Family Day in the Elan Valley

After all the excitement and thrills of the Pyrenees trip we needed something a little more subdued for a family day out. A picnic and short stroll in the Elan Valley was in order.

We parked up by the Pont Ar Elan at the head of the Craig Goch Reservoir. My memories from my childhood was of playing in the the river but today it was a raging torrent. In fact the Mountain Rescue were practising their fast moving river techniques in it. I don’t recall it being particularly wet in the previous couple of weeks but I guess it must have been

Whatever, it was a fine place to spend a couple of hours filling our faces and it was actually pretty hot and humid. I would have taken a swim if I’d had my stuff with me

We moved on to the dam of Craig Goch and were surprised to see it gushing with water. This normally only happens in winter and, despite the fact that I’ve visited the Elan Valley dozens of times, I’ve only ever seen it like this on a couple of occasions. Normally in summer the water is low enough to leave several meters of bare shoreline exposed. It makes a pretty dramatic waterfall when its in “spate” as it were

We took a short stroll along the lake shore and over the small rocky outcrop that overlooks the dam. It was wonderfully clear day and the dark blue of the reservoir contrasted to great effect with the green hillsides (further evidence of wet conditions) and the paler blue sky

The aerial view down over the dam was especially grand

We moved on to the second reservoir and dam of Pen y Garreg to see if the water was flowing over which indeed it was. You can walk easily to the base of this one and it was mighty impressive

I told the kids that extreme kayakers love to shoot the sides of these flows (although its strictly forbidden not to say bloody dangerous)

We finished the day with a cuppa by the visitor centre at the lowest reservoir and dam of Caban Goch. This was also thundering with water which I’ve never seen before in almost 50 years of visiting the Elan Valley. Alas no photos as the car park was a chargeable one which I was too outraged to pay up for so we wanted to avoid a parking ticket by overstaying our “welcome”. Clearly the money the generate from the gift shop, cafe and bike hire isn’t sufficient to pay the shareholders dividends

We went our separate ways. TBF and TJS to mid Wales for some walking (not entirely successful as this was the start of few days of heatwave so too hot for hiking) and me and TJF back home to work and school