In May, we did an impromptu, long weekend in Snowdonia National Park, Wales. This trip was our first real experience with elevation in the UK! It felt soooooo good. Snowdonia has a lot to do (castles, scenic train rides, more castles, the most sheep and goats you will ever see adorning the hillsides, mining museums, hikes, and more). We kept ours focused on hiking mostly.
In the region of England where we currently reside, it’s pretty flat. After experiencing a lack of elevation for a while and then entering some land with steep hillsides and windy roads, we felt transported to another planet. Have you ever felt that before? Oh, sheep are everywhere too!
Road Trip – Getting to Snowdonia!
As we started driving to Wales, I had a minor panic attack in the car. We didn’t think to do any research about the England/Wales border. Kevin was satisfied with the general conversations he’s heard from coworkers about traveling freely in the UK. However, I was like, what if they have checkpoints, etc. While England and Wales are part of the UK, they are also separate countries. I kept fretting about if we needed our passports or visas (which we didn’t bring). Anyways, it was fine. I didn’t even know when we got into Wales – I might have missed the sign. Much ado about nothing!
What we loved about this trip was checking so many things off our super informal, not-written-down (well, maybe on a scrap piece of paper, whereabouts currently unknown) UK bucket list.
Our First English Pub & Inn
The first thing crossed off on our super informal not-written-down UK bucket list: we stayed in a quaint English Pub and Inn. Not a hotel, but a pub with rooms upstairs for you to stay in. We’ve wondered what that experience was like! Is anyone else really good about romanticizing things? Like, Oh how cute, you can sit downstairs order your dinner, and have a lively conversation with a few pints of ale before you call it a night. I’ll hear people laugh and slam down a pint of ale and someone will pick up a musical instrument and start playing while everyone sings along.
Romanticizing is my specialty. You know those times you try to experience something but you always feel on the periphery? As parents with two kids, that’s how we felt. We got in right around bedtime, so basically went up to our room and tried to put our kids to sleep while we could hear everyone enjoying their ale, laughing, and talking standing outside. Luckily, it didn’t last too late in the night. Woot woot, living the pub life! We could have lived dangerously, had a drink, and pushed bedtimes back. Starting the weekend out with over-tired kids didn’t feel like a gamble we were ready to take. However, with early little risers, in the morning we went downstairs. Early enough to experience the anticipation of waiting for the inn’s kitchen to open so we could enjoy our full English breakfast.
Hedgehog and I came down after Lil Fox and Kevin. Lil Fox was so excited to make everyone some toast and tea while we waited for breakfast to open. English breakfast here is similar but different to the states. You can expect eggs, bacon, and sausage. Then things get wild and branch off. You also get a tomato, beans (think baked beans), and mushrooms. They’re not all mixed in some hash or omelet, but all separate on your plate. It’s an interesting combination of food. Anyways, at this inn, they also served black pudding. The term pudding might catch you off guard. It’s really a blood sausage which you can learn about here. I’ve come a long way trying new foods, but I passed on this one.
Day 1: The Famous, Crowded Mount Snowdon Hike
After breakfast, we finished our trip to the heart of Snowdonia so we could climb Snowdon, the tallest mountain in Wales. We drove straight to a car park that shuttles trekkers to Pen Y Pass. Pen Y Pass is a popular car park where most trails to climb Snowdon begin. When we arrived at the shuttle car park, the lady collecting cash (basically in a fenced field) was breathing hard, apologized, and laughed saying she was getting in her exercises for the day. LOVE it! Just gonna do some pushups and whatnot while I wait for cars to come park.
It reminds us of the Daffodil Festival where the dad directed cars to park while wearing a baby on his back. I know this is a bit of a side tangent, but it’s one thing we love about the UK – this feeling of informality and light-heartedness (at least from our perspective). Anyways, the road you take from the shuttle car park up to Pen y Pass Car Park is narrow and windy. We wondered how many routes the bus drivers did in a double-decker bus before they felt super comfortable doing the route. Glad to know riding a double-decker never gets old, no matter where you are!
Hiking Snowdon
Pen y Pass was a cluster when we got there. I always find it interesting to people-watch when you go on a more “touristy” hike. You see ALL types of people there: outdoorsy, not so outdoorsy (but maybe they are), hard-core trekkers, families like us, groups wearing matching t-shirts. It always reminds us you cannot put nature lovers in a box!
