November sunshine.

What a wonderful day to be out on the hills, having set off from the gloom and mist at sea level I spent a great couple of hours running with my human.  We set off from the lower car-park at Bwlch Penbarras where the autumn colours were spectacular, the sky was blue and the sun warm.  The photos don't really give a true impression of how colourful  the forest was today.

The views soon opened out and we could see our first hill for the day, Moel Famau and good views to the east towards Maeshafn.

Today we took a different route and using forest tracks and old roads crossed the ford in Cwm-llydan (time for a drink) before heading round the base of Ffrith Mountain, passing Brithdir Mawr on some very,very old tracks.

Autumn sun and old hedgerows.

A gentle ascent on the heading west on Ffrith Mountain.

As the track gained higher ground there was a great view of Moel Famau, looking a bit closer now, but there was still a fair bit of climbing to do.  We passed some cyclists on this part of the climb, my human said the steep bits are easier to run than to cycle up.

A bit steeper here on the approach to the summit, I'm just running back to my human to try and get him to run faster.

The sun was so bright that the route down from Moel Famau looks very dark in contrast, that is low cloud in the distance 

Here's part of the route down from Moel Famau with our next hill, Moel Fenlli not too far away.

Looking back on our route from hear the top of Moel Fenlli.

Coed Ceunant - a Woodland Trust woodland.

From Moel Fenlli it was a brisk scamper back to the car park and a sleep on the way home.




Wags and woofs,

Dexter.

...zzzzzzzzzzz

Hills and water, a busy weekend.

I had a great weekend with lots of active stuff for me  to do. On Saturday I went for a run on my favourite hills Moel Fammau and Moel Fenlli.






On Sunday I was out on Llyn Tegid, there was a gentle breeze and the sailing was easy.  I kept a good look-out for other boats.

Wags & woofs,

Dexter.

Ludlow castle

Well have I had an exciting weekend. My human dad and his friends went to Ludlow to complete a 69 miles cycle ride on behalf of Macmillan Cancer Support. It is a really good cause.

Me and mum went to Ludlow by bus which stopped near to the castle. As they allow dogs, we went on a tour of the castle. We went up lots of high towers and windy stairs. I almost got dizzy.

Mummy is scared of heights, so I made sure I stayed really close to her! I took a selfie right at the top of one of the towers, when I looked down the humans looked like little ants scurrying around. It was really weird. I then went to the Castle cafe ( they also allow dogs) and shared a blueberry scone. 

It stayed misty all day so parts of the castle looked really spooky...

We then went back to see Dad finish his race, me and mummy were very proud when he and his friends all finished.

Woofs and wags,
Dexter.

Nuttalls and trains.

A day in the mountains climbing three summits - ( Nuttalls are mountains over 610 metres, there are 190 in Wales so only 182 to go!).  A great day on the ridge of Arenig Fawr (854 m) taking in the additional minor summits of Arenig Fawr south top  and Arenig Fawr south ridge top (peak-bagging!).  No rain and clear views in all directions made the day even better.

Arenig Fawr - from the southeast.

Arenig Fawr

Yr Wyddfa and Snowdon Horseshoe

South Ridge top -712 metres

South ridge

 

Rhinogydd

An energetic day on the mountain was followed by some relaxing time in a train the following day:

  Wags & woofs, Dexter.

A busy few days.

I've had a really great few days involving mountains, running and a brand new activity  - cycling.

My human has always promised to take to the top of the highest mountain in England and Wales so on Thursday we headed into Wales to climb Yr Wyddfa (Snowdon) which is 1085 metres high.  The weather forecast wasn't too good with rain forecast but soon after 09:45 we started the walk from Pen-y-Pass using the Pyg Track, this is an easy route even for humans as the walk starts from over 350 metres.  Before we headed into the cloud there was a chance for one photo looking towards Llanberis but by the time we got to 500 metres we were in the cloud with no views.

That really set the theme for most of the day and as we got towards the top of the zig-zags at Bwlch Glas there was strong wind and rain.  The first peak was Crib-y-Ddysgl which at 1065 metres is the second highest of the Welsh peaks, the view was non-existent and you can see from the photograph how wet it was.  So we didn't linger here!

My first Welsh 1000m peak.

From here it's an easy walk to Yr Wyddfa and the whole ascent only took just under two hours.  This summit was no place to linger, by this stage there no sign of the cloud lifting so just a quick pause for a photo with my humans and then a walk down the mountain by 

Yr Wyddfa - my second Welsh 1000m peak.
Very wet!

the Llanberis Path.  Once we got below the clouds the weather was fine and sunny and it was a very easy walk for me.  In total the walk was about 14.5 km with 787 metres of climbing so not very tough on the paws.

Friday was a rest-day for me (although I think that might have been for benefit of my human) followed by an 8k run on the Sandstone Trail on Saturday.  This was mainly in the woods and very soft on the paws with a steep uphill bits mixed in with fast downhill scampers.



Now here's the new activity.  As I'm now running easily and quite fast (I could go faster but I don't want to damage my human!) I was told I could go cycling, this was very confusing, how would I reach the pedals?   So on Sunday off I went to Delamere Forest to find out what this was all about.  It turned out that all I had to do was run alongside the bike not ride it.  Wow, this was fun, I ran with my human; sometimes ahead of the bike and sometimes behind.  We went up hills and down hills, through gloopy mud and even through a stream.  Because I'm used to running and listening for the safety commands I didn't get tangled up in the bike, this was the first cycling adventure so we didn't go very fast but I'm already looking forward to the next run out with the bike.




 Wags and woofs, Dexter.

Moel Emoel

Back in September 2014 I went for a walk to the top of Moel Emoel so it was great to get back onto the hill in lovely sunny weather on 8th August.  It's an easy walk and a great chance to run around on the parts of the hill with no sheep (my human keeps me on a lead if there are any sheep or cattle around).  The route opens up with great views in all directions.  There's not much else to say, it was lovely for a young terrier to be on the hills again.

 ...watch out for my next adventure...

wags and woofs, Dexter