Shell Island - Day 3
I had an excellent night's sleep last night. I decided to wear my earplugs, and woke at 8.05am to Claire moaning that I'd been snoring, and the alarm had been going off for 5 minutes. I didn't hear a peep out of those noisy birds though. Or anything else for that matter.
We managed to drag ourselves out of the tent after about half an hour (an improvement on yesterday), and I made some porridge whilst Claire made sandwiches out of some homemade bread that she'd baked on last night's barbecue, and the remains of last night's sausages. We set off at 10am, which was an hour later than we'd planned, but not too bad.
It took us about an hour to drive to the start of today's walk. We'd spent some time last night deciding the best route to take up Cadair Idris. We eventually decided on the shortest, most scenic, but steepest route. 6 miles in total with about 1,000 metres of height gain (and, of course, height loss, which in my opinion is the difficult bit).
The walk started off climbing through some lovely woodlands with a river and waterfalls, up to a turquoise blue lake which made a perfect sausage sandwich stop. I must say that the sandwiches were delicious, especially the bread. Partly because they actually were delicious, and partly because I was chastised for not mentioning the bread baking in yesterday's blog.
After lunch, it was onto the ridge leading up to the summit, which was much easier going than I was expecting. Not so for Claire, who was suffering the after effects of the squats in yesterday's kettlebell workout.
There were views for miles in every direction as we ascended, and as we got to the top, the view towards Snowdon opened out before us. It was nice to be able to see something from the top of a mountain for a change!
At the summit, there was a rather annoying group of southerners (possibly from Essex, but I'm rubbish with accents) who were "summit hogging". In my opinion, and Claire agrees too, when you reach the trig point, the correct mountain etiquette is to climb on top of it, pose for photos, and then relocate nearby for a break/lunch/nap or whatever takes your fancy. Not so for the Essex crew. They decided to sit in a ring on the little concrete base of the trig point, talk loudly in Essex accents, flaunt their unsuitable mountain clothing (a denim skirt!!!!), and make the summit a very unwelcoming place.
After about 5 minutes we got bored of waiting for them to move, and barged our way through to the trig point to claim the summit. We didn't take any photos because of the denim skirted southerners in the background.
From the summit, we spotted a couple of blokes we'd crossed paths with earlier, by the turquoise lake. They appeared to be facing in the approximate direction of Mecca (east-ish), and were on their knees praying. They'd both looked pretty unfit earlier, in fact, we thought one might actually die on the ascent as he was that red in the face. We walked down from the trig point (ousted by the swarms of southerners), and as we walked towards the men we noticed that in actual fact, one was checking his mobile phone inside his rucksack, and the other was lighting a cigarette in the shelter of his rucksack. We stopped for a quick chat, and they couldn't stop laughing when we told them we thought they'd found Allah on top of the mountain. We also found an alternative explanation for the red face, as they were both swigging from cans of beer!
After that, we walked along the ridge, which was actually a huge grassy path on