Gale-force winds and hail, said the forecast. I wasn’t sure if I should climb Cader Idris. The route would take me away from Abergynolwyn and over the shoulder of it, climbing up to the head of the Dysinni valley – which ended in a curved bowl of land – and dropping down towards Fairbourne to take the railway crossing to Barmouth. I tacked my way up the side of the steepness, pausing at rock-scattered sheep-pens, the first places for farmers to contain their sheep as they corralled them down off the high lands for childbirth or medication.
Of course I climbed Cader! It’s my favourite mountain and I was only a mile and a half from the peak. The winds were strong but the summit was clear; once I’d climbed out of the valley basin I could see it! I dumped my bag by the fence, stuffed my pockets with Sarah’s sandwiches to eat at the top and set off, bracing myself with my walking-poles, wary of the hundreds of metres of rocky cliff that fell down to Llyn y Gadair on my left. The gusts were only occasional but they were strong, buffeting and bashing me, forcing me to stop and brace to make sure they didn’t bowl me over. I went steadily to the summit, keeping at least a tumble and roll away from the sheer drop at all times, rocks gradually whitening with accumulated frost and hail, small patches of snow. I looked at the snow and worried: what would Snowdon be like further north – would I manage to climb that, too?
It started to hail, sharp needles stinging my face. I turned against the wind until it died down, standing like a statue and allowing the sharp points of pain to spatter against my water-proofed, padded back. The clouds moved quickly overhead, patches of sun-shaft brightness alternating with dark storm-grey, raking over the route I’d climbed.
Up to the trig point, a photo, a video, a sandwich in the bothy and down again to where I left my rucksack. Two and a half hours. I reached the bottom of the mountain at 3pm. I could have camped anywhere around there – it was all open, inviting land – but I had an invitation to stay in Barmouth, just five miles further on. I could do it, I thought, a bed would be nice. So I descended to the road, as daylight became twilight and then darkened to pitch-black, down the steep steep hill, pained feet pressing against the front of my boots, and finally across the 700m long railway bridge that spanned the estuary. The bridge seemed endless in the darkness. I concentrated on the small circle of my torchlight highlighting the planks under my feet, the wind whistling through the wires that separated me from the trainline. My feet were stones by this point, just thudding, blunt and heavy, down to the ground, over and over. A train rumbled past me, the whole bridge shaking. I shone the torch down to the water and felt dizzy as soon as I saw the sea rushing inland, white foam stirred by the tide and wind. I was a small thing in the face of the mass of metal, the elements of wind and water.
I arrived, wind-shocked, at the warm and steamy Mermaid chippy. After an eleven-hour walk through high winds and hail, battering myself up a mountain and down again, I was done in. Dianna had phoned ahead; I could have whatever I wanted while I waited for her to finish her spinning class. The lady behind the counter couldn’t hear me – my voice becomes very small when I’m tired – but I managed to repeat myself a few times and make my request understood.
“Large chips, peas, gravy, mayonnaise, cup of tea and a can of coke.” A meal for comfort, not nutrition. I ate it all, slowly and carefully, and sat back, sighed. Restored.
Dianna’s home was comfortable and relaxed. She brought out the decorations; it was time to do the Christmas tree. I didn’t believe so many decorations could even fit on one tree, let alone look good but she kept encouraging me,
“Put more on, put more on,” and she was right. The completed tree looked wonderful.
She dropped me in Barmouth the following morning. It was a great day for walking but I loitered in the town, snuffling coffee and toast in the converted church café, African drums and woven bags hanging where the organ used to be, high ceiling painted with stars. My urge to be out there in the gale force winds, trussed up in my waterproofs and rucksack, fighting to see out of my tear-spattered glasses, wiping drips from my nose, shoulders hurting from my rucksack, pain striking into my heels every time my feet hit the ground… Well, it was strangely absent.
My childhood favourite rock-shop was now closed for winter, but I went to the other famous Barmouth bargain shop, where everything comes in round orange bins with shovels for you to help yourself to your choice of dusty muesli, dried figs, powdered soup or peanuts. I shovelled up a selection of chocolates and sweets, feeling a childish excitement over strawberry creams, honeycomb crunch, toffees, chocolate limes, pastel smooth dolly-mixture, hard jelly beans, soft jelly babies, chocolate smarties. Now I had a bag to dip into, give myself small treats every few hours, the pleasure of surprising myself with a varied sugar hit would help my spirits withstand December weather. I headed out of town, climbing up a steep, winding back road which started with small town houses that grew larger and more expensive-looking the higher I climbed, gazing back at the increasingly-costly view over the bay.
