If your Welsh is a bit rusty Lyn y Fan Fach means Lake of the Small Hill. A more apt name would be Small Lake of the Big Hill.
The lake is in a hollow made by a glacier in the last Ice Age, 11,500 years ago. The picture above is from Wikipedia as we didn’t make it to the ridge yesterday: there was a very strong wind and we would have been late for lunch. We did get up to the lake, 1,660 feet, and the other pictures are mine.
There is a creepy legend about the Lady of the Lake. She came out of the lake like Rusalka in Dvořák’s opera of the same name and was strikingly attractive, at least compared to the sheep. A swain eventually bribed her to marry him with copious amounts of bread and cheese but she made one condition. If he hit her three times she would leave him and return to the lake. Of course he did and she did. Frankly it does not show either of them in a particularly good light.
Two days of walking in the hills left me hungry for a spot of cultural nourishment to complement my peak physical fitness. Alan obliged with a couple of episodes of Jeeves & Wooster, aka Fry & Laurie. As it was my last night Alan celebrated by pouring me the last of his home-made Saffron Gin. He didn’t distill the gin but he grew the saffron – a singular achievement in the capricious climate of Wales.