Needless to say, it was a crowded trail. Six different trails take you to the summit, one trail even has a path near the small train route that goes up to the peak of Snowdon from Llanberis. I’m sure Lil Fox would have preferred that. Us adults wanted to be a bit more in the weeds of nature. No pun intended. So, we did a circular hike going up the Pyg Track (just under 2400 ft in elevation gain) and back through the Miner’s trail to the summit.
If you want to see a good visual of the climbing route, you can see some pictures capturing that on the Pyg Track hyperlink in the last paragraph. Lil Fox did AMAZING and climbed it all himself. I probably carried him for 100 feet on the descent in an area where he said his legs were a bit too jiggly and he wanted a break. I didn’t want to pull off with the massive hiker traffic in that area. Hedgehog got the most scenic ride, on daddy’s shoulders, but she did do a good chunk of the descent.
We had a good clear view at the summit but didn’t feel like waiting in line for the traditional mountain summit touch point. The queue was ridiculous!! As we made the descent the clouds started to roll in and it made us feel fortunate for our timing. A half-hour later and we would not have had the views. Taking the Miners trail back, we walked along a couple of lakes.
Overall the hike was beautiful, but a bit too crowded for our liking. We did a hike on Day 3 that we much preferred! We didn’t think Snowdon was too strenuous (assuming you are fit) on the route we took, although others probably disagree. Part of the reason we felt this way is the trails are so manicured it’s more like gravel paths than scrambling rocks, dirt, etc. Regardless, we crossed climbing one major UK mountain off our bucket list!
Officially Joining the Hostel Posse
After the hike, we drove to our first-ever hostel to get some R&R. How many of you have stayed at a hostel? If you haven’t, you might feel horrified to hear we brought our kids to one based on the stereotypes one learns. If you have stayed at one, you realize these stereotypes aren’t true everywhere you stay. This was a family-friendly hostel. We had private rooms, a bathroom, and bunk beds. The kids loved it. The rooms were reminiscent of college dorms, but it was clean and welcoming! We christened our first hostel stay by making dinner in the communal kitchen and eating in the dining area. They even had a play area with toys for the kids to stay entertained while we made dinner. Amazing!
Day 2: Goats & Alpacas, Castles, & Rain
The next morning the kids wanted to feed alpacas and goats at the hostel. THIS was the highlight of our stay there. Each alpaca and goat had different personalities. We performed evade, escape, and distract maneuvers for the different personality types. I couldn’t stop laughing as we walked over there (and it was at least a minute walk). They just know you’re coming. Some of them start running towards you, leaping in the air. They act as if they’ve never seen food before. Oh, and if you’re curious, this is a hostel like out in the middle of nowhere, hence the alpacas and goats. I know I’m making this sound like the perfect backdrop for some circa early 2000s horror film. It had good reviews though and we agree with the reviews. 🙂
Right after we fed the animals, it started to downpour. So we went to go see the Caernarfon Castle. Wales has a ton of them. At one point, it was estimated there were about 600 castles and more per square mile than anywhere else in the world. Isn’t that crazy? We enjoyed seeing the castle walls snake through parts of the city. You could even see homes literally built into the castle walls. A few exhibits and lots of informational signage helped give us some context of the long, complicated history.
If that wasn’t enough, we walked by a room and we saw a person dressed up as a knight with a sword and all. We did not expect this. It freaked me out! They must get a kick out of how many people they startle. Then they see you freaked out and start walking towards you. Who needs to go to a haunted corn maze when you can experience this?
I can see how intimidating knights would be in real life all dressed in armor. No wonder Arya Stark (Game of Throne fans?) wanted to learn sword fighting. In all seriousness, they were friendly and offered Hedgehog and Lil Fox to take a picture with them. They were channeling knight energy without being asked to and they look so serious-faced in that picture that it cracked us up.
After Caernarfon Castle, we checked out the National Slate Museum for a hot second. It’s supposed to be pretty cool, and it’s free! However, after doing the castle, we decided the kids wouldn’t last long in a museum. It’s too bad it wasn’t a clearer day. The area has a lot of little steam trains that you can take along lakes and lands. What train doesn’t keep the kids entertained? We decided not to do any train rides because training through thick fog is not our thing. Shame because the Llanerbis area was pretty cute and scenic from what we could see.
