And quickly we were slowed by the typical Easter traffic. It wasn't too bad at first...

...but then it got worse and eventually...

...it just stopped altogether.

Then it started raining. This was pretty much the forecast for the whole weekend, but hey mountain biking is only half as fun if you don't come out wet and covered in shit.

Wales, like Scotland, shares the same land mass as England, and there's no real obvious indication that you've crossed the border other than the country becomes much nicer...

The place names all have a rather disproportionate number of consonants that resemble a four-year-old's spelling...

And there are sheep everywhere hehe.

We were staying in a tiny little village called Maentwrog, home to 585, and if you can pronounce that name well kudos to you.

Big news in the village today was this shit all over the road. A truck had come flying through, took the corner too fast and lost a couple bags of whatever this stuff is. Doris next door told me "Aww gee I could've been killed!", even though Doris was inside at the time of the incident.

We arrived late Friday afternoon, and spent the remaining hours of daylight taking a drive around the area. Here we have a Welsh beach. Lovely.

Some colourful Welsh beachfront homes. Nice.

A seagull stuck in the same spot due to a friggin' strong and friggin' cold wind. Brilliant.

This little coastal town is called Criccieth, home to around 2,000 old people, and again if you can pronounce that then good for you.

Criccieth has castle ruins...

A limo service...

And apparently the best fish 'n' chips in the land since the sign on the door said they don't open until 6:30pm, and there were queues outside the door at 6.

After being bored shitless by that place we carried on along the coast before heading inland along some of the narrowest and twistiest roads I've ever driven along, and bloody hell was it fun!

Except for this guy, who I nearly mowed down.

Anyway, enough of that, this was the real reason for my coming - the mountain biking! This is the Marin Trail near Llanrwst (pronounce that how you will). Marin is about 25kms in length with a total ascent of around 450 metres which made for some pretty amazing vistas in places. The skies looked as though they were about to piss on me at any moment, but for now it was dry.

The Marin Trail has a bit of everything, including stretches with really sharp and jagged rocks all over the show. I let a bit of air out of the tyres to allow for it but not enough evidently. My rear tube got pinched one too many times and that was the end of that. I was at the half way mark at this stage and in no mood to call it a day, so instead I jogged the bike 5kms back to the car (hooray for GPS!) for running repairs, during which this almighty hail stormed passed overhead hahaha! Probably a good thing I was back at the car and able to cower under the open boot.

Twenty minutes after the hail had passed the sun came out and stayed out for most of the day. You just can't pack for the weather in this country!

So after the one-hour and 10km detour to patch my wheel, I was back into it along some brilliant single-track with jumps and mud and twisty bits - awesome!

It's a bit hard to tell here with the bike being so white but it was well covered in shit, as was I hehe - love it!

While I was playing up the mountain, Katie was off doing a boring horse ride somewhere, after which we went for another drive to see some more of Snowdonia. There are some really gorgeous landscapes around here. I wouldn't go so far as to say it tops New Zealand, but it's up there :)

Back in our little village, and the locals had spent the day cleaning that shit up off the road hahaha!

Sunday, and I hit trail number two still covered in yesterday's fun.

This is Tarw Trail near Coed-Y-Brenin, another 20-something kilometre track and another 450-metre total climb.

This one got most of that 450-metre climb out of the way right at the start in one great ball-busting stretch, after which it was mostly flat and downhill single-track through the forest. Bloody nice! And look at the weather - sunny, ah-mazing!

Be that as it may, it definitely wasn't a relaxing cruise back down the mountain - this trail is one rocky bitch! This made for a bloody technical ride but damn it was fun!

They got that right.

I think I saw a few blood stains in places along here hahaha! I thought if the tyres were going to pop or the bike break in two anywhere it'd be here - it really got a good punishing but for £1,300 of bike I got what I paid for.

After about two hours of riding and half an hour of dicking around taking photos both me and the bike made it back in one piece. During the fun my odometer clicked over to 9,000kms (since I bought the first bike back in May 2007).

After all that we hit the twisty narrow roads again which are so much fun to hoon around...

We passed through several more cute little villages and a steam locomotive, and eventually ended up...

...here - the anus of Wales, also known as Holyhead - a complete and utter shithole at the very northwest tip of Wales. I thought Glasgow was bad until I came here. I took very few photos, partly because I was expecting to get mugged, and partly because there was really nothing worth taking photos of. This week was the anniversary of Doreen Morris' murder (or llofruddiaeth). Her badly burnt skeletal remains were found in her badly burnt house in 1994. Property had been stolen from the house and a post mortem revealed she'd been killed before the fire was started. Lovely. So yeah we had a quick feed and got the hell out of there!

Just behind our village is a public walking track that works it way through paddocks and hills and whatnot.

I'm not sure what, but something had some jolly good fun with this lamb.

Baaaaa!

So that was our weekend gallivanting around Snowdonia - wicked! We drove home through several more little Welsh villages and towns, and back over the border we drove through Knockin, and passed the Knockin Shop hehe.

It would've been quicker to cycle home.