Today we decided to do Yr Aran via the Watkin Path.

We parked in the car park at the beginning of the Watkin path. After leaving the car park we crossed the road and then started on the Watkin Path.

The path starts off going through some woods, meandering gently up for a while.

After leaving the woods you can see the route of the path for quite a distance, as it bends round to the left then round to the right and up the valley between Yr Aran and Y Lliwedd.

Today was turning out to be quite a hot day again and the mountain stream looked very inviting on the way up.

After going round the right bend we came to a gate across the path (SH622515), to stop any vehicles going any higher, going through the walkers gate we carried on up.

 

I am sure it was at this point, that the famous scene from Carry on up the Khyber was filmed.

Picture the scene, Private James Widdle (Charles Hawtrey), doing extra guard duty at the gate to India in the Khyber Pass, when along comes the Burpa warrior Bungdit Din (Bernard Bresslaw).

Bresslaw wants to get through the gate by offering his scimitar as a gift, but while displaying his scimitar, Hawtrey faints to the floor, allowing Bresslaw to discover the Devils in skirts actually wear underwear under their kilts!

 

Back to our walk....

We carried on up through the gate, the path is good from here, as it is made up of big slabs of rock.

The stream must have been too inviting for some people, as in the various pools, people were having a swim and cooling down! Which made this seem even more appealing, but we carried on up…..

Then in one pool there were two couples skinny dipping in one of the pools! I have heard of cooling off but I think that was taking it a bit far….

As the path levels out, on the other side of the stream, there are some ruins, it was at this point we had a breather and a bite to eat.

It was great to just lie there and take in the views and the stillness of the day.

Andy decided not to go up Yr Aran, so Ray and I started up for the summit. The path is well defined, but as we didn’t want to follow that path to the summit we tried to find a path that took us up to the East Ridge of Yr Aran, this was a lot harder going as it was across tuffs of grass and steep loose rock.

While we were making our way up to the ridge, we were again been buzzed by another helicopter, it just seemed to be circling the whole of the valley and going to the summit of Yr Aran.

It even went down to the valley floor, must have been about 200m from where Andy was waiting for us, then it flew fly right over our heads.

When we finally got onto the ridge, we started to follow the stone wall up to the summit.

It was at this point Ray made it known to me he was not feeling too good, and asked if I would mind if he didn’t carry on to the summit!

This is very unusual for Ray, who is normally the fittest of all of us! I told him to take his rucksack off and take a rest while I carried on to the summit. I must point out that Ray insisted I carry on.

From the point I left Ray, I think it took me about 35 minutes to reach the summit.

From here you get a good view of Snowdon.

As I didn’t want to leave Ray for too long, I set my camera up on its tripod and took a few pictures, then headed back down to Ray.

It must have taken me about 10 minutes to get back to Ray, and then we started back down the ridge and down to Andy.

I think it was about a 45 minute walk down to Andy.

The skinny dippers had gone by the time we went back down…..

This was quite a pleasant days walking, considering it was a very hot day.