A week of mixed weather has meant some extra cunning when it came to deciding where and when to be hill walking this week.

On Thursday I was doing an introduction to Duke of Edinburgh’s Award navigation, where we managed to stay dry over near the Little Orme by Llandudno.

And I’ve also had a couple of climbing sessions at the wall to try and keep my arms strong enough for our upcoming climbing trip away. This crack climb gave us a bit of fun to work on technique as well.

Over the weekend I been Course Director for a Mountain Training course call ‘Hill Skills’. It’s a really good introductory course to all things hill walking, including where, how and with what kit. We started with a short classroom session looking at different types of kit and deciding what would be most appropriate for the day – from flip flops to insulated winter grade boots, before moving onto types of maps and guides.

Out ‘on the hill’, even after selecting the ‘driest’ option, we were only lucky enough to get about 10 minutes of the day that wasn’t torrentially raining! The rainbow was a good one though!

The conditions, although not ideal, did give us some good learning points – especially to those in the group who thought their trekking trousers would be waterproof!

It was tough going and to be fair, the group did very well as it was hard enough just staying alive, never mind trying to learn anything about maps and navigation!

After a final rainbow, snack all eaten, and all socks being reported as wet and cold, we decided to call it a day and headed back to base rather than trying to get to the top of a hill!

When the clouds cleared the next day there was a good bit of snow on the hill tops.

We stuck to the lowlands though, following the Llugwy on a saturated footpath to Plas y Brenin…

Where things brighten up! A Christmas fair was on and my friend Emma made me a gingerbread man to dunk in a coffee! Thanks!