Pistyll Rhaeadr

One of my favourite places and the scene of one of my earliest solo excursions. Limited by school runs and horrified by the amount I have spent on petrol recently, I decided to keep it quite local.
Pistyll Rhaeadr is a beautiful waterfall in the Berwyn Mountains, just inside Wales and west of Oswestry and Shrewsbury. At 240ft or 80m it is the UK's tallest single drop waterfall. Or at least that is what it said on the website!

I decided that today was going to be about the photography rather than the hiking, so I packed lenses, filters and tripod. Its a great place to play around with shutter speeds and I have experimented quite a bit.

These gorgeous creatures guard the bridge that crosses the river that the waterfall flows into. The bridge is the perfect place to stand and take photos. Not just because it has a perfect view of the falls, but because it's flat and the tripod doesn't wobble!

To get to all the little tributaries that flow into the big waterfall you have to climb to the top! I did this once before but went up completely the wrong way and ended up scrambling through ferns, bracken and heather which, believe me, wasn't pleasant. So, especially as the beautiful weather had tempted me to venture out in cut-offs, I decided to find the easier path. There are 2. One is very steep with large uneven steps, the other a gradual sweeping incline. Guess which one I found first!

The top of Pistyll Rhaeadr is incredible. The views are amazing and you can see for miles. Its a heck of a climb, but so worth it. There are many little cascades and you can follow the river for quite a long while. Here are a couple of my favourite pics from the top.

I had the camera on the tripod and manually focussed using the live view which helps a lot, although I do have to dig out my reading glasses to be able to see clearly otherwise I can't tell if any blur is due to the focussing or just middle age!

Again I was practically the only person up there and sat for a while on a rock just dangling my feet in the rushing water, felt like a kid again.

Some parts of the top level are very swampy and its like a military manoeuvre getting across, but by channelling my inner mountain goat, I managed it. Was worth it if only to come across these weird and wonderful tree creatures.

Found the gentle undulating path down (typical!) and headed back to the car and home, only to stop with a screech of brakes when I saw these growing out of a tree:

Got to be Alien!

btw. Family have staged an intervention re the tattoo and I have promised to consider it for at least a month before I do anything drastic. So watch this space!

Lessons Learned: Sometimes its good to regress to your childhood. Paddle in the sea, dangle your feet in waterfalls and clamber over large rocks in an inelegant and wholly inappropriate manner! Life is for living!

Diet Diary First week at Slimming World and 4lb off. Very pleased and feeling determined, but then I may have said that before!