Traverse of the Rhingos: Final Day
- Danielle Kelly
- Jun 29
- 3 min read
We awoke for the final day, no blown-away tents. No broken tents. Just broken, tired humans. Outside, the sky was all cloud; we were inside the clouds, and grey, misty fog greeted us.
We packed up, no coffee, no breakfast, just a plan to get to our highest point in the mountains before the weather got worse. Little did we know, we would do just that.
Rhingo Fach to Diffwys
Awake and packed up, we headed out again, munching on trail snacks and admiring the views when the gaps in the cloud and mist allowed. The path up Rhingo Fach was steep and almost scramble’y’ at times. Once up the top, we scrambled onto the peak and basked in the happiness that comes with the first peak of the day. However, we didn’t stay long as we knew we had a race against the weather.
Moving on to reach Llyn Hywel, which should have been where we camped, there was more scrambling to descend than we had anticipated. The camping was not so inspiring. We felt we definitely had made the right call the night before, although it had left us with 6 peaks and 19km of hiking to do for this day.
Up and over to Y Llethr, we were feeling confident, eating Minions Maoam and just embracing the walking. We were starting to feel really positive about the thought of having our breakfast up on Diffwys.
Walking along the ridge, the views, when we got them, were incredible. It was beautiful, the sight of the sea in the distance and the mountains ahead. This, to me, is something that makes Wales so spectacular.
Atop Diffwys, we sat between a stone wall and a cliff edge, with a view of Barnmouth. We all sat down and started preparing our breakfast. As we went to tuck in, the rain that was due started and started strong.
Soaked, but it's all downhill from here!
We still had 3 more smaller peaks on our route down from Diffwys, but our mission now was to get back to the car so we could get changed into something warm and cosy and get out of the rain.
The rain poured, and the wind blew strong gusts. We trudged on knowing that each foot in front of the other would eventually lead us back to the car.
With the weather miserable and the lack of views due to cloud cover, I did my best singing and chants to keep everyone motivated. Although the weather wasn’t great, we had just completed something amazing and, better still, we were outside enjoying nature.
With the rain and being mostly on grassy hills, you can imagine what started to occur for us: slippery, muddy descents. We were getting closer to Barmouth and becoming so wet our waterproofs no longer felt like they were functioning. While we were then fighting to stay upright on descents as the hills became grassy slides. It was starting to become a slog, but there is no motivation quite like knowing you literally can only walk to your destination.
The Final Push
“Just keep going”, I sang like Dory from Finding Nemo, the rain relentless. We were almost down; we could see Barmouth in the distance, we could see a school setting up top ropes for climbing, we could see a break in the rain. We were only 5k from the car, and our excitement couldn’t be contained. Back through more overgrown paths heading into the town, steep stairs and some tarmac roads and eventually we made it back where we started.
Elated and proud of what we achieved, we all rushed to take off our bags and wet clothes, getting changed in the car park (as discreetly as we could). We headed inside the car, heater blowing and back to South Wales.
Our Thoughts
This trip to all 3 of us was one of the most memorable things we have done to date; there were so many highs and lows and things we learned on this trip about wild camping in the mountains, but also about ourselves. We really persevered and hit every challenge head on - even when times felt tough, we pushed through, and each of us look back on this as something we loved and would love to do again.
Until the next one xo
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