Offas Dyke Day 13 Llangollen to Clwyd Gate

Day 13 pictures
A good night's sleep is a good way to greet a Monday.
For some reason though I was vaguely irritated most of the morning.
It was overcast, not cold, not raining, not windy so I had no reason to be so, yet I was.
We needed delivering to our start point, which necessitated a 15 minute drive out of Llangollen. I missed a turn off which didn't help the irritation, yet was vaguely vindicated when we arrived at the other end of the road we should have used, to find it was closed for some reason.

Scree slope of Craig Arthur

Anyway we set off around the cliffs of the Eglwyseg Mountains, along a well defined path through the scree slopes, about a foot wide. The scree slope rose above us quite steeply, to Craig Arthur and Craig-y-Adar, and dropped away from the track even more steeply. One of those places you wouldn't like to meet a yak, if you were in Nepal!
The views ahead and behind were pretty damn good and we made good progress.
Even though the track was narrow it was reasonably flat.
We came off the scree track at World's End, joining a tarmac road, that climbed and climbed, through forest then quite suddenly broke out into classical moor country, gorse and heath covered, rather desolate looking.
It was here we started to get the wind, that blew across our faces, as we walked.

Moorland board walk

The moorland also threw up the first section of boardwalk I can remember. These went for quite some way, hundreds of yards/metres, preserving the fragile bog environment.
Relief from the wind arrived in the form of Llandegla Forest, a cultivated pine forest for paper manufacture, and here we enjoyed morning tea.
Typically our height gain was short lived, and we then descended quite rapidly, through forest, then out into open farmland again.
This comes with it the terrors of  the bovine, however there were none and we safely arrived at the very pretty village of Llandegla.
The houses in the main street had quite delightful window boxes full of flowering plants, none of which I could name in a fit.
Soon after we hit the pastures and this time our bovine luck ran out.
A large herd across one part of the path, a long walk to get to them, a long walk past them to the refuge of a bridge.
Funnily enough this was completed safely and the bovine with HUGE scrotum went unnoticed.
It was then  happy meander until we came across another walker sunning herself, without her top on. She watched our approach, and then realising the person out front wasn't a female with bright orange hair, but a bloke, hurriedly put her top on-you win some and you lose some!!
She was very chatty, however had been smoking too and I think was more embarrassed about that.
We climbed up for lunch and sat in the wind. The wind was strong enough to blow my camera off a post when I attempted a time delay picture.

Lunch with wind

It was then hills for young and old. First Moel y Plas, the first significant climb of over 100 metres, then a very pleasant track contouring around Moel Llanfair, then another fierce climb to Moel Gyw, followed by another lovely contoured track, until our final decent into Clwyd Gate.
Tomorrow more Moel's.
Our accommodation is off track about six kilometres, so our trusty driver picks us up once more.
Our accommodation, Hafan Deg is quite luxurious compared with previous and everyone is happy.
The wind picks up and looks bleak for tomorrow tho I am assured it will, well blow over!!

Hafan Deg