My day started at 3.50 in the morning, with a quick cup of tea. My friend picked me up at 4.35 and we caught the 5.00 train to St. Pancras. A quick walk over to Euston, where we had half an hour to grab another cup of tea and a bacon roll and meet the rest of our group. Another train to Chester, then on to the slow train to Llandudno Junction. A quick change onto the very slow train to Betws-y-coed. We then waited for the 11.20 Snowdon Sherpa bus services from Betws-y-coed to Pen-y-pass but unknown to us, the service had been very much reduced! This didn’t leave us much time; we only had 5 hours before getting our train home, so sadly we had to abandon our plans for Crib Goch and decided to head for Tryfan instead.

We were a bit unprepared for this walk, but we started speaking to one of the passengers on the bus about where we could alight; he told us, and we asked the bus driver to stop there if he could. All we had to do was ding the bell, and the bus driver stopped right were we needed to be. We had a quick look at the map and, given the restrictions on our time, decided on the route that we would take. We went via Tryfan Bach first, then on to Heather Terrace, which was quite a hard scramble up to.

At 3010 ft (918m) above sea level, Tryfan is the 15th highest mountain in Wales and is part of the Glyderau group in Snowdonia. After the walk along Heather Terrace, it was a steep ascent to the summit, where we came across the rocks known as Adam and Eve. We stopped here to have lunch, with a few of the group jumping from Adam to Eve – crazy people! I just sat and ate my cheese roll and watched them! The weather was beautiful; the sun was out and you could see for miles around.

On the descent, we met a couple who were celebrating the lady’s birthday, so we stopped and sang Happy Birthday to her! Clearly the sun was beginning to get to our heads…! The way back was a lot easier; we went back to Llyn Ogwen to try and get a bus back to Betws-y-coed, but the last bus had left at 14.44, and we reached the stop at 16.00. But we were in luck. A very kind lady offered to drive us back to Betws-y-coed, which took her two trips. We gave her petrol money for the trouble she had very kindly gone to, and bought her a drink in the pub!

The train service at Betws-y-coed is very infrequent, about one train every three hours. After waiting in the pub, we got the 18.06 to Llandudno Junction, where we had 10 minutes to spare to catch the train to Chester. This train was running late, which meant we could miss our connection to Crewe. But after speaking to the conductor of the train, she phoned through and managed to hold the Crewe train for us, so that we could get our connection and get home that day! If we had missed that we would have had to spend the night in London. We did catch that train, and I got home about midnight.