For the past few months since the busy period of August both Josh and I have been busy up in the mountains and this blog post runs through what we have been up to and how we maintain Yr Helfa. The weather has started to take a turn, the wind is blowing, the rain is rather heavy at times but thats what makes running a remote accommodation business exciting and it hasn’t stopped us from servicing the off-grid equipment, carrying out upgrades and taking new pictures for our social sites and this very website.

To effectively look after Yr Helfa with the aim to upgrade every year we split the work into three main areas. The first being power. As Yr Helfa is powered by off-grid technology our first and foremost priority is to ensure that the equipment is working effectively, efficiently and any servicing is booked in by our specialist engineers before winter takes hold. The backup generator has now been serviced, the Biomass boiler and underfloor heating has had a pump repaired and is working perfectly and the fire service has visited and

Browsing the web one-night last week I came across a brilliant black and white image of a man sitting on an outcrop of rock. Wearing two boiled wool hats, a marvelously well-worn twill overhead jacket, plus fours with wool socks pulled up underneath. Wearing proper leather walking boots, around his neck was a long piece of knotted rope with a carabiner which he was holding in one hand and a finished cigarette in the other looking into the distance.

As I looked at the image, Josh walked into my office with a cup of tea for me, looked at my screen and said ‘oh Joe Brown, he was an amazing climber, lived in the village. He passed only last month’. I had never heard of Joe Brown but I had heard of Joe Brown’s shop in Llanberis where we live.