A cold and showery day up in the mountains today. A bothy trip was perfect for doing some expedition training with a group of students – rather than aiming for a cold and frosty summit, we set our sights on navigating to a nice warm bothy instead.

While it was cloudy on the tops, we had good clear views of the coast as we hiked in.

As a band of hail and rain washed through the valley, we caught glimpse of the bothy and decided to head straight for it, abandoning the path we were on. Although more direct, it was very wet on the open hillside and before long almost everyone had wet feet as they sank into the saturated ground.

Inside was a welcome relief from the wind and rain.

Having each filled any spare room in our rucksacks with logs before we set off, we set to work warming the place (and us), up with a good fire.

I even treated myself to having a ‘proper’ mug for a brew!

The only disadvantage of getting warm and dry over lunch is that eventually you have to go back outside into the cold to walk back down the mountain! We chose to not cross back over the stream to make it a circular walk and the path did a good job of maintaining it’s reputation as the wettest footpath in Wales. Wet feet all round…

We got back to the minibus just as the next squall passed through…

A very satisfying 8.5km hike with only 300m of height gain and plenty of time to chat along the way…