Having Enough Time

This Saturday, we had a fleeting taste of summer. We toasted Eileen's birthday with thimble-sized samples of blackcurrant whiskey liqueur at the street fair. Touring Caernarfon Castle, we disoriented over and over in the spiral staircases of the polygonal turrets, hearing carnival screams and then music, watching the flow of crowds and then sea from the many tower faces. I lay beneath a tree to read for two hours and didn't mind the damp grass a bit. The sunshine felt so lovely on my legs.

That's over now.

On Sunday morning, we checked out of the uncharacteristically delightful Airbnb we'd been staying at (laundry machine en suite, a tea table, an expanse of plush gray carpet). Through the six big windows of our temporary room, we watched the fog roll in. Then strapped packs to our bodies and went out into it.

It wasn't all that bad, but we did sit in the bus shelter for nearly an hour in our puffy coats before ascending to the youth hostel at Pen Y Pass, and then three more in a chilly cafe until check-in.

For a hostel, the lodging is pretty good: we shelled out for a private room for the week. It's a high price for bunk beds and stained carpet tiles, but we have access to a well-equipped kitchen — the most food autonomy we've had all trip — and the mountain paths leave directly from the door.

We're in Snowdonia now. It's rugged, astoundingly beautiful, and much colder than the coastline below. It mists actively, clouds rubbing up against you when the wind blows. Just to…