A pretty wet and dull first day of 4 walking the Llangollen Round in North Wales

Dates walked: 20th November 2018

Distance: 10.62 miles

Maps Used: OS Explorer 255- Llangollen and Berwyn

Guide Used: The Llangollen Round , obtainable via the website for the walk at this link (£5)

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Llangollen (pronounced langothlen with the welsh sound for the double “l”  at the beginning which is nigh on impossible to describe), is a town in north Wales on the River Dee. Its a nice little place and boasts a steam railway line and a canal. So, fun for all the family.

This pic was taken a couple of days later

It sits in the Vale of Llangollen and is surrounded by hills and moorland rising to around  2000 feet, so although many of the surrounding hills are called mountains if mountains they be then they are modest ones.

A few years ago some bright spark had the idea of creating a 33 mile circular route using existing rights of way, taking the higher ground around the Vale and crossing all the surrounding summits. Sounds fun, doesn’t it? Well I thought so. I just may not have been wise to choose late November to tackle it.

If you are ridiculously fit or foolhardy, the excellent little guide book reckons that the Round can be done in a day. Four days is the most that the authors reckon that it should require “at a leisurely pace”. I’m all for a leisurely pace and November days are short, so that’s what I had allowed.

It’s a long drive to Llangollen from home so I thought I’d take the train (to Ruabon) and then a bus (free with my over 60’s bus pass – whoopee).  It was a good thought but it would have been better if I had got off the train at Ruabon and not Chester (where I had got to by the time I came out of my train-induced reverie). I didn’t have to wait too long for a train back. Sadly, I had also forgotten my bus pass which I had intended to use several times to get to and from my daily start/finish points.  Add to these set backs a fairly awful  weather forecast and things were not going according to plan.

I had booked myself into the Gales of Llangollen wine and food bar which has rooms and a wine and gift shop for 4 nights.  My double en-suite room was spacious (if a little chilly) and I liked the wine bar decor so I thought I would eat there for the first night at least..

My olive oils and bread starter was fun….

Three different oils and two vinegars, but the plastic pipettes didn’t deliver them very well

…. but the burger was rather dry in texture (too lean), the bun un-toasted and the chips oily. Disappointing.

After a good nights sleep and having opted for the continental breakfast (nice) I was up for ignoring the drizzly outside.

The guide divides the route into 6 sections and makes useful suggestions about how to combine them according to your chosen level of strenuousness.  On the first day I was going to tackle section F taking the bus to Carrog and then walking back into town at the end of the day from the point where section F joins section A. If that sounds complicated this diagram from the guide should help.

The bus stop was only a few hundred yards away and the journey was only about 20 mins to my drop off on the A5 near Carrog; I resentfully handed over my £2.80.

The guide has a description of each section but I had some difficulty finding the right track to start on.  The one I did take did go uphill, so that was reassuring.

And at first the visibility was not bad so that I quickly had a nice view over Carrog and to the hills beyond where I would finish the walk in 4 days time.

A bloke on a quad bike zoomed up, scattering a mass of pheasants, and told me that my intended route through the wood was impassable and that I would need to go round the edge of the wood instead.

I wasn’t sure that I believed him, but didn’t want to risk having to re-trace my steps so I made my way round the edge of the Carrog Plantation. It wasn’t easy and after a while of struggling through the tussocky grass and bumpy, boggy ground I delved into the wood and picked up a track within it.

This is a rubbish pic but it was dark so the shutter speed wasn’t fast enough.

This track gave out towards the top of the wood so I had to leave the wood and return to traipsing over now very boggy ground to skirt the wood and find my path again on its southern most corner.

The post had the Llangollen Round marker disc . Hooray.

From the wood I had a two mile climb on a narrow path up to Moel Fferna.  As I climbed it began to rain and and I soon  had very little visibility.

I’d reached  2066 feet by the trig point and the guide waxes lyrical about the views to be had to the distant Berwyn and Clwydian hills.  I could see about 20 yards.

You’ll have to take my word that I am standing by the Trig Point

Although the track from here due east was reasonable, for the most part I had very little to see but the track itself.

This section is also part of the North Berwyn Way

Although the rain persisted the mist did lift to give me some tantalising glimpses of the surrounding views.

I saw one person, who proved to be taking his dog for a walk not far from his parked up car.

For a couple of miles the path followed the edge of the Ceiriog Forest – a conifer plantation. The track pretty boggy in places  and there was a lot of surface water.

For quite a lot of the time it was also quite narrow, so that I was often brushing against wet foliage.

After the forest the path heads north-east, to take in the summit of Vivod Mountain (1837 feet).

Taken in the rain on my phone – I wasn’t going to give my decent camera a soaking.

From that hill  the path headed east again, passing by summit of Y Foel, where on a fine day one might have made a detour to see the pile of stones that remains of Biddulph Tower and for another trig-snap, but this wasn’t a fine day so I didn’t bother.  I was quite glad to get off the path at Finger Farm and join a small road – at least it wouldn’t be that wet underfoot.

The Llangollen Round takes this rather dreary road for several miles. For today I only had to do about two miles on it.  I reached a junction where a road heads downhill to the town. This would be where I would return to the next day so I turned off the path facing a rather weary two-mile trudge.

Not long after I had turned off I stuck my thumb out as a car approached and I was delighted that a woman with a wonderfully untidy car stopped – she was picking her child up from nursery school in Llangollen and took me most of the way.  That was the best bit of what had not been a very pleasant day.