I gave in to tiredness and paid for a B&B on the night I limped into Bala. It was something I could barely afford if I was going to keep walking for months, but my sleeping bag was damp and clammy. I lay in bed, showered, clothes rinsed in the bath, sleeping-kit strewn around the room to dry out, feeling miserable and eating ice cream, then realised I’d started my period. I instantly felt better about everything; it’s hard to cope with such strain when you’re experiencing hormonal peaks and troughs as well.
RIVER DEE
Route description: The River Dee starts in the wilderness of the mountains south west of Llanuwchllyn and ends at the estuary between North Wales and the Wirral, passing through the wooded valleys of Llangollen and the flat flood-plain farmlands of Cheshire on the way, leading to the urban environs of Chester, before turning tidal and becoming estuary.
Length: 127 miles
Total ascent: unknown
Maximum height: 134m
Dates: 25 May – 12 June 2014
Time taken: 18 days
Nights camping/nights hosted: 5/13
Days off: 4
Average miles per day: 9.07
I set off around the south side of Bala Lake, crossing the steam-railway line and keeping on for a mundane day of road walking. Someone contacted me on Facebook to tell me their auntie worked at a campsite further on, and I should go and ask for a cup of tea. I paused at the roadside sign that marked the turnoff; was I really going to do this? Just barge in on strangers and say someone on the internet told me you’d give me a cup of tea. Why not, I decided. Worth a try. I wound my way through the fields down towards the lakeside campsite and there I found the really relaxed and friendly Paul, Jane, Molly and James. They were bemused but welcoming, and fitted me in nicely to the chaos of a family campsite in the summertime, letting me bed down on the leather office sofa, James coming to pick me up after I’d walked another few miles onwards. I walked in the rain but didn’t mind, it made such a difference knowing I had a dry place to sleep in later. Another really random but very nice experience, thanks to a woman I didn’t know making contact online.
The next day, pausing at the garage in Llanuwchllyn before heading into the Penaran Forest, I found myself in conversation. First, Heledd recognised me from Facebook and offered to host me that night, further up the valley. Then Non popped out of nowhere, wife of Gareth, who farms the land around my old house in Machynlleth, and we were all recognition and excited chatter.
“Do you have somewhere to stay?” Non said. “You could stay at my mum’s.”
“She’s coming to mine”, Heledd said.
It turned out they were sisters, had grown up in this village where the road turned a corner to wriggle around the lake to Bala. I told them I was going to search for the source of the Dee and they looked at each other and giggled. Non gently teased Heledd about a mention of the big cat, out there in the Penaran Forest, close to the river source. An old story barely believed, the kind that involves an earnest teller and a scoffing family.
It seemed to me that I’d come a very long way from home. I’d walked away from Machynlleth months ago and left it 600 miles away, but really it was just over a few hills. Wales feels like it’s a very separate country but each area is incredibly close to the other; north and south Wales have barely a hundred miles between them. The start of the Dyfi River was high up on the side of Aran Fawddwy, the mountain that Heledd lived under, but I wouldn’t be coming to find it for another few months. I was going to walk another 1500 miles before it became time to trace my home river to its beginnings.
Once I walked deep into the Penaran forest, a few miles west of Llanuwchllyn, I had to leave the stone forestry road. There was no man-made path leading to the source of the river, I’d have to split away and follow the water through the forest and into the boggy wilderness beyond. There were bulbous clumps of grass, sprouting long sharp reeds from gooey, squelching ground which drained copper, clear water into the bubbling, vibrant Dee, ice cold and faintly peaty.
There were scattered young trees tenderly beginning to live, yearlings, unsure yet of their footing. I saw curls of scat on the ground and thought about Non and Heledd’s warning of the big cat: the Llanuwchllyn leopard. It was really hard ground to cover, trying to stay close to the infant river as it wound and wiggled through the marshy, pine-seeded field. The ground was a mix of water and plants, and I never knew where was safe to put my feet, resorting to stepping from one bulky bubble of grass to another. There I knew the matted roots would hold my weight, would keep me out of the lurking, greedy water. It was incredibly slow, twisting and balancing, often on one leg as I probed and tested the ground ahead to find another footstep.
