Arriving in Bryncrug, having reversed my route over another two days of walking and camping, I was almost back at the coastal path again, sodden from a surprise rain-storm. I was too lazy to put my waterproof trousers on, as usual, so got soaking wet as usual. I’m no kind of survivalist. I’d spent the previous night in a barn – no shelter out on the open moorland of Cwm Hafod Oer, and I didn’t fancy crawling into a soggy, windblown tent so I found a wooden bench in the shelter of a quiet barn. Remove the sack of lime and the empty sheep-drench tin and, bingo, there was my bed. The farmer came in after dark, unexpectedly.
“I’m sorry,” I said, frozen on the bench, an interloper in his empty property.
“No problem,” he said, more concerned about the dead lamb in the pen in the corner.
They’d been so quiet I hadn’t realised there were animals in there. He shooed the mother out, cursing. I saw her the next morning, hanging around in the gravelled enclosure, head drooping, limping.
I’d meant to camp on the night of my arrival in Bryncrug, in the wet again, but Sarah was only five miles away, over the hill.
“I’ll pick you up,” she said, like the big-hearted nurturer she is. I had no signal until Bryncrug but there she was, at short notice. “Yeah, no worries, love, I’ll be there in half an hour.”
I had a bath, rubbed my feet, bedded down on her sofa.
Sarah took my bag ahead so I could walk freely, past Tywyn and then along the long beach to Aberdyfi, treading the line between the silvered dunes and the tide, sun reddening my face, sand soft under my boots, a thread of footsteps laid out behind me. I treated myself to a cream tea when I reached the town, then it was a walk along the road to a holiday apartment, thanks to Paul at The Old Stables. It was lush, luxurious and all mine for the night. What generosity!
THE DYFI VALLEY WAY
Route description: A beautiful walk tracing either side of the Dyfi river, from Aberdyfi up to the peak of Aran Fawddwy, near Dinas Mawddwy, and returning on the south side of the river to finish on the opposite point of the estuary at Borth.
Length: 101.4 miles
Total ascent: 6422m
Maximum height: 876m
Dates: 14 April – 5 May 2015
Time taken: 22 days
Nights camping/nights hosted: 1/21
Days off: 10
Average miles per day: 11.1
From Bryncrug to Borth I didn’t stay too long on the coastal path before I detoured inland again. I’d spotted the potential for a circular route during my route planning. The Dyfi Valley Way ran along one side of the river from the sea to the source where it dribbled off the peak of Aran Fawddwy, and traced back to the sea again on the southern side. One hundred and eight miles of familiar territory, this was the place I’d called home for the two years before I set out on this journey. I’d have friendly faces and warm beds for the whole length of it.
The Dyfi Valley Way began in Aberdyfi and finished in Borth. To make sure that I could say I’d walked the whole of the Wales Coastal Path I decided to walk it to Borth, then retrace my steps to Aberdyfi and set out on the Dyfi Valley Way, continuing south once I reached Borth again. It meant I walked the panoramic way between Aberdyfi and Pennal three times, as the Dyfi Valley Way followed the same route!
Here’s the farm where I cut through a field to the road, here’s the house where the road runs out, here’s the horseshoe mark cut deep into the boulder, here’s the double-locked gate, here’s where that dog barked at me, here’s where the beautiful flowers are, here’s where I cut through the woodland. On again now, for the third time, all the way to Pennal where the Dyfi Valley Way took a left, heading up the valley away from the coast and through the forest, down to Pantperthog.
I gave Polly a ring and stayed with her family for one final night. I’d had three nights in a bell tent in her garden as she ferried me between my trekking points, giving me the rest I needed and absorbing me into the typical chaos of a house containing young, adorable children.
It was a peaceful day heading up into the Dyfi Forest towards Dinas Mawddwy, padding along through closely-planted pine trees, along dry dusty packed-rock roads, finding paths that led between the isolated farms and houses which had survived the compulsory land-purchases. I passed derelict Capel Soar, slate slabs slowly being pushed from roofless walls by the trees which grew there in place of a congregation. Once this valley would have held farms, workers’ huts, a school; now peaceful ranks of pine stood silent, bird calls echoing through the trees.
