December so far.

Normally December means slowing down but I seem to be busy so far. Thus far life has included some work instructing a family gorge scrambling and abseiling, a couple of days taking friends kayaking, lots of time out with Santa for Round Table and a night out with the Sound System.

Family group in the Afon Ddu Gorge. Abseiling in Vivian Quarry.
Quick swim for Ben and Kitty on the Llugwy.

Contemplating the jump.
Caernarfon Round Table on the road with Santa.

Kev following me down a rapid at Llangollen.

Flyer for the latest night.

The night in full swing.

Afon Ddu and Pont Cyfyng.

I managed to escape the office for my second gorge session of this week which makes for a nice change. Today I only had 4 clients all of whom were very able which means we made it up the Afon Ddu really quickly which left us time to stop of for some bigger jumps on the way home. Again a nice change as we do not normally get to visit the big jumps with clients due to time constraints.

In the gorge for a change.

Amongst a quiet week otherwise only broken by a trip to Liverpool the day came to life today with a trip to the Afon Ddu with a group of family friends which included one of my old school teachers from when I was eight. I don’t remember much of her, more worrying is she seems to remember me, recounting that I use to sit at the front! Anyway the group kept me on my toes with varying needs as you would expect from a group that ranged from 7 or 8 to late sixties.

Group control of three excitable young ones.Thankfully small enough to move around by harness tails.
Scrambling towards the last climb.

New website gone live.

We have been working on the new activities website http://www.adventuresinwales.co.uk/ for a while now but yesterday it went live. Thanks very much to Pete at http://chargingarc.com/ for the design of the site and Chris at http://www.freerangedevelopers.co.uk/ for making it work.

2011 Adventure Leaflets

The 2011 activity leaflets arrived in the office yesterday and are already making there way out around North Wales.

Gentle to Mental, the Afon Cynfal.

For staff training on Wednesday we travelled over to the Afon Cynfal for a bit of play and exploration. This trip we made it further down the river than any of us had seen previously and where all amazed by how spectacular this gorge is. I will defiantly have to take others back so that I can explore more. This is a real experience of gentle twisting and turning flowing river dropping over massive waterfalls, I don’t think I would want to swim it as we did with any more water though.

Looking back at waterfalls which where not the largest we encountered during the day.

How cold was the water, this cold!
Wading on through.

The amazing rock pillar in the middle of the river. You could probably just perch a small car on top to give it some scale.

Two years on.

Two years ago some friends and I went to explore the Cynfal Gorge, we only made it as far as Rhaeadr y Cwm. We felt the prudent choice was to come back another time when the water levels were not rising and we had not underestimated the length of rope needed. The Sunday just gone about two years since we last visited some of the original party returned for another go. On this occasion Will, Mark and I made the journey from above Rhaeadr y Cwm to Rhaeadr Cynfal.

This is a spectacular gorge as you can hopefully see in the photos below and a great committing adventure. If you go to do it take a good amount of rope as we previously found a single 50m to potentially be a little short. This time we took 120m which was defiantly more than needed but was what was in stores on the day. Also don’t forget some tat and old crabs to leave behind on the abseils, some of the kit left from others looks very faded with river debris wrapped around it.

Will abseiling in.

Mark feeling drained after retrieving the abseil rope on Rhaeadr y Cwm.
Will leaping from the bottom Rhaeadr y Cwm.
Mark and Will repacking the ample rope after abseiling the fall above.
Mark (closest) and Will wading on downstream.

Will on a slide between Bont-Newydd and the Viaduct.