I realised, there, just how much humans have tamed the world, how much of it we’ve made safe for ourselves to walk on. Even our countryside footpaths are a laid-down ribbon of safe ground. I couldn’t see the inhospitability of the truly wild world until I left the manicured human paths, and found plants wildly overlapping, no safe passage, nothing cleared or laid down ahead. I felt as if I was a settler in a new world, forging ahead where others had never trodden, experiencing the difficulty of being the first human. It was time-consuming and tiresome. I felt intimidated by the wildness only metres away from the human-laid trackway, equal to the irritation at how difficult it was to cross.
My feet felt better, though. The twisting and balancing, precarious as it was, was forcing my feet to stretch in unaccustomed movements. Rather than thudding them repeatedly onto flat, unyielding ground I was tiptoe and precarious, using my poles to steady myself as I twisted from side to side, bringing the trailing leg slowly forward to hop towards the next dry pedestal.
I took hours to follow the river, coming at last to the edge of the pine plantation where the ground became too wet for trees. Across the plain, where sheep roamed their own winding, unfenced ways, the mountain loomed ahead. From this view Dduallt was a huge crag of rock, sheer-sided, dribbling with pebble falls and water droplets. I squelched and plodded my way towards it, my feet long since soaked through. There was no source, just the place where the water ran together and became more than the land, started an overflowing and outpouring until it became a channel. There a stream began, which would find its way to sea sixty-eight miles away.
At the base of the mountain there was a small building. The remnant of a building really, just low walls and scattered rubble but, for me, potential shelter. One side was a huge round stone, the rest balanced and built onto that. A Celtic place of ritual, said the guidebook. A place of reassurance, of obeisance, a place to say hello, check in with the gods of the water. I sat in the edge of the shelter and ate, taking silly selfies in the starkness, just me and the grasses and the mountain, scattered sheep far away. I made myself small against the cold wind until I felt no need to be there anymore. There was nowhere I could sleep, I had to plod my way away from the water, to find safe, dry ground to lie on.
I took the direct route back, no longer feeling tied to the water’s winding. To reach the nearest track, I had to pick through cleared pine, a mass of ankle-twisting booby-traps, never knowing how the wood would act beneath my feet, whether it would hold strong or sink away, crumbling and rotting in peace. I knew I wouldn’t make it back to pasture that night, I’d have to sleep in the forestry somewhere. I also knew it was going to rain and worried, end-of-day footsore, about where I’d rest. I was thrilled to spot, then, by the side of the forestry track, where beaten stone dropped off to a ditch and a morass of inhospitable cleared plantation, a series of thick black plastic pipes, big enough to kneel up in. They were long and dusty and empty, apart from a lost, confused slug, dehydrating in the dusty interior. It was heaven, apart from the midges. I pulled the sleeping bag around me, my hair over my face as a midge deterrent and read happily until bedtime. The rain in the night didn’t touch me. Bliss.
When I reached Bala again, the annual Urdd Eisteddfod was in town. Children, schools and parents gathered from all ove
r Wales to compete in Welsh-speaking singing, dance and performance. It was a huge deal; two of Elin and Alun’s children were competing. I’d been listening to them practise. Elin had said she’d see me there, I could go to the enclosure and find the Ysbyty Ifan area, where their caravans and tents were grouped. Heledd was proud, her son had won first place in a singing category. It was the only time during the whole trip that I truly felt like a foreigner, a visitor, someone who didn’t understand the culture she was in. I suppose it’s the effect of entering into a tight-knit community, and this really was the time for the Ysbyty Ifan families to celebrate together, to come and camp and watch their children perform, popping in and out of each other’s caravans, chattering and excited, a festival atmosphere, the village holidaying together.
