Snowdon via the Rhyd Ddu path (10/7/2014)

In July we visited Snowdonia and spent six nights camping in the most wonderful campsite: Snowdon Base Camp (The Cwellyn Arms) in Rhyd Ddu. No matter where you pitch your tent you will have majestic views of Snowdon looking down at you and it was a pleasure waking up to the highest mountain in Wales (and England) every morning.

The view of Snowdon from our tent.

The nearest trails up to Snowdon from the campsite are Rhyd Ddu and Snowdon Ranger path - so on July 10th 2014 we decided to climb up Snowdon for the first time via the Rhyd Ddu track. You can walk to the start of the track from the campsite but it's about a mile so we took the car and parked up in the Rhyd Ddu train station where the path begins, it costs £5 for all day parking and there are toilets there.

Check out our journey to the highest point in Wales via the following photos...

In good spirits as we start the walk from the Rhyd Ddu car park, which is just off the A4085.

The first part of the walk is on a fairly even path with a gentle incline.

It's not long before we reach the old Ffridd Slate Quarry which was working up until the 1960s.

The Rhyd Ddu track is one of the quietest ones and we didn't see anyone for the first mile apart from these beautiful cows. 

We passed through several gates and started getting fantastic views of Llyn Cwellyn and Mynydd Mawr to the left.

It's pretty hard to get lost when there are signs like this :)

The path continues to be easy...

...until we get to this - where things start getting a bit uneven.

Its worth it though...we could even see our tent from up there!

One of the birds we frequently saw were meadow pipits.

What happened to the nice path? Things start getting rockier and steeper now.

But once again rewarded with amazing views on the Llechog ridge!

A pretty wheatear graces us with it's presence.

This was one of the rough bits...A steep zig zag path.

A look back....pretty high now at 938 meters above sea level!

The rocky ridge of Bwlch Main

It's a long way down if I slip...

...and the hill fog was getting lower!

Time to do some scrambling...

"C'mon Dan...not far now!"

The foggy path to the summit...

The cafe hidden behind the fog!

We did it! At the highest point in Wales - The Snowdon Summit!

Nice to air the feet after the hike up and enjoy the view...

...even if it only lasted a few minutes.

Dan makes a friend...although I think he really has his eye on Dan's sandwich!

The Snowdon Mountain Railway appears from the fog.

It got so cold on the summit Dan's beard had moisture droplets in it!

Making sure we choose the right path down...with thick hill fog only a few feet away.

Hooray, we can see again!

Dramatic clouds and sun rays over Rhyd Ddu and Llyn Cwellyn...

,,,and our tent is still there!

Three cows chilling out with Llyn Cwelleyn in the background.

A cute ram looks down on us as we made our way back to the car.

A look back at Snowdon and the hill fog was still hanging around.

We were very tired when we got back to the camp...but put our feet up and were rewarded with this beautiful view of the sun setting over Llyn Cwellyn.

Even though we didn't have a great view up there, the hike up was amazing and we knew we would do it again...little did we know it would be exactly two months later...Snowdon in September blog coming soon :)

• Cwellyn Arms campsite is awesome - Visit their website here.
• All you need to know about Rhyd Ddu track can be found on the Snowdonia National Park website - visit it here.