Another cloudy and drizzling day in Wales, much more like I anticipated. What better day for it to rain than the day we rent a car to drive to the Snowdownia National Park and try climbing the highest Mountain in Wales, 3300 feet.
Let me start by saying Wales is a beautiful country. I've already loved what I have seen on the Train ride across the country to the coast, but that didn't prepare me for the change as we drove north. The train ride from Manchester takes you through rolling green hills along a river, and as you approach the coast it opens into a beautiful river delta. Aber itself sits on the coast snuggled between some hills and a small river. So already I've seen quite a variance in landscape. As you drive north thinks only get hillier untill you reach full mountains. So in two hours on can go from coast and hills to Mountains. Now maybe I'm overly impressed because Illinois is so boring and someone on the East or West coast can do that all the time, but for such a small country (size of Massachusetts) it's amazing.
As for climbing the mountain, people usually take about 2hours to reach the summit. We only managed to go about an hour and a half before turning back due to weather conditions. Things were too windy and cloudy near the top for us to go any further, so we turned back before someone got hurt. Although we didn't reach the top, it was still worth trying, maybe some other time.