More high winds were on their way and I decided to take the lowland route, up the west side of the Rhinogs and cut through Bwlch Drws-Ardudwy. Most of the high route would have been fine to climb, but the descent from Y Llethr was a sheer slope that I really didn’t want to tackle in bad weather. It had been difficult to climb back in the autumn, a sheer gravel-lined gash in the turf that felt almost vertical. Descending it would be worse: a horrible slow step with knees aching, balancing with walking-poles, feet ready to slip out from underneath me, especially when strong winds were battering and blowing. Instead, I took a path through the middle ground between busy coast and rocky hills, in a gentle landscape of grasses and sheep, ancient stone bridges crossing small streams. That night I slept in Cwm Nantcol, a small sweet valley at the base of the Rhinogs. It had the feeling of a valley end, only a thin pass snaking on between the two mountains, the farms occupying the fertile land in the valley floor. Stone-walled field edges crept up higher until they could enclose no more, leaving the sprouting wild land above, sheep released to roam and tame it as best they could. I came past the farms, out past the last stone wall, and trod down an oval in the bracken and heather to make a springy bed, pushing the tent pegs almost horizontally into the thin layer of soil between roots and rock.
It was -2oC in the tent in the morning but I’d been cosy all night; this new sleeping bag was such a good investment.
I walked the day through the mountain pass and into the forest beyond, coming out on the plains of Trawsfynydd, with just a few more miles to the edge of the reservoir where I could cross a long wire bridge and end up in the village itself. Trawsfynydd feels isolated in such open plains, the nuclear power-station looming from the other side of the lake.
There was a youth hostel here and I went in, pleased to find a cheap place to sleep. Once the reception closed I was alone in the building, a strange and lonely feeling. I ate a disgusting meal of tuna and noodles, the only food I’d found suitable in the corner shop; my brain was tired and dull, blankly staring at shelves of colourful packaging. I couldn’t bring myself to finish this lump of claggy carbs, sitting alone in the empty faceless kitchen. Still, I woke at 4am to hear the wind and rain blowing outside my tiny bedroom window and was very glad I wasn’t camping.
Next day brought me a walk through farmland around the Trawsfynydd reservoir; the rain continued to come, sheeting down on me and soaking me through. I had to walk with one eye closed against the amount of water that was driving against my face. I stopped in the visitor-centre café and poured water out of my sleeves. I was truly saturated, peeling off my waterproofs to let them dry as much as possible in the brief hour I could spend inside. I nursed a pot of tea and watched the rain beat against the huge windows. I felt scared of winter and needed comfort. Were the next three months going to be like this? Always wet and fighting cold? And what about Snowdon? The route lay directly over Snowdon; I’d feel really disappointed if I went around it. If there was rain down here there would be snow up there. Coul
d I climb a wintry mountain with my huge rucksack and incomplete kit?
It continued to rain that afternoon as I walked to Maentwrog, the village that lay at the head of the Dwyryd Estuary, the first place where cars could cross the river. There was a large hotel there, the kind that was a coaching inn for several centuries, with large wide rooms and tucked-away nooks and crannies. I went for a huge Sunday lunch, a buffet where you can load huge spoonfuls of mashed potato and roast parsnips on top of your slices of beef and cover the whole thing in as much gravy as you like. I sat for a few hours eating and digesting the food, drinking a lovely pint, my waterproofs laid out on the surrounding chairs to dry out. The post-meal sloth grew and grew until I couldn’t bear the idea of strapping on my bag again, heading out of the hotel to go and find a soggy place to camp for a damp, uncomfortable, shivery night. I booked a room. I really couldn’t afford it, even though it was the smallest there was. It cost me £50 – more than I tried to spend in a week. I berated myself as I lay in the single bed; a plastic packet of biscuits and nice wallpaper wasn’t worth the drain on my resources. I had to get stronger, had to manage properly what I was trying to do here, not freak out at the last minute and spend money I couldn’t afford just to make my life temporarily easier. I stuffed in a cooked breakfast the next morning, ate endless rounds of toast, sneaking yoghurts into my rucksack from the buffet. Now I’d climb again, over the high land behind the Moelwyns.
