Climbing Snowdon 3.

By now the views were getting quite spectacular - there were, in addition, for those with sharp eyes occasional wild birds to be seen ... Buzzards and Ravens. The weather, as ever on a mountain, was changeable with sudden sweeps of mist or cloud rolling in from an unexpected direction hiding or partially revealing, as here, spectacular views.

And when the sun broke through on the lower hills - highlighting one side of the mountainous slope whilst the other side lay darkly in shadow then the effect was exhilarating. Looking back - they could see how far they had climbed.

A mischievous breeze could pluck the hat off ones head - forcing a mad dash to re-claim it from the rocky scree-slopes. To think people actually run down [& up] these slopes.

And then the weather could in a trice change from sunshine and a summer-of-sorts into the gothic gloom and deeply shadowed dark of a Wagnerian opera. The lower darker part of the mountain and its' foot hills stretched out mistily to a distant and lighter horizon.

Sometimes the lower reaches seemed so overwhelming and close that even with, as here, the nearby ridge silhouetted by the brighter sky, the mountains arms although edged in the far distance by sunlight, seemed like octopus-tendrils to stretch out in all directions.

And then, a fraction later, the sun would break through and what was a mere moment before a threatening mass of mountains becomes a sunlit valley on the far side of our rocky balustrade.