Moel Tryfan

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We ventured forth on a whim this afternoon to try and find some blue lakes amongst the quarries above Rhosgadfan, that we read about in one of our guidebooks. We arrived at the approximate location of the track off the road at Fron, a small hamlet, high up in the hills, and a place I'm only too familiar with, having worked up there on many occasions, mostly in the teeth of winter gales, rain and snow: if you had told me a few short years ago that I would be returning there voluntarily for pleasure, I would have laughed in your face.

We found the first pool - pictured: grey, rather than blue due to the threatening skies - despite the sketchy directions in the book and the fact that we had left our OS map at home, but decided that discovering the three upper lakes so ill-equipped might be a tad tricky, so we left it at that, and decided to return suitably equipped in the not-too-distant, and complete the trip.

On getting back home, we struggled to find the upper three pools on the paper OS map of the area: the photographs in our guidebook implied that they should be almost as large as the lower pool, and yet those surveyed looked like puddles in comparison to it. Then, I logged into my newly-acquired OS online/mobile account, and found that according to a much more recent survey, the upper pools are, indeed, much larger than formerly shown. In less than twenty years, it would seem that the water table, even at 400 m+ altitude, has risen considerably. And they say that climate change isn't a thing...


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