The heavy rain slightly let up in the afternoon so we walked along the river in the Aberglaslyn Gorge toward the town of Beddgelert. This is in a National Trust area which meant we could utilize our membership for free parking in the car park! We’re still adjusting to having to pay to park everywhere in the UK.
This was a great hike to change up the scenery after doing the Mount Snowdon climb. It reminded us of the Pacific Northwest back home and was so perfect! Hiking in the gorge is the best part because you get to do some fun traversing. Then it mellows out and the path meanders a little further from the river and becomes more of a gravel flat path. Without as much of the Swashbuckling vibe, we turned around and headed back. We had pizza & cider to get to anyways! The pizza was good but forgettable, and the ambiance was great.
Day 3: Our Favorite Hike – Y Garn via Devil’s Kitchen
This one was on the way out of Snowdonia for us, Y Garn via Devil’s Kitchen (about 2300 feet elevation gain). Y Garn is the tenth highest peak in Snowdonia and was the bee’s knees favorite hike of the three we did. It wasn’t crowded, it was rugged, and had multiple different facets of technical hiking. It was one of those hikes that when you’re done, you look at it and think well, I’ll be I can’t believe we hiked that and you feel a little bit superhuman. It felt way tougher than Snowdon even though the elevation gain was a tad lower.
A gentle walk along a lake warmed us up and then we begin a slow ascent up into Y Garn. Things quickly got exciting! We started rock scrambling. The kind where it’s just a poorly marked field of boulders but you’re going up a mountain. The kids loved this – we all did really. Even Hedgehog did most of this part herself. So strong!
You had to pay attention and use your intuitive hiking/orienting skills to navigate this trail section. The visual kept you guessing since you didn’t really know where the trail was taking you. You just kept thinking, how are we going to go over this massive mountain in front of us? However, we stuck with it, and all of a sudden around a corner we came upon this opening. I joked we reached The Wall from Game of Thrones. It kinda had that vibe like you were passing into new foreign territory, and you really did.
We came upon a lake and enjoyed a grassy stroll and then had to climb some more. Lil Fox wanted to put a stone on the different piles of stone along the way and carried one to the top. Motivated, he was. I didn’t carry any stones!
The summit view was gorgeous and even though it was a different view than what you saw at Snowdon, it felt very similar and without the crowds. You could even see Llyn Ogwen, the lake where one of King Arthur’s knights allegedly threw King Arthur’s sword Excalibur into.
While looking at Llyn Ogwen, the whole time I kept thinking, I wonder if any historians or archaeologists have ever done any research into searching the lake to see if Excalibur is really in there. I don’t know I didn’t look it up. Whether you believe the tales or not, some things are meant to be magical to the mind.
It feels cool and a bit surreal to visit physical places that you hear about in globally famous stories and legends. The fact these places have remained undeveloped, raw, and not commercialized leads to a feeling that you’re somewhere very special, which words can’t quite describe. Have you experienced something similar?
The descent was one of those never-ending but still incredibly fun descents. The terrain changed every 30 minutes or so from rock scree to steps, to switchbacks, to walking through clouds. For that reason, I’m very glad we took the advice of some other trail reviews and went clockwise. I can’t imagine climbing UP rock scree. Lil Fox and Hedgehog did well going down through all of this!
We ended up at our car with a greeting of goats (or maybe they were sheep). They can look very similar in some parts here. Finishing this hike perfectly ended our three-day adventures in Snowdonia. While driving home we passed through some of the more popular B&B style towns which reminded us of some combination of small towns in the White Mountains in New Hampshire with the towns in Door County, Wisconsin.
We didn’t spend any time in these Snowdonia villages as our hostel was out in the middle of nowhere and days were spent in nature. The towns did look adorable with their courtyard dining squares and B&B signs everywhere. Had we more time there, we would have loved to spend an afternoon in one or two of the towns or even stayed at one of the B&Bs. In true Swashbuckler fashion (or really because we forgot we had a long weekend coming up), we planned our trip probably four days before we went so not many options were left, ha!
[…] Unattractive. We are so fortunate in this experience to kick off our Europe adventures with to Snowdonia, Venice, Lake Garda, and Germany during some weekends and school breaks. Yet, when we aren’t […]