13th June 2008:Our 44th Wedding Anniversary

It's our 44th Wedding Anniversary today, and we celebrated in our usual fashion: we didn't! or rather we confined ourselves to having dinner out and an extra ice cream (hang the expense!)
Still, that's our way and it makes us happy!
Armed with our new OS landranger map we decided to head North West via the maze of tiny roads across the peninsula to a village called Clynnog Fawr (pronounce that if you can!)
The route took us past some beautiful scenery, as it rose onto the shoulders of a mountain Bwlch Mawr, with superb views in the General direction of Anglesey far to the north, and across towards the mountains of Snowdonia past the ruins of a farm, gradually being absorbed back into the landscape by the forces of nature.
This is a much prettier area than we remembered, with a very attractive and ever changing landscape.
The roads here are very narrow, really only a car width ride, and there aren't many places where you can pass!
As we rose over the summit we had a fantastic view of the coast, and below us our first objective Clynnog Fawr, above it the coast snakes towards the Menai Strait and Caernarvon.
Our third view is the long and winding descent into the village, you can see Anglesey as the line of land at the top of the picture.

Reaching the coast road we turned left to visit Trefor and here we took what appeared to be the right road on the map to take us to a National Trust coastal area, but in fact wound up the mountainside to end in a vertical cliff and the local quarry, where the huge workings had eaten away half the mountain-top!

We had to make our way down the steep and rutted road and couldn't resist the tremendous view
We followed the coast north again and stopped for a fish and chip lunch in a cafe at Dinas Dinle, where we heard from the waitress that garages in Caernarvon had run out of diesel fuel, which wasn't good news as we needed some quite urgently.
A rapid change of plan had us scuttling back to the lower coast and Llanystumdwy, in search of fuel, which we found, but what a price! £134.9 per litre!

After this we dropped into Criccieth for a much needed ice cream and a naughty lemon and Sultana muffin which we are on the sea front below the castle.


By now we were ready for a rest before tea, and we'd had a really nice day: it had been cool, yet sunny, and occasionally cloudy too, but it hadn't rained, so we were well pleased.