Cylch Llangollen variant

A short version of the Llangollen Round, a 32 mile trip round the Dee catchment. Peter suggested it as a Christmas Eve outing, and it was an excellent idea, but I hadn't properly checked the details and needed to be home by midday. So, sadly, it was a curtailed version for Steve and I, but all very enjoyable. We left Trevor at first light, in drizzle and lowish cloud, then headed through the lanes to join the OD path through the woods north of the village. These emerge on the Panorama road and we climbed through the Monument boulders to gain the escarpment and the edge of Ruabon moor. The route then takes a direct line across the edge of Esclusham Moor, much of this new territory for me and much more runnable than I'd expected (I have always used the OD path below the crags when doing loops of this valley). As we approached World's End, a brief glimmer of sun, and a useful tail/cross wind. The terrain, kind underfoot until this point, turns boggy after the duckboards and the crosswind turned into a headwind as we crested Cyrn y Brain. After a coffee and jaffa cakes at the Ponderosa, we continued in a strong wind over Moel y Faen and Moel y Gamelin before going our separate ways: Peter continuing to Carrog, Steve and I looping back to the Ponderosa.