I sensed that they didn’t want to speak Welsh in front of me because they felt it rude, but their English conversation was awkward and stilted. It didn’t feel natural them prioritising my inclusion, especially as I was the quiet stranger in the corner, zoned out and half asleep with exhaustion. Why speak a second language to your own mother just because a foreigner is in the room? I thought it best to excuse myself and go to bed early. Elin had put me a bed in the awning of their caravan. ‘Gwely Ursula hon,’ said Gwydion, showing me to it. ‘This is Ursula’s bed’.
I met nice people as I walked along the back roads and hillsides from Bala to Glyndyfrdwy to Rhewl to Horseshoe Falls, joining the canal which ran flat and straight towards Llangollen and past it, for an easy nine miles further, towards Chirk. There were aged brick bridges, trailing trees, and sometimes the canal was chipped out of a tall rock-face, just a narrow horse track alongside a steep descent to the Dee valley. Some of the people mentioned a hostel in Llangollen and it piqued my interest; the forecast was for rain and I was tired of getting wet.
Descending into pretty and touristy-twee Llangollen from the canal I passed horse-drawn tourist boats, fudge shops and hanging baskets, painted metal railings and riverside pubs. I walked into the suburbs to find the hostel and, as I came closer to the door, a small child came running across the road to me, clutching a pound to put into my collection tin. She asked what I was doing, and as I started to tell her the story she turned and yelled across the road.
“Muuuuuum. This lady’s doing something awesome,” bringing the waiting family over to hear my tale.
Suddenly there were phone calls to the hostel owner, money was pressed into my hand and I was beckoned to the hostel door, finding myself with a bed for almost nothing and an invitation to breakfast the following morning. I stood stunned and amused, inside the grand, empty kitchen, to cook my sparse rice and fish, nabbing extra spices from the communal leftovers cupboard. The world of possibilities had opened up out of nowhere and great things had happened, yet again.
Sarah, the girl’s mother, came to meet me the following morning. She wore her hair cropped close to her head as she’d donated it all for wig-making. The more I looked into her steady, direct gaze, the more I saw how stunningly beautiful she was; a woman who felt strongly that she must do all she could to make the world better, to raise money for charities. She had something deeply strong and wonderful inside her, but seemed to have no idea of it herself.
She’d read through my blog overnight and saw that I was having foot trouble. She’d been suffering the same plantar fasciitis while standing at work, preventing her training for fifty-mile endurance walks, and had brought something that she used to ease it. Rocktape is a strip of adhesive, elasticated fabric that stretches in only one direction, and it would save my walk in all its smallness and simplicity. Sarah stuck a short length to the sole of my foot, covering the arch lengthways, from the heel to the ball. I took away a short strip of what she gave me and ordered my own online, discovering that it came in a variety of colours and patterns: tiger print, cow print, British flag, pink camouflage, skulls and crossbones. Although I didn’t know it at the time, I would walk for another fourteen months, and wore my feet strapped for every single day of that, cycling through as many prints as I could.
The day Sarah strapped my feet over breakfast, I walked nine miles. It was a revelation. I felt so happy as I walked gently along the canal towards Chirk; this was much further than I’d been able to walk recently, and with no pain!
Val was very accommodating and picked me up a day early at short notice. I felt unworthy of all this care, a gauche invader in her tidy life. Not only had she gone to all this trouble, I’d phoned up and asked to come off-schedule, just using her according to whatever I wanted, paying no attention to the careful way in which she planned her life. I made excuses and went to bed early.
As I lay down, showered and clean, an unexpected sentence spoke itself in my mind. She’s doing this because she feels sorry for you, and all I could be certain of fell away. My body tensed as something dipped within me, as if the bed dropped away beneath me to reveal a howling chasm of my deepest fears. I was fooling myself if I thought that I was doing something worthwhile. I wasn’t impressive, thinking I was on an epic adventure, I was homeless and in need of help, a deluded hobo, ranting of cancer.
I struggled and clung to the edges of the bed, telling myself it wasn’t true, doing my best not to fall into that space where all was self-hatred and unworthiness. I clung to scraps of reality, people online told me I was inspiring, I’d received generous donations, this wasn’t real, my old patterns of thinking were trying to hook me back into the safety of not doing anything, not challenging myself, not risking any failure by never trying at all. It was a sabotage attempt from my low self-esteem, my historic traitor within. The fact that the chasm had opened so clearly and unexpectedly helped me to withstand it. The surprise attack was its very downfall, I could see that it was just another state of mind, not the absolute, just something to be considered and let go. It was unsettling, that this deep self-loathing could surface in the face of exhilaration. The walk was wonderful and positive, a constant flow of beauty and good things happening. I was totally buoyed up by the online reaction and support I’d received, yet I contained the poison that would render all my positivity void. Thankfully I’d been able to see it for what it was this time.
I set off the next day, thinking I’d head into a stretch of small villages. With no contacts organised this was a chance to really get back into wild camping, re-enter the journey I’d set out to make, just me and the countryside. I walked from Chirk to Overton through the morning, where I stopped in at the library, intending to spend a couple of hours sitting, resting, writing. I’d come through fields of soggy clay which excitable calves had trodden completely to muck, a slow and frustrating morning trying to pick through an inhospitable mess.
The librarian asked what I was doing; the flags and large rucksack tended to inspire a raised eyebrow or two. I got people approaching me to say Umm…err… and I’d fill in the question they were too embarrassed to ask.
“What am I doing?”
“Yes,” they’d say, and laugh. “What’s it all about?”
So I’d give the usual spiel about cancer, long-distance walking, hospital appointments, Wales.
“Where are you sleeping?”
“Well, I’m set up to camp but people keep offering me places to sleep, which is really unexpected but a massive help.”
The librarian, Rebecca, offered me a cup of hot chocolate which was very nice. I was clearly tired after my tough and muddy morning.
“I know someone who’ll take you in. They’re kind of drop-outs, and they regularly have people to stay. He might come in later.”
And he did. Rebecca placed him at the computer next to me, just saying, “This is a special lady that you need to talk to.”
It was a very awkward way to begin a conversation, but eventually we started chatting about what I was doing and Steve asked if I had anywhere to stay that night, and if I wanted to stay with them. I agreed, following this unexpected turn of events with no real wariness.
We agreed that he’d pick me up a couple o
f miles down the road and I walked on down the river without my rucksack, feeling a wonderful lightness in my body. The air was warm and thick with thistledown; it floated like fat snowflakes against the trees. A cow stood close to me, I stopped still, said hello, and she trotted over, enthusiastically licking my outstretched hand, even letting me scratch her tufty forehead.
I waited at a pub, was picked up by Steve and taken to his home. There I found a Christian family, driven by a message from God to give up their IT business, stop working or paying their mortgage and attempt to live self-sufficiently, keeping pigs, growing vegetables. They were living in a big and beautiful home, bought when they were still working, but now the house was without electricity, mostly without hot water, completely without gadgets. God had told them to show people that we are deadened by over-consumption, headed down an oil-addicted dead end that will lead to the collapse of civilisation within our lifetimes. “A person who believes we can keep a finite system in constant growth is either a madman or an economist,” said Steve.
God had told them to keep an open house and accept anyone referred to them in spiritual trauma, after suicide attempts or mental illness, devil-worshipping or other moral repugnancy. Steve told me stories of challenging paedophiles and Satanists, a constant ramble of words tumbling from him, I felt he was close to mania.
They showed me the pigs, sniffing around a bare sty. The family would root in skips to find all the food the animals needed, regularly bringing remnants from the local cheese factory. The family were eating basic food, but they were always eating. “This is a bag of wonky carrots, they’re supposed to be for horses but they’re perfectly fine for humans too!”
One Woman Walks Wales Page 11