Snowdonia Links

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.

Public Transport

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.

Lightweight Gear 3 - Work in progress.

Food ideas.

I personally think this is one of the most important aspects of the whole trip. If you've had a foul day, slipping in mud, soaked to the skin and frozen along the way, then a decent meal will help lift your spirits. A little tot of whiskey might help too (but remember it lowers body temperature, so dont drink alcohol if you feel cold, or a possible hypothermia victim), as will a decent brew.

The easy option here is to throw cash at the problem. That means pre-packaged foods such as Wayfarers and dehydrated options. I haven't got the extensive experience of these to really recommend any though. All you can say is that the dehydrated ones are obviously lighter than the ready to eat varieties. The First Choice Expedition website appears to have an extensive choice of food, but i've not tried them. I have a number of dried meals ready to test, but i probably wont get the chance until spring. That said, the Wayfarers chocolate pudding is coming with me on my next day trip (they get rave reviews).

The main drawback with the above options is price. A main meal can cost between £3 and £5. If you need 3 a day then it starts looking expensive for long trips, or if you overnight often. The option that solves this is to get a dehydrator to make your own dried meals. They aren't cheap, Backpackinglight.co.uk have one for sale for £120, which means you need to be camping often to get your money back. Though once bought, you just need to make an extra portion of your meal and then bag it ready for your trip. The thought of a proper Beef Madras on the hill makes this a tempting, albeit realistically, too expensive option (at the present time).

Cheaper than this, and ideal for trips of a couple of nights, is to just bag and freeze your portions of food. It should last fresh from morning one to evening 2. Remember, you only need to bag your 'sauce' and then you can boil up your 'stodge' seperately. By this i mean dried potato, rice, pasta, noodles or cous cous. It is a method i've used succesfully overnight, and is a cheap compromise. These meals are still lighter than ready to eat boil in the bag meals, as you carry the bulk of the meal in a dehydrated form.

Finally, there's the option of buying dried supermarket foods to make a meal. This is time consuming, but the cheapest method. There is an American website, Freezer Bag Cooking, that is dedicated to this. Unfortunately, while it is a superb resource, there is the problem of having to travel 2000km to obtain many of the ingredients, and the measurements used leave me cold (cups anyone?). It is ideal for someone to take the time to adapt the recipies to UK use, and perhaps source some local alternatives to what they use on the site.

Some ideal ingredients off the shelf are:

Boil in the Bag rice. Whack it in boiling water and leave it for 15mins while you cook the sauce. Worth its weight in gold. Beanfeast. Various flavours, bound to be one that pleases. Smash. Various flavours available, Ideal with minced beef beanfeast. Pasta n' sauce is a bit bland, but convenient to carry. Super noodles are an ideal snack if you can stomach them. Mattesons do a smoked sausage that needs no refridgeration, and is arguably palatable, and i still think the humble tin of tuna is worth its weight. Vesta make a couple of different meals, the risotto isn't the most appetising. Dolmio have started to make a meat bolognaise sauce that is ready to eat. It isn't dried, but your pasta will be. Uncle Bens make a rice pouch, but i'd rather take dried rice unless it was a luxury lunch on a day trip, which is why they're in here. Oats So Simple can be made with dried milk for a warming breakfast. I find Tesco do a cappuchino in a tube that's less faff than dried milk (which i find tastes strange in coffee) and its sweetness is welcome on the hill.

That goes without mentioning dried milk, dried soups and many other options. I'm hoping to extend these pages to include a more exhaustive list of recipies and suggestions using shop bought items. Some can live on seeds and berries during the day, gorp or trail mix as it's called. Not to my taste though, my stomach would be complaining rather loudly over that one. Bread is another item, you can take tortillas or pittas that are less fragile, and again up to the individual.

Ok, this is just my thoughts on food. I mainly do short trips, a couple of days long. I can go without breads and stuff, so I like to keep my food simple but tasty. The biggest problem is daytime foods, as i'm not much of a breakfast person. The only option i'm going to try is primula with oatcakes, perhaps with warm soup, but I'm yet to be convinced. Watch this space.

Digital Mapping

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.