I got frustrated in the final few miles before reaching Dinas Mawddwy. The unwalked path ran out into a sea of brambles, impossible to push through. I had to retrace my steps and cut along the side of the pine forest, stopping every so often to watch the fighter jets flit alongside me, their shadows racing to catch them up along the steep hillsides.
I didn’t last long in the company of hospitable Kim and his two friendly dogs. Despite the dogs insistently pushing their noses into the crook of my elbow, I fell asleep on the sofa by eight: sun-blasted, mile-weakened.
The next day I set out to walk to Llanuwchllyn and back again. I’d climb up and over Aran Fawddwy and then return around the base of it from the opposite side of the river, coming around Creiglyn Dyfi Lake where it curled into the crater side of the mountain. Thirty miles in two days, crossing a mountain: a tough journey. My feet didn’t normally let me walk so far.
Oh, the bed was so comfortable, some kind of mattress covering I could just sink into and spend the day on but no, not yet. I hadn’t earned a day off, not with all the breaks I was taking to go and see my brother. I got up, met Jackie as she came home, bleary-eyed from the night shift, saw her off to bed and set out, my rucksack carrying the bare minimum for an overnight camp.
First I met Clara, who came to accompany me for the first few miles towards the base of the hill climb. We walked in the sunshine, promising a hot day ahead up, the back roads passing small farms, sheep roaming, lambs bleating for their mothers. Clara turned back eventually, normal life calling, and I climbed on, coming to the steep beginning of the mountain, up a few hundred metres, stopping at a water-trickle to wash off my sweat and sun-cream, reapplying again. I climbed and climbed with frequent pauses, excusing myself that it was to admire the view, looking back at how far I’d come.
Eventually I was at the cairn marking the top of Aran Fawddwy. There was a white heat-haze covering the far distance, but I could make out the distinctive lumps of the Rhinog range, tracing in my mind my couple of days climbing up and down them with Stu. Nearer to me was the brute lump of Dduallt, the mountain I’d walked to in search of the source of the River Wye, the Arenigs further away to the north; I’d walked around them, dropped off near Llyn Conwy by Alun, the friendly farmer. Then coming, down to Bala, there was the blue puddle of Llyn Tegid that I’d walked around. Below was the valley I’d walked alongside last week, following Mary Jones’ path. I retraced my footsteps across this view, saluting the months of effort and satisfaction.
Walking slowly down the ridges towards Llanuwchllyn, my knees ached on the downhills. I tried to estimate the time I would arrive: 7pm I hoped. Enough time to rest a bit and then try for another few miles before sunset; the next day would be an eighteen miler unless I knocked another couple off tonight. It was 7.10pm when I staggered towards the car-park by the bridge, too tired to walk the extra quarter-mile to the pub, no time to linger there anyway. I took enough time to take off my shoes, sit on a rock, eat my evening meal and wiggle my toes. Then that was it, I heaved up my bag once again and walked slowly on aching feet towards the valley at the base of the Aran ridge, looking for a place to sleep.
I found it after a couple of miles: a perfect piece of old, ungrazed land, crumbled stone wall near a stream, oak-tree canopy and a flat piece of ground in the centre. I kicked some chunkier twigs to the side and settled to rest, watching the stars come out between the tree branches.
Early start the next morning, pausing for breakfast on
ce my stomach started rumbling. I looked up at the ridgeline of the Arans above. The outline was familiar and I realised that I was heading towards Nant-y-Barcut, the farm I’d been taken to when I was offered a bed in Llanuwchllyn by Heledd. She’d called the outline of Aran Benllyn above the farm ‘the old man’, saying he had his hat on when the clouds covered the peak. Should I say hello? My path would take me right past her front door. I thought it over as I walked up the lane towards the farm. Perhaps she wouldn’t remember me; it had been almost a year. Perhaps she’d think I was crazy, some smelly hobo with an equally odorous rucksack turning up uninvited. Maybe she’d think I was ridiculous for still walking, plodding on like Don Quixote, endlessly in search of 3000 miles. I came closer and decided to put these foolish thoughts to one side. I had to knock, just to say hello at least. Of course Heledd recognised me, she was following me on Facebook! It all worked out, nice cup of tea and a chat and I was on my way – without rucksack!
