Stunning Snowdonia with friends

I love a good hike and Mount Snowdon has been on the list for a while, but pre-pandemic, it never quite made it to the top. When a friend suggested a group trip to Snowdonia, I jumped on the idea. North Wales is often mentioned as being stunning, but I hadn’t expected it to be as beautiful as it was.

We stayed in an ex-miners cottage in Llanberis, within Snowdonia National Park. Tegfan Victorian Terrace Cottage was just big enough for the six of us (three couples), and had a good-sized kitchen - although we didn’t end up cooking anything more than breakfast. The cottage is within the village and easy walking distance to cafes and restaurants, and the lake.

We spent most of our first day driving to North Wales due to several rookie errors (too many stops and driving into Solihull for lunch), so we ended up with three full days to explore Snowdonia. On our first evening, we had dinner at the Peak Restaurant, which was my favourite of all the places we ate in Wales. On our first full day, we went for a drive to a beautiful walking spot near Betwys-Y-Coed. I’m not sure of the trail name, but it was a great area to wander through the hills and along lakes. The scenery was spectacular and rugged, and a pleasant change from the flatter areas surrounding London. We had lunch in Betwys-Y-Coed, a scenic town surrounded by hills with plenty of good food options. We didn’t spend a lot of time in the town, but it felt like the sort of place I could easily come back to.

We had pre-booked white water rafting for the afternoon of the first day at the National White Water Centre. It was my first time, other than some simple white water kayaking near Melbourne and I loved it! The white water wasn’t too severe, so you can have fun without being completely terrified. The guide was also fun and certainly didn’t hide the fact that he was trying to splash us.

The next day we visited the very unusual Port Meirion tourist village. At first, we thought this might be some type of Italian settlement but don’t be fooled - it’s actually the unusual creation of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, an architect that just loved this type of architecture. It reminded me a lot of Sintra in Portugal, much more so than Italy. Beyond the buildings, there are also gardens to walk through and a path down to the sea. If you do visit, I would recommend getting lunch at Portmeirion. We tried to find somewhere else for lunch nearby, but struggled to find any good options.

In the afternoon, we decided to try a multi-person paddle board on Llanberis Lake. The board could take up to eight people (there were six of us), and I was convinced we would fall in - but thankfully, we didn’t. Paddle boarding doesn’t look easy on a single board, and trying to coordinate six people to paddle simultaneously was definitely a challenge, but great fun all the same.

Our final day was spent doing the one thing we came for - hiking up Snowdon. We opted for the Llanberris path, partly because we were staying in Llanberis so didn’t need to worry about parking. This is known to be the easiest path, but also the longest. It doesn’t have any technical sections and the path is quite wide, while other paths are much more steep and narrow. If I visited again, I would like to try another path, but the Llanberis path is a good choice if you’re going with a group with varying abilities. The hike lived up to expectations and we were lucky enough to get a beautiful clear view at the top. The fog did come in on our way down, so I would recommend doing the hike in the morning to make sure you don’t miss the clear view.