The final mountain from our Three Peaks challenge was Snowdon. We had one available weekend in August where we could climb and the weather forecast was ok. We planned to camp for the weekend and I was going to travel with the kids from Gloucester on the Friday morning and Stu was going to travel on his own direct from London after work.

It is almost a four hour drive to Snowdon so we did a quick service station stop and also stopped at Conwy Falls which was only 30 minutes from the camp site. At the falls we were lucky to spot salmon leaping up the water fall!

^{Conwy Falls, Betws-y-Coed}

We reached the campsite where we had planned to stay but it was not very nice. The bathrooms didn’t feel clean (probably not helped by the rain) and it wasn’t the best field. I decided that I didn’t want to stay there and remembered driving past a campsite that looked much bigger so went to find it (with limited mobile reception – and contacted Stu to give him a rough idea of where I was going)

The new campsite was Llyn Gwynant Campsite and luckily they had space. I was told to just to take any pitch that was available. It was drizzling, windy and cold so the kids sat in the car whilst I put the tent up as fast as possible.

The campsite was lovely – there was a lake and a river. It also had a wood fired pizza food truck so I bought us all pizzas for tea! Stu joined much later and it was a good job I had told him we were moving as there was zero reception at the camp site – still not sure how he found us!!!

We got up early the next morning ready for our climb. We parked in the town, Llanberris and took a bus to the start of the Pyg track – the route we were going to take up the mountain. It was raining and really misty but the forecast said it was due to clear in the next 30 minutes so we set off.

^{Start of the Pyg Track – in the rain}

The rain didn’t stop. It was also quite windy. We were absolutely soaked within an hour and as we climbed up we were in the clouds and could barely see anything. This was probably a good thing as I think on some parts of the path you can see some drops and we hate heights!

We reached the summit in 3 hours and queued to have our picture taken – at which point it started to hail!

We had promised the kids hot chocolate in the cafe but it was so busy there was no chance of getting served. We sheltered behind a wall outside for a few minutes but realised we were starting to get quite cold so decided we should keep moving and head back down.

We were returning via the Llanberris path and half way down the rain stopped and the sun made a brief appearance – which meant we dried out!

^{The hike back down.}

We eventually made it back to the town and bought hot chocolates for the kids and returned to the campsite.

Considering what a miserable day it had been – the evening was beautiful. We bought more pizzas and Stu found a firepit so we bought logs from the campsite shop and lit a fire. We also went to the lake and did lots of photography.

^{An evening at the campsite}

The following morning was also beautiful so we did some more photography.

We packed up the tent and headed home. We stopped at the Snowdon viewing point and although the weather was much better, Snowdon still had its head in the clouds!

We also did a quick stop at Swallow Falls on the route home.