Edinburgh’s Gold Award hikes. Together over the next four days they would walk about 55 miles, through the "hill" in the Snowdonia area.

Day 1 – not long in to the hike and a quick check on where to go. Luckily we all agreed on the direction this time and so carried on, up another small hill, or two, or three…

Suddenly it became very cloudy and we decided to stop and have a break. Francis provided entertainment for us by making a sock puppet! All of a sudden it felt like Big Brother, no TV, no phones and mad housemates. When was eviction night?

The end of Day 1 – our camp was next to a reservoir in the Trefriw area. We set up hoping that no cracks would appear in the wall of the dam or we would be swimming in the morning!

Well, no visit to Wales would be complete without sheep. We saw lots!

Day 2 was a long, long day and took us through hills, fields and towns. We kept going knowing that the end would finally come. Eventually we did make it to our campsite and set up. This was our "luxury " night as this site had a loo and hot water! What more could we want... well actually a pint of Guinness, soft bed... The down side of the site, it rained!

Day 3 was a very, very short day and we made it to our campsite in five hours. We set up camp and then had a nice long rest. Sadly, it wasn't long before things went wrong. We were politely told we were in the wrong field and so should move to the next field, the correct one. After a few minutes of moaning and not a lot of movement the farmer said we could stay and we settled down once more.

Never expect a path to be there, even if it is on a map. We did this and ended up in a working slate mine. Luckily no one noticed us and we sneaked out and carried on. Here we are wandering down a rather steep hill. This was the point where Daniel pointed out how bad it would be if someone fell and started rolling – what a lovely thought!

Our final challenge of the hike was Cnict, a rather large hill. We scaled it to the top and then had to make our way down. Stuy pointed out how he doesn't do heights or rock climbing.... Oh dear, both involved here. In the end the team managed to get him to move and carried on down – the end was in sight.

This was our final view as we came to the end – 50 miles after the start. A lot of new friendships made, lots of laughs and memories later.

And that's it, a potted version of the hike. Once we had finished it was time for hot showers and then off to the pub to celebrate our achievement.

The day we all had a nice, long, lie in!!! Bye!!!!