Heledd had offered to take it to the other side of the hill: a steep climb for me, a detour around the mountain pass for her. She kept asking if I wanted a sandwich; I kept saying no, being proud, being independent, but at the last minute I relented, said yes, it would be nice. I only had sugary treats to last me until I reached Dinas and a solid meal that night.
It took three hours for me to reach the church porch where Heledd had agreed to drop my bag. At the head of Cwm Croes, where the farm-track ended, I passed Cwm-fynnon, a small, low farmworker’s cottage, the shabby door held closed with orange twine. Three butterflies battered desperately at the cobwebbed window, wings worn thin in their torment. I tried to open the window and help them but it was no good. I unwound the door handle and went inside to the remnants of an older way of life. Broken red-rose china on a table, ancient ashes in an open grate, a wooden pew against the wall. The fluttering of the butterflies against the window was loud in the sleeping cottage. I closed my hands around each one in turn, raising them to the open window and freedom, then left the cottage, rewinding the twine around the doorknob, looking around furtively as I walked away, unsure of my right to enter.
I walked, crab-wise, up the steep valley-head and down the other side, joining the small Dyfi stream where it wound and tumbled down from the Creiglyn Dyfi Lake. Eventually, after a steep descent and a road-walk in burning sunshine, I reached the shade of the church porch, finding my rucksack and the packed lunch Heledd had made for me. Deep delight as I lowered myself onto the cool stone seat to enjoy this unexpected feast. Sandwiches, crisps, cake and fruit. Such a small thing for her, an intense joy for me.
I walked on: just six miles more. I could see the valley split where I’d walked with Clara the previous day, the head of Aran Fawddwy receding behind me, the conjoining of valleys ahead of me where Dinas Mawddwy nestled into the unseen dip, the settlement at the crossing of routes.
Made it. 7pm, just in time to see Jackie before she disappeared for the night shift, inhale a big plate of spaghetti and salad, stroke the dogs for a while, chat to Kim, shower, bed.
I broke the walk again the next day, going back to the Midlands for a few days to welcome Owen home from hospital. I didn’t like entering the urban area, with its car fumes and UKIP posters, houses pressed close together. To stop and start was also frustrating; it felt like I wasn’t properly concentrating on either thing, but it was the way it had to be. Owen was coming home after three months in hospital and I wanted to ease him into his first week back in a house. He lived by himself and would suddenly be expected to do all the daily tasks of a normal life: washing up, cleaning, bill-paying, cooking, monitoring his hunger, his fatigue. It was all new to him, yet completely familiar.
He listened to his music collection, hearing the freshness of the music for the first time but simultaneously experiencing the memories that special tunes fired for him. He was OK and not OK, all at the same time: free to leave hospital and enter back into his own life, but he’d completely changed, whereas everything else remained the same. The strangeness of his brain injury didn’t show on the outside. It wasn’t an easily labelled disability, but apparent in an unusual way of expressing himself, a strange blankness with certain words, a difficulty in organising himself, needing long periods of rest. There was no guarantee that he was capable of returning to work. Yet his situation contained so much joy, he was alive when he very much might not have been; our family’s love for one another was unexpectedly at the forefront of life and constantly reinforced. We were all really happy to be around him, laughing at his foibles, making humour out of his mistakes, cheering when his broken jaw healed well enough to allow him to put a whole crème egg into his mouth, the way he’d always liked to eat them.
I registered to vote during this period, as a person of no fixed abode. The solemnity of what I’d done, the official labelling of myself, settled on me for the first time. I’d actually made myself homeless, so fixed was I on the idea of telling women about the symptoms of ovarian cancer. The journey had overtaken everything else in my life, there was nothing else. No home, no work, nothing else to fill my time. Walking was all I wanted to do, walk and raise awareness, collect donations. Was this obsession OK? Was my mental health intact? Other fears preyed on my mind too. I currently had less money and security than I’d ever had in my life. I had no idea if this was safe or reasonable, just that I had a way of living that worked for what I wanted to do right now. I had a system that allowed me to walk long distance, I knew how to cope with it, I had the right kit and just about enough money to finish what I’d started, to walk roughly another 1000 miles. That was enough for now. The future could wait, whatever shape I was making for it.
Back in Dinas Mawddwy I shouldered my pack again, heading back to the sea where I’d walk around the coastal path and down to South Wales, through sun and rain and wild nights and strangers’ beds, through experiences unknown. I passed through the houses and hands of many friends in the Dyfi Valley: Tom and Laura, Vicky and James, Ruth and Naps, Annie, Megan, Kate…
The next time I saw Machynlleth would be at the end of the walk. I’d walk around the coast of South Wales, detouring inland to walk four more rivers and that would be it, just up the River Wye and home, back to Machynlleth for the final time. I swapped my boots again; this pair had walked 1000 miles and were bulging and cracked, slip-soled tired travellers, bent and worn by their journey. I stocked up on small things from my supply-dump, chomped final chocolate bars and posted supplies ahead to friendly addresses in Bristol and Pembroke. That was it, I was heading south. See you at the end, Machynlleth and friends!
CEREDIGION AND PEMBROKESHIRE COASTAL PATH
Route description: The most beautiful area of the Wales Coastal Path, the Pembrokeshire coastal path in particular is a long established National Trail, opened in 1970 – a spectacular cliff coastline walk in many places, providing views of the rugged northern coast and then rounding the corner at St David’s to the softer rocks of the south coast and its many sandy beaches.
Length: 240 miles
Total ascent: 12,826m
Maximum height: 167m
Dates: 6 – 31 May 2015
Time taken: 26 days
Nights camping/nights hosted: 8/18
Days off: 4
Average miles per day: 11
The days were longer now, and the temperature had risen. I luxuriated in daylight, took breaks without fear of losing body-heat or walking time. I slept outside without a tent once again, plonked myself anywhere in green-grassed solitude, no longer having to stop at 5pm twilight or immediately snuggle into my feather-lined cocoon.
Summer days meant carelessness, stretching out on my back, wriggling into last year’s dry bracken for a post-lunch catnap. Summer brought scent: hot coconutty gorse, fresh pine fronds, thick carpets of bluebells, grass, greenery, growth. The land was returning to full, fecund life and my first few weeks of the coastal path were spent enjoying full bluebell-power.
Without having to fight the weather, walking
got easier. The series of enforced breaks seemed to be doing my feet a lot of good too – first the six weeks of no walking as I orbited around my brother in hospital and then the regular breaks to go and visit him. My daily distances started creeping up – fifteen, seventeen, nineteen miles.
There seemed to be no stories to tell; this incredible life was normal now, I just kept walking. My sister came for five days, and we walked together. She’d come from Mexico for a summer of family visits, coincidentally timing her flight with my brother’s accident, arriving just a few days after he woke from the coma. We’d spent a couple of months together in the maelstrom of his recovery, tight together in the same house, loving and supporting each other through this incredibly hard time. My sister was my calm place, my source of wisdom. Now it was time to relax together, for her to visit my life and share the wonder of what I was doing. Together we traversed the short seventy miles of the Ceredigion Coastal Path, where the land came from the flat plains of Ynyslas and Aberaeron then gradually climbed and climbed, the ripples of land becoming higher as we grew closer to Pembrokeshire, the cliffs higher and the drops to small beach coves steeper.
Walking with Rose made me realise how fit I was and, conversely, how unhealthy I was. She’d always been thinner than me, with a different, more athletic, body type. She was willowy, I was sturdy and rounded. It was OK, I wasn’t jealous, just appreciative of how beautiful she was, proud of her for looking so good. She went to the gym regularly at home, had taken self-defence, core strength training. I felt slightly defensive about walking with her.
Sometimes I felt as if this wasn’t a challenge at all, that this was just a beautiful walk with loads of people helping and supporting me, making life easier. Then Rose came to walk with me and I jokingly pushed her up steep slopes as she slowed down, helped tend to her blisters and realised that this was in fact a huge challenge; I’d just toughened up over the course of it, incredibly so. I helped her as she struggled with a too-heavy bag, feeling the pain of wrongly-fitting, borrowed boots and realised that in comparison I was worn in, finally, after months of exhaustion!
One Woman Walks Wales Page 30