Looks like summer is nearly here! They say one swallow doesn't make a summer but I saw four whilst out walking the dog yesterday morning.
The photo below shows a vixen that stoped briefly to see what I was up to earlier in the week.
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As I keep a few poultry I must admit I'm not a fan of the fox however cute they look. One of my neighbours lost nearly all his hens last year before he worked out how the Fox was getting into the chicken run.
With the 21st of June being the official start of summer I thought I'd have a trip to Snowdonia to celebrate. I decided to visit a relatively small mountain (by Snowdonia standards) called Cnicht which is some 689m in height. Cnicht is situated in the Moelwynion hills a couple of miles east of the village of Croesor. There's a small free car park in Croesor which is pretty unusual in Snowdonia. Croesor is situated roughly between Porthmadog and Beddgelert and a couple of miles off the A4085.
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Cnicht is ofter referred to as the Welsh Matterhorn for obvious reasons and the last section is quite a steep scramble as the picture below shows.
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Apparently Cnicht is the old english word for a knight's helmet which probably makes it unique in that it's the only mountain in Snowdonia that doesn't have a Welsh name. Also there's no Ordinance Survey Trig point on the summit. One last point if you're thinking of travelling there, regardless of what your SatNav says, don't approach Croesor via the very narrow lane from Maentwrog. It's barely wide enough for a car in places, there are very few passing places and 4 gates to open and close. Fortunately it's also pretty deserted along this lane and I didn't meet any oncoming traffic.
Autumn's here, most photographers favourite time of the year. I especially like the beech tree woods near home and the glorious colours you see in autumn.
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I managed to take this photo at just the right time, a carpet of leaves on the ground but with some leaves still on the trees.
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I took some surprising pictures one Autumn some years back, a very early snow fall in October. I had been to Bettws y Coed to see the salmon run after a heavy rain storm the previous night and about one oclock the skies darkened and it started to snow. We travelled back across the Denbigh moors past Llyn Brenig and took lots of pictures on the way.
We sent in the picture by Llyn Brenig to Derek Brockway the weatherman on BBC Wales and he featured it as the backdrop to his weather forecast that night.
You can see how bleak it is up on the moors where the Sportsmans is located, the bar staff had just been out and built a very rude snowman with appendages, I thought it was best not to show them up any closer.
Sadly the Sportsmans closed down a year or so later, no doubt due to it's isolation up there on the wild windswept moors with just the odd grouse or walker for company.
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I read the Sportmans Arms was up for sale in March for a mere £600,000 although this was later reduced by £50,000 for a quick sale. I'm not sure this happened as I think it's still closed. So if you fancy running a pub in one of the bleakest parts of Wales there may be still time to put in an offer.
I had my first sighting this morning of our winter visitors from Scandinavia a flock of fieldfares, the fieldfare is a member of the thrush family and I would love to know if it's the same flock of birds that return to this area each year.
I see snow is forecast for later in the week, let's hope we don't get as much as Buffalo in New York State had a couple of weeks ago, 70+ inches of snow is not something we could cope with.
On the subject of avian winter visiters, I saw my first Fieldfares this winter in Denbigh town, normally I see them stripping the berries off the holly tree at the end of our back garden but this year I was totally amazed at where I saw them.
We took our two new rescue Bichons for their first haircut a week ago today to Denbigh, this was on a fairly new housing estate with quite small modern gardens.
I sat in my car and watched fascinated as a small flock of Fieldfares, about six or seven, that were rapidly demolishing the bright scarlet berries on a Pyracantha bush in a small front garden opposite to where I was parked. They were accompanied by a few starlings that were quite possibly also Scandinavian winter visiters to our shores.
I was waiting for Cynthia to come out of the dog groomers house and I was really surprised, given the close proximity to the pavement and road, at how indifferent to passing traffic and people the birds were!.........They must have been starving hungry.
The first snow arrived in Trefnant this morning and our two new dogs duly left their yellow calling cards in it, but not for long; lunchtime it was mostly gone.
I journeyed down to Tenterden in Kent on Wednesday to visit relatives and that night there was a really heavy frost with a temperature of minus seven degrees C.
Thursday morning everything was white with frost including my car, so it took a good twenty minutes of clean off and warm-up, that's a first for this year.
Considering how much farther south Tenterden is to here, apparently it was a lot colder down there than up here in Trefnant on Wednesday night!
I can't remember such a prolonged spell of cold weather before Christmas. With snow on the hills I couldn't resist a trip up Moel Famau one sunny morning. I did make it harder for myself in the icy conditions by forgetting to bring a set of crampons to clip onto my hiking boots.
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Just when I thought we were going to have an early spring this year, winter's back with a vengeance. After a few weeks of warm dry weather i ended up with around 6 inches of snow on the pond covers.
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Since then, in the space of 5 days, the temperature has risen from 0C to 12C and the snow has disappeared, hopefully for good this winter. Mind you this isn't the worst snow I've had in March, in 2013 I measured 14 inches of snow on the pond covers.