Thanks to Ian for the comment below. The cafe has now re-opened and does sound like it's worth a go. Sounds like it might be another caff to be proud of!

No longer the only safe eating method at the PYP Caff...

Cafe now under new management - a social enterprise buying locally and operating as ethically as they can.
The crockery is real as is the espresso, americano, latte, cappuchino, hot chocolate and all the wonderful homemade cakes that are served with them!
Food is all prepare on site and cooked when it is ordered. Everything I have eaten there has been great and obviously prepared with care. Decent veggie choice too.
Open from 7am till 8pm there is plenty of chance to get in there and its much lighter and warmer than it used to be with a far friendlier welcome!
Would be great if you can publish this as a comment on your blog as i suspect the current comments will put people off visiting the 'new' cafe.

Cheers,
Ian

I could be all organised and research this before hand, but whether it's the National Park or anyone else running this circus, they should be ashamed of themselves.

To start with, £5.50 for some stuff that's just passable as food is insult enough. To have it served in front of oneself on a polystyrene plate and plastic cutlery is nothing short of contempt. That's for the customer and the environment.

Even service stations can provide a basic level of service these days. You go to the Lakes you can stop at Tebay and eat real food, what do we offer the visitor? The McDonald's of the hills. Disposable, inedible and soulless. If it were before 12pm today I'd had stated that the NCP was about to take the place over, and I'd probably get away with it. Build a multistorey with a CrapDonald's drive through at the bottom to negate the healthy effects of a day in the hills and ensure our population continue in this perpetual spiral of increasing obesity.

Compare this to the cafe in Nant Gwynant and the new cafe in Aber, and you can see how it should be done. Local produce, crockery and REAL COFFEE! Simple really.

Some have emailed asking what gear you can use for a winter wildcamp. Here’s my selection of gear. I’ve split it into two posts - one for the ‘big 3’ of shelter, sleep and cooking and the other for the rest of the stuff.

Freezing conditions were expected and the gear below kept me comfortable all night. There was a gusty wind that lasted till midnight, must have been caused by the pass between Rhinog Fach and Y Llethr as it certainly wasn’t forecast. The upside of this was that while wind chill was extremely bad, the temperature didn’t seem to drop as low as we expected.

Tent – Terra Nova Laser (1300g). Ideal weight to space ratio. The porch is just huge on this, but so is the space inside. I could put all my gear in the inner tent to keep them from frost and only kept my water and stove here. The awful carbon fibre pegs were just not up to the job of use on frozen ground and most were broken on removal. Either the copper coloured point remained in the ground on pulling, or the yellow cap on top came off making it impossible to remove. Titanium pegs I had with me were much more suitable, but prone to bend on removal. The tent does tend to be pretty flappy in the wind and despite many pitches, it can still refuse to pitch taut when the ground isn’t perfectly even.

Laser Competition on the Left, full sized Laser on the right.

Sleeping – Old Mountain Equipment Classic Dragon 750 (1400g or so), Exped Down Mat (1000g) and Rab Survival Zone bivvy (350g). The sleeping bag is my extreme weather sac and compares in weight/performance to something like the AlpKit Alpine Dream sac. Stated to be good to -12c it was up to the job if a little heavy. A pipe dream 1000 by Alpkit would be nice and light at 1150g and £150, being good to -17c (with other offerings of similar weight to temperature being much more expensive) but probably not worth the investment with the use it’d get under typical Snowdonia conditions and being only a couple of hundred grams lighter.

The Exped Down mat is heavy and bulky but provides a warm and comfortable night’s sleep. I’ve a ¾ length summer synthetic version (imported from the States and I forget the make!) that’s a paltry 450g but just not cut out for the winter unless you want your feet dangling over the end.

Finally, the bivvy bag might seem like overkill but it does provide an extra layer on the bag that must add a degree or two, and certainly protects the down from any condensation or moisture that’s present in the tent. Bit of a belt and braces approach for a one nighter, but a very wise precaution if you’re out for longer.

Food and Drink – MSR Titanium Kettle (120g), Pocket Rocket (85g) and titanium KFS set (life venture I think, and around 50g). Snow peak Ti mug at 70g and my’rice pouch’. The kettle needs little explanation, it does the job at a great weight but you pay for it. It hold’s 850ml, so has a practical volume of over 750ml. I’ve got a custom made pot cosy for mine, so you can keep the extra water hot for quite a while. The warm water was essential to keep my gas canister from freezing solid. Either I’d put the canister on top of the warm lid, or place it in the lukewarm water to defrost the canister. I reckon that a mild warming of the canister should be OK, but it’s probably one of those’don’t try it at home’ tricks and I’d not recommend it. The pocket rocket is a super piece of kit at a light weight and the KFS set I take in it’s entirety. Some people recommend just a spoon, but I’d rather eat noodles with a pair of tent pegs than try it with a spoon. The fork is usually used, and the knife is useful for spreading things onto oatcakes.

On a morning like this, it’s better to stay in the sleeping bag!

A mug is likewise a bit of a luxury – you can use the kettle for that – but I like to have a drink while my meal’s cooking. This was almost essential on this trip to help warm me up. I had 4 platypus pouches as well – that’s one for a litre of flavoured drinks and then a 1l and a 2l bladder so that I’d have enough water to last me the night. Word of warning though – don’t leave them full of water overnight as they’ll freeze and you’ll end up with 2 kilos of ice you’ll need to carry out! I filled my kettle with water instead and it only had a thin layer of ice by morning (the pot cosy helped this).

My’rice pouch’ cooks proper noodles a treat. I mean the egg noodles, not the nasty 9p stuff that can’t be made of anything decent for that price (add to the 9p the pack of indigestion tablets that inevitably follow and they’re not so cheap for me). These noodles were my carbs for the’look what we found’ gourmet meatballs in tomato sauce pouch. These cost £2.50 each, but are still cheaper than camping food. What surprised me was how tasty they were. I’ve had similar food eating out and you never expect that from convenience food. Compare them to a wayfarers and for a bit more money you get a complete meal, but that includes the rice/pasta. With this you get a full meal, with the addition of a dry component makes it the ideal balance between weight / palatability / calorific content. I normally take a home made curry in a freezer bag for an overnighter which also ticks all the boxes.

The rest of the edibles were chocolate (usually Green and Blacks quality stuff or Lindt if I want milk chocolate) which can be melted into instant hot chocolate for a calorie rich meal in a mug! What has to be emphasised in this weather is that calories are essential to keep you warm. If I feel cold, I drink and eat a bit more. This is the only time I tend to eat pork pies, the buffet varieties packing in 300 calories of pure fat and protein. Of course, jelly babies bolster this when you need a bit more oomph on that steep uphill.

Sugar rush...mmmm.....

No matter how great a meal porridge is when wild camping, I can never be bothered with the hassle of cooking it and the thought of it welding to the bottom of my titanium kettle. I tried a free sample meal replacement earlier this year as a breakfast, and it did the job. But the meals were £2 each and I had to buy 20 of them - that’s a lot of breakfasts in the same flavour.

Then I came across Complan, which I thought was only for ill people. Mixing the chocolate up with 200ml hot water gave me a perfectly acceptable hot chocloate. It was easily as good as any hot chocolate made up with water I’ve tried (such as the instant Cadburys ones) if a little blander, but less watery as it contains 250 calories. If you feel you need more then 2 packs would be easy to drink as it’s surprisingly light and that would definately help you start the day off. I prefer the idea of a light breakfast when wild camping, especially as I’m usually camped quite high with the first leg of the day often being steeply uphill. One sachet of Complan and a couple of coffees before my work out agreed with me and I felt particularly energetic on the uphill (especially as I too often skip breakfast when wild camping, and make do with a flapjack).

At £3.29 for 4 packs it’s a lot more expensive than Oats so simple, but the same price as a single dehydrated youghurt or muesli from Reiter. I’m going to be choosing this over the others from now on though as it’s a decent price and is absolutely no hassle to prepare. Though the others are still useful for variety. You can prepare them hot or cold, which means you can still prepare breakfast even if you finished the last of the cooking gas on last night’s seventh coffee. For the same reason, they’re handy as ‘spare’ food for a trip, as you only need water to make a meal.

The strawberry ones are great cold but i'm yet to find the banana flavour, so i’ll update this when i do.

Came across these today. They may not be to everyone’s taste, but if you buy the expensive Reiter camping puddings they’re an ideal replacement. They’re made by Victoria Foods for WeightWatchers, so they’re also pretty low in calories, but still pack 100 calories in and round off a wild camping meal. What clinches it for me is that they’re only 35p a pudding as opposed to £3 for the Reiter, so i was hoping they tasted good enough to want to faff with at the end of a long mountain day.

I tried the Chocolate and the Strawberry flavour, both made up with 125ml of skimmed reconstituted dried milk. The puddings were easy enough to mix into the milk (which had just taken a while to make up, even with a whisk), but the pack recommends an electric whisk - not something likely 600m up a mountain. Presumably it would be more ‘moussy’ and lighter if you did that, but the consistency was still acceptable. I left it out for 10 mins, rather than the fridge (for obvious reasons) and then took the pics and did a taste test on them.

The chocolate one looked a bit iffy, and had a mixed texture as the upper layer was lighter than the lower one. It tasted OK, but nothing special. Having said that, it’s no worse than anything else i’ve tasted that called itself "Chocolate Flavoured". I’m sure that crumbling some flake onto it would turn it into something tastier. Definately not as rich as the Reiter chocolate pudding, but i think that’s too rich anyway.

The strawberry one was much better. It tasted as good as anything similar i’ve tried. Somewhat similar to the pot mousses you can buy in flavour, but a little heavier in consistency. This one will definately be the one of choice for my next trip.

Both sample puddings lasted less than a minute under my spoon, so something was right. The pack laughingly claims it contains 2 servings, you might want to take two sticks to make up one pudding if you have a healthy appetite on the hill.

Summary - Cheap, instant pudding ideal for wild camping. Just as good as the Reiter puddings at just under a tenth of the price! These will find a permanent place in my wild camping larder.