Weather Links

MWIS. Weather forecast for mountain regions. Only active Friday to Sunday. Highly Recommended.

Met Office. Now it's improved to a 5 day forecast! Great.

Snowdonia Snowline - States the altitude of lying snow in the Carneddau.

Metcheck weather

Advertise your Snowdonia Business here! Email for info.

Accuweather

Snowdon Weather Station Project. Weather data, but is down at the moment. The Webcams show Elidir Fawr and Moel Eilio.

Snowdon Sherpa Bus Timetables

Welsh Highland Railway.

Travelline Wales.

theTrainline - Timetables and online booking

The Welsh 3000s - website just about the 14 peaks.

The BMC - British Mountaineering Council.

The Mountain Bothy Association - yes, there are bothies in Eryri...

TAC - The Angry Corrie Scottish hillwalking fanzine, read it free.

Eryri - Snowdonia National Park.

Oggy Cam . Ogwen Mountain Rescue and a Ogwen Valley webcam.

BBC North West Wales.

Graham's Wales Photos. Loads of excellent pics on Eryri in here.

North Wales Photographs Beautiful photos of North Wales by Simon Kitchin.

Cambrian Mountains National Park A 'Should-Be' fourth welsh national park.

Snowdonia Society Charity which looks after the interests onf the National Park.

eryriway.org.uk Sister site to walkeryri, emphasising long distance trails.

What does it takes to get a Mountain Leader (ML) qualification?

by Paul Cummings (Originally posted on uk.rec.walking, and published here with kind permission. His website is here)

PART ONE - Introduction (page 1 - page 2 - page 3 - page 4 - page 5 - page 6)


These are a few notes from my ML training and assessment.  It is long and (hopefully) interesting or at least humorous (occasionally).  I hope they will be of interest and just possibly inspirational to someone who may be thinking of taking an ML or maybe has not even thought of taking it.  I started this process around October 2004 (with my registration in the scheme) and completed it in November 2005 (with my assessment pass).  I was told that this is generally regarded as a very short elapsed time for anyone who does not work virtually full time in the outdoors.  I am not a full timer by any stretch of the imagination.  I tend to have around one week and three weekends a year in the wilds with around another dozen or so day walks in lowland areas per year.  Not much really.  My navigation skills are largely self taught from a young age, but always good enough for my aims.  I had a spell in the TA which sharpened up my navigation, but that was nearly 15 years ago.


The first thing you have to do is register with one of the ML training boards.  I live in South East England, so I registered with the MLTE (Mountain Leader Training - England), who, confusingly are based in Capel Curig in North Wales.  This costs something like £30 and includes a year's membership of the British Mountaineering Council (BMC).  As far as I can see, you get nothing much for this, except that the membership ticket gets you 10% off in most outdoor shops (well, Field and Trek, Cotswold, Snow and Rock, Blacks and Millets to my knowledge).  The training board send you a cheap and nasty looking log book to record all of your walks in.  A Top Tip here, which nobody told me, is that you do not need to keep to the small sections divided up in the log pages.  Use two, three or more, but take the time to write up the log so that it clearly shows that your walks are Quality Mountain Days (QMDs).  Better yet, keep your log of walks in the ML format, but in either a Word file, or, my preferred option, an Excel spreadsheet.  A QMD is a unit of measure for minimum experience for the award.  It is what it says on the tin - a Quality Mountain Day.  Usually this means at least five hours on the hill (in a recognised upland area), where you were involved in planning the day (and route), navigating off path, taking care of safety etc.  It can be either in a group or solo.  In fact, solo days are encouraged as they are when you tend to push your own learning barriers more.

page 2 Training

General Links

Snowdonia attractions Several great reviews about some of Snowdonia's better known attractions. 

English-welsh dictionary Links and resources to help you translate that welsh word into English.

Walking shoes - Another site that I found that sells walking shoes online.

Merrell Walking Shoes from fitnessfootwear.com, decent little site i found for Merrell walking shoes.

Whalley Warm and Dry - paramo stockists, great service and range.

V-G Walking and Backpacking. Inspirational website detailing one to three (and more) day walks around the UK.

Trekking Britain. Route descriptions & experience as opposed to guide book.

OutdoorsMagic - Forum based website, lots of information on here.

Phil George - Mountain Leader Training in Llanberis.

Peak and Fell Walking - A photographic guide to walking in Britain's National Parks.

Wild Tramp.co.uk - New site on walking in the UK. Looks promising.

Tracklogs IMHO the best mapping for PC.

MemoryMap Still good, but route handling clumsier.

Viewranger mapping for smartphones.

Fugawi and Anquet are also popular.

Quo The new kid on the block.

Multimap - Free online mapping.

Get a Map - Free online mapping from the OS

Access Land in Wales - online mapping from CCW.