Earlier this year, I posted a few photographs taken during a visit my sister and I made to north Wales in order to visit our aunt in a residential care home. At the time, I wasn't sure into which category that particular blog should have been placed. It would, for example, not have been out of place as a trip down "Memory Lane". However, I decided that "Trixie" (see right) was more suitable because I had ridden there on my trike. On this occasion, however, I thought "Rambling" would be appropriate.
Over the past couple of days - alone and driving my car as a mark of respect to the weather - I've repeated the journey to deliver Christmas presents to my aunt and others who have been helpful to her - and, in so doing, followed a procedure with which I've become extremely familiar.
This usually involves a hasty drive north using the motorway system, an overnight stay at a convenient hostelry, followed - after visiting my aunt and the aforementioned 'helpful others' - by a more leisurely journey back south. The route I usually take (certainly whilst still in north Wales) avoids major roads and, in some cases, involves single-track roads and steep ravines which can be dangerous and quite frightening during inclement weather. Indeed, when I paid a flying to my aunt, a month ago, I encountered the worst fog/hill mist I've ever driven through in over fifty years of driving in the region.
So, yesterday, fearful of a repeat performance, I took a route which I had never taken before - and in so doing visited somewhere I had been intending to have a look at for several years (bearing in mind I come from Liverpool) a major source of the city's water supply - Lake Vyrnwy.
Interestingly, yesterday was the shortest day of the year and I only just managed to take some photographs before it became too dark. Even then, I've had to resort to taking advantage of some of the gizmos available on iPhoto. Smaller photos can be enlarged by 'clicking' on them..........
The first two photos (above) show a couple of the numerous waterfalls which supply the water to the lake (below).........
Possibly enhanced by the fading light, the darkness of the water (below) in this quiet corner of the lake looked rather forbidding......
Evidently, the tower (below) contains the main part of the extraction process from where the water is pumped over sixty miles through underground pipes to Liverpool........
Finally (below) is the dam which created the lake......
Having spent years with little option other than to stay at motorway service stations when I used to deliver buses around the country, one of the advantages of A and B roads is the variety of alternatives which are available. I visited this roadside pub/hotel just south of Shrewsbury during the earlier visit to Wales on Trixie and have stayed there a couple of times since - including last night - because it's very welcoming and very reasonable.