There was a spooky valley of abandoned houses that led up from behind the railway line at Tanygrisiau, collapsed rafters poking into the air like a heap of bones, the whole valley empty, leading up to the disused slate mines of Cwmorthin at the top, stacked slate houses slowly degrading, tottering and leaning, roofs and windows gone. Cold air blew out of the mine entry, a hole in the hill that led into a dark and deep unknown. My torchlight showed nothing, the water-filled shaft-floor prevented me exploring any further, not that I was even tempted. I was heading another way I hadn’t travelled before, around the spine of Cnicht and into the empty high territory, bypassing Beddgelert below me and leading towards a Snowdon approach from the East.
I slept a night up on the high lands behind Cnicht. The path led through thin grasses poking through a blanket of moss, and I found a spot where the land dipped and I could bed down out of the wind. There was even a small round pool not far away, stony-bottomed and clear enough for me to safely take water. It was a cosy night, no real frost and the wind ruffling the tent where it whipped over the rise of land from the west. The gentle lavender dusk picked the whitened wiry grass stalks out in rose.
It was a slow start again the next day, the usual routine of poking my nose out from my sleeping-bag before bracing to reveal the rest of me, packing up as quickly as possible before a final sit-down beside my full rucksack for as long as my dropping body temperature would allow it. I was high up in the hills but the land was gentle, swoops and rises and the lovely springiness of compacted peat to support my footsteps. I passed small pools of collected water and rusting pieces of ancient fencework. When I looked behind, past the knobbly peak of Cnicht, I saw the Glaslyn estuary where it joined Tremadoc Bay – low tide and silvered paths of water scribbled across the empty sands.
As I came to the top of the final rise, where the land dropped away down to the thin valley bottom and the road, Snowdon was there – unbelievably, hugely, right there. The whole mountain range was in view – I’d never seen it so clearly. Normally Snowdon appeared as a point, just a head crowning distantly behind other crowding rises, or a bulk seen crouched imposingly above. But across a wide rift of a valley I saw the whole thing, floating squat, weighty and…snow-topped. It was the moment I’d been dreading. I was supposed to climb it the following day. I’d known it was snowy, known I was heading for difficulty, but the visual assault of the huge mountain in its entirety brought a blank certainty. I couldn’t get up that. I thought of the Watkins path ahead, sometimes a sheer tiptoe of rock footfalls in gravel and loose earth, the rattle of small stones ready to run away under each footweight, and sometimes a clamber between rocks, lifting each heavy boot knee-high to reach onto another bouldered step and lever up a heavy, burdened body.
I thought of my bamboo poles stabbing weakly at icy stone, badly held in closed fists, ready to slip and send me tottering and tumbling, weight-laden and clumsy. I thought of my boots, worn down and leaky, the rubber soles worn to slippery smoothness. I felt unprepared, unkitted-out for a snowy rock traverse and quailed in the face of it. Snowdon had loomed large in my mind during my frosty trek up the centre of the country, the most challenging part of my route; I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge that I was unprepared.
I spent the night in the Pen-y-Pass hostel, feeling slightly separated from these happy young people who’d just spent the day ascending the highest mountain in Wales. I maundered in my bed, spreading kit out to dry and ignoring the fussy people who shared the dormitory. Shân, my north Wales stalwart, lived close to the next valley and I arranged to stay with her the following night. I could even leave my gear in the hostel, she’d pick it up during her commute and then pick me up later from the hotel just down the road from her house. All I had to do was walk over the shoulder of the Glyders, down past Tryfan and hitch a few miles to the hotel.
