Gwilym's Adventure Blog

After a few days of doing DIY on the yacht and some failed diving attempts due to poor visibility and high winds, it was great to get out and play today when I took Simon, Sarah, Tom and Bill to Ansteys Cove for some Coasteering. The water was warm and a super high tide made for a great coasteer followed by an ice cream, full english breakfast and a 9 holes of pitch and putt. Not being a golfer, it was not my finest performance of the day. During the day we had a number of short sharp showers but nothing that had any effect on our activities.

  Original Galley (with electric hob and fridge)  Completely destroyed New Gas oven to go in  Work surface back on and working tap Back on the yacht for the last 2 days with the intention of doing all the outstanding jobs that  needed doing. The biggest job of the lot is ripping out the all electric galley (as that requires me to be hooked up to shore) and replacing it with a 12v / gas system. The tap has never worked so that got plumbed in properly and had power feed run to it so it works on a microswitch. Once the gas man has come to plumb all the pipes etc then I can finish it off by mounting the oven and replacing the tiles on the work surface. A good days work I reckon.

After spending 2 weeks on foot walking around Scottish and Welsh mountains, I fancied something a bit more relaxing (and less demanding on the knees) and hit the beach at Brixham for some Scuba action. Thanks to Mike for being my buddy for the day. No pics today but my new Dive Camera comes next week so look out for lots of underwater photos in the coming weeks.

After the two day expedition, it was a relief to get lighter packs and head up into Cwm Tryfan for some search exercises and water hazard training. Today the weather was again hot and it made the river crossing exercises quite pleasant (or so they candidates told me).

For the last two days I have been on expedition with the candidates in the east side of the Carneddau. We had glorious sun and it was hot (almost too hot) on Tuesday, the skies were clear for the night navigation session and today was misty on the summit until we dropped below 600m. A good two days that tested the candidates fitness and navigation to the full, it also allowed us to look at poor visibility navigation for real.

Today I took the candidates to the flanks of Tryfan to look at security on steep ground and ropework. The idea was to concentrate on route choice, spotting and verbal guidance as options before the rope came out. We then looked at lowering on a rope, confidence roping and personal abseiling. All in all a busy day with wet greasy rocks and grass making it all the more realistic. Wet and windy today, out on expedition tomorrow and Wednesday so hopefully will be a bit nicer.

Today we headed out into the Glyders by way of Y Gribin ridge over Glyder Fawr and onto Y Garn and back down into Idwall. The aim of the day was navigation and movement on ridges including the odd rock step.The sun was out but it was very windy and some spectacular clouds formed during the day.