Isn't that essentially what the Cornish have done to Lands End?
No some rich **** who went bankrupt bought it back in the 80s he was from Essex. Ironically the company that owns it now, also owns JOG & the Snowdon Mountain Railway.
You can tell their only interest is making cold hard cash as they haven't rebranded to Yr Wyddfa, to keep up with the name update.
like this bloke who didn’t think he had any reason to ask those up there.
Because there wasn't any reason to? Its just a bunch of people standing around who happen to think there should be a queue?
I was up there last bank holiday with my boys ( not the best timing but all we could fit in with exams etc). Bus up from llanberis, we went up via Crib Goch and returned by the Rangers and telegraph valley. Crib Goch was relatively quiet a couple of couples and one large group doing the Welsh 3000s. On the descent we barely saw a sole, no-one on Telegraph valley, The summit and the llanberis path on the other hand was mobbed there was a 100 yard queue for the summit which was in thick cloud. We obviously didn't bother bit we did have to use the cafe as I'd forgot to pack the snacks.
It's clearly a big achievement for some folk so I can understand why they'd want a photo, I often don'f bother going to the summits. I certainly wouldn't queue.
On the descent we barely saw a sole
That's a bit fishy.
It does call to mind what Wordworth had to say about the view from Snowdon (as he called Yr Wydffa) describing an inversion by moonlight [from
A hundred hills their dusky backs upheaved
All over this still ocean; and beyond,
Far, far beyond, the solid vapors stretched,
In headlands, tongues, and promontory shapes,
Into the main Atlantic, that appeared
To dwindle, and give up his majesty,
Usurped upon far as the sight could reach.
Not so the ethereal vault; encroachment none
Was there, nor loss; only the inferior stars
Had disappeared, or shed a fainter light
In the clear presence of the full-orbed moon,
Who, from her sovereign elevation, gazed
Upon the billowy ocean, as it lay
All meek and silent, save that through a rift—
Not distant from the shore whereon we stood,
A fixed, abysmal, gloomy, breathing-place—
Mounted the roar of waters, torrents, streams
Innumerable, roaring with one voice!
Get a move on mate, we've been queuing here for hours!
Isn't that essentially what the Cornish have done to Lands End?
Well, not "the Cornish"; but yes, the privatisation of public spaces because the public can't be trusted not to be aggressively stupid and public funding doesn't exist and even if it did exist would end up in someone's pocket.
What's Cornish for "Land's End"?
But if you walk around the far side of the platform thing, away from the cafe/train, you can walk up to the top without pushing past the people queuing on the steps. Although you may get in the background of whoever is having their allocated time with the poor old trig point and spoil their pics.
That pic's AI'd, but no you couldn't. There's a plateau bit above the station building, then the summit is on a rocky crag about 8ft up in the middle of it.
The three paths from the north all come up the last few hundred meters along side the railway which is where the big queue tends to form if it's really busy right back to the Pyg and Miners tracks..
The Watkins and Rhyd Ddy paths come up around the other side of the station and merge with the same steps but even if you tried to enforce some sort of 'merge in turn' queueing you'd still be ~50m from the trig point. You can (I think) cut the corner on the Rhyd Ddy path and come straight up the rocks which would bring you up onto the plateau avoiding the steps.
So even if you walked past absolutely everyone in the queue, you'd still have to physically elbow the last 8-10 people out of the way to get to the trig point as the steps upto it aren't that wide.
c8.alamy.com/comp/MR6KGW/snowdon-summit-north-wales-tourist-hotspot-MR6KGW.jpg
What's Cornish for "Land's End"?
Penn an Wlas or Pedn an Wlas
Our holiday to Italy a couple of years ago crystallised my long suspected view that anything you have to queue for isn't worth queueing for - there's probably something just as good just around the corner, all on its own. *
I bet the most expensive painting that nobody ever looks at is Paolo Veronese, Les Noces de Cana (The Wedding Feast at Cana). It's in the same room as the Mona Lisa.
In Rome, hot and fed up with crowds everywhere and with nowhere to sit without spending £20 on a coffee we stumbled across a deserted Piazza Manfredo Fanti, a beautiful little park with ruins, a garden and somebody rehearsing the flute on the Church steps. Marvellous!
We stopped there for 45 delicious minutes. I gave the flautist a couple of euros on the basis that she wouldn't play Wonderwall or Streets of London.
*Similar to Homer Simpson's assertion "If a job's worth doing - it isn't worth doing".
Not that this actually affects me as I won't be climbing that particular mountain, but I've got little tolerance for ****s who expect everyone to clear out "the background" for their selfie shot. If you want solitude, go very early/very late/mid week in November.
I'll give someone a few seconds to take a quick snap but I'll be buggered if I'm hanging around out-out-shot whilst they faff around organizing their families or cocking up the technology or taking multiple shots cos Joe blinked at the wrong time.
There's lots of apps out there that can clean up the background if needed
Yes, I'm a curmudgeon...
You can tell their only interest is making cold hard cash as they haven't rebranded to Yr Wyddfa, to keep up with the name update.
Name re-establishment; it’s always been Yr Wyddfa to those born there and whose language the landscape is named in. Same as Cornwall, Scotland, Ireland and, possibly the Isle of Man.
We no longer live in an age where children are physically punished for speaking their native language.
Thankfully.
There's lots of apps out there that can clean up the background if needed
I've got a great pic of Giant's Causeway which looks like I was there alone.
Realised immediately I'd never get anything without people all over it but the camera AI stuff solved most of it in seconds leaving me to fix a couple of tiny blurred patches where the auto erasing hadn't been quite perfect.
I thought this thread was going to be about Everest (or whatever I'm supposed to call it these days) having seen photos of people queueing for hours for the summit.
I was led to believe that Brits were very good at queueing and enjoyed the experience taking every opportunity to queue:
Wait for petrol shortage to fill up the car.
Wait for a store to announce 10 cheap items in the sales and then join a queue of hundreds and sprint to fail to get one.
Queue overnight for tickets to a concert taking enough food and pee pee bottles for a week. In the rain obviously.
All leave to go on holiday at exactly the same time on the same day.
ANd now people can't even queue for a mountain top.
You can tell their only interest is making cold hard cash as they haven't rebranded to Yr Wyddfa, to keep up with the name update.
That’s because it’s still called snowdon in English. Like many places round the world there are different names and spellings for the same place depending on the language. For example there are Italian and German names for many places along the Austrian border. Same with French and Flemish in Belgium. This is just another example
Everest (or whatever I'm supposed to call it these days)
or even pronounced
Realised immediately I'd never get anything without people all over it but the camera AI stuff solved most of it in seconds leaving me to fix a couple of tiny blurred patches where the auto erasing hadn't been quite perfect.
I went to the Giants Causeway and there wasn't a soul there - took a selfie but it made me look like a lonely loser so I used AI to fix that and fill the background with various celebs so that I could look like one of life's winners who hangs around with all the cool and successful people. Then I got AI to delete the Giant's Causeway and replace it with a private island in the Seychelles. Ahhh memories.
We did it a few years ago. Went up and down Rangers with the dog before this sort of thing became too much for him.
Looked at the queue to the summit, looked at the endless posing and Insta shot composing going on at the top, wandered off, ate sandwiches, walked down.
Still had a good walk, still had lovely views, didn't feel like I'd really missed anything of importance by not touching a trig point. I get there's a bit of an event tick box but really I go up a mountain for two things, a physical challenge and a view. I didn't need to be 20feet higher to appreciate this.
Following year we focussed on a different mountain in the area for our main family walk of the trip. It was lovely without all the human traffic. Shame the mist rolled in on the top and the view was obscured.