It wasn’t a straightforward day. I wound upwards over swollen rushing streams, the water dusky blue and toppling downhill, swollen with ice-melt, and came up to the rocky shoulder of the mountain-top. Here was where I could detour up to the top of the Glyders, go and see the bouldered castle of the winds. But the clouds had descended and I was in mist already. A large patch of snow marked the place where the routes split, and I decided to see it as a sign of conditions higher up and descend instead. It was a relatively simple route down through the heather clumps and rocks, along the side of a swooping bowl that contained another mountain in the curl of it: Tryfan, a thin triangle of rock that was a sheer-sided scramble and the toughest Snowdonia mountain of them all. I’d pop out on the road that ran through the Ogwen valley and hitch a few miles along to the pub at Capel Curig. Which was fine until I became lost. The cloud thickened and I realised that I should have come to a sequence of lakes. Instead the heather and rocks hadn’t stopped and I couldn’t see further than about twenty metres to orientate myself with the map. I sat for a while, stumped, my waterproofs insulating me from the worst of the wetness, stopping to wipe the cloud droplets from my glasses and wonder, humorously, where I might be. I wasn’t too worried, I knew that I’d come over the mountain and was heading in the right direction. As long as I continued to descend I’d reach the Ogwen valley floor, I just wasn’t sure exactly where I’d pop out. A few hours of careful clambering later, I made the short hitchhike to the Tyn-y-coed pub with a man delivering tyres from Anglesey.
Rain had drained inwards, sweat had soaked outwards and I was saturated. I sat close to the coal fire and ordered a cherry brandy hot chocolate, promising to pay when my purse arrived. There were a few other walkers in the room, silver-haired and relaxed in their expensive kit. One started talking and eventually brought me some of his clothes to change into. He was right, I was never going to warm up if I kept the same damp clothes on. I reluctantly accepted his offer, feeling gauche and unprepared for the day’s conditions, ready to change back into the damp uncomfortable clothes when I got picked up.
Shân collected me in a whirl of chatter and friendliness, home to hot water and a cosy sofa. We checked the weather forecast for the next day and it gave gale-force winds. I’d have to miss the high ground again, third day in a row. I’d take a valley cut through to the side of the Carneddau, winding through Llyn Cowlyd to reach the Conwy valley at Dolgarrog. Even the low route made for a hard enough day; down in the cleft shelter between the high peaks the wind blasted through the narrow valley and slapped the lake into white ruffles. It knocked me over several times, catching my blocky rucksack and twisting me off balance and down. I learned to watch the surface of the water and brace myself as another gust came ri
ppling down the length of the lake towards me, finally ducking down behind the wall that separated the lake-valley from the boggy fields beyond, and breaking out my emergency mint-cake for fortitude.
I crossed into a wide, flat field and couldn’t find the stile the guidebook promised; the grass kept breaking down into puddles and mucky wetness, making it difficult to find my way. There was a barn ahead with a van parked outside: Dulas Ltd, a Machynlleth company. Turning up at the barn door with windblown tales and foggy glasses, I poked my head around to see Dyfi valley friends. Waving my arms in the air, pouring a run of water drips from the elbow of each bent arm, I rambled about the stile and about my journey. Follow the pipe, they said, and you’ll find the road down to the valley below. A thick black pipe ran from the dam at the end of the lake, I didn’t ask why.
I sat in a haze of damp clothes in the Post Office at Dolgarrog, eking out a very welcome pot of warm tea and picking my way through a £1 bag of broken biscuits. The Post Office had a closed café in the corner, and I was allowed to squeeze into a table and wait for a woman to pick me up. She was a disappointment, glossy and closed, telling me I was crazy. I wondered why she’d opened her home to me if she couldn’t handle the reality of a damp adventurer who simply made her feel nervous and unwelcome. Dinner was a precooked chicken leg brought home from a local food factory, eaten with oven chips and instant gravy. I watched Frozen with her son and gloomily ate chocolate. I wasn’t in the mood for my host’s reservation and didn’t handle it well.
Sometimes I’d arrive at someone’s house and, even though they’d chosen to invite me home, they wouldn’t be relaxed. I’d just have to go with it, accept whatever they had to offer me, in a personable sense, whether they wanted to talk or ignore me, whether they were used to having people in their house or not. I couldn’t choose how each person acted in their own home, whether they wanted to hear my whole cancer story or just chat about insignificant things – whether they wanted to offer me booze and have a celebratory night or whether it was an everyday tea. I had to react, to an extent, to whatever they had on offer. It was my job to make the situation comfortable: easing the effort of hosting a stranger was my payment for the reward of a shower and bed.
One Woman Walks Wales Page 25