UKC

John Proctor recounts a day of racing against both light and restaurant closing times, where nothing was quite as 'easy' as claimed.

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What was the name of the restaurant? Sounds like they deserve a bit of free advertising 👍

The disappointment of missing out on coffee and cake was mitigated somewhat by an excellent day of climbing elsewhere.  I'm sad to report that most of the rock we found was disappointingly stable,  although there was a certain amount of vegetation.

Similar to my memories of doing a long route on Lliwedd in the late 90s, including the plans for the evening. We arrived at the curry house in Bangor late at night covered in green slime after dragging ourselves up sopping algae-clad grooves miles off our intended route. The waiters shoved us into a hidden alcove at the back of the restaurant. A brilliant day out!

Sorry I can't remember the name but it's the one on Llanberis high street not far from Pete's Eats.

By the way, we (OutdoorLads climbers) recently started an instagram account to share (mainly outdoors) climbing shots, in case anyone is interested.  We do a lot of climbing nowadays!  The pic of Paul on Paradise was the first post

https://www.instagram.com/odlclimbing/

Also (see pic below) here is the route I think we took up the crag.  310m of ascent "or more" according to the pitch lengths in the Kelvin Neal CC guidebook.  310m sounds about right as The Sword / Route 2 / Longlands takes a more direct route up the cliff and is 285m.  We lost track of how many pitches haha so I haven't marked the belays on the topo.

There are some serious ethical concerns about this ascent, speaking as someone who used to work in kitchens.

There *used to be* a quite decent place called "Y Bistro"; long gone I think

Ylliwedd - absolutely my favourite climbing experience. Went with two friends, dawn start cos we'd been camping by the upper lake and wanted to be gone before we got busted.

My most evocative audio memory is of the clank of the karabiners hanging from my harness as I panted up to the start of the route. I can't remember the name of it, just that it was long, twisty and turny like a twisty turny thing, good enough belays and had a great ledge to stop for a hot tea and a flapjack. We were hauling our rucsacs: we were wearing tennis shoes and didn't fancy losing balance while fighting the rock and the sacs.

Topped out early afternoon, walked to Llanberis via Snowdon summit, and celebrated by polishing off an infamous 'Big Jim' each.

A magnificent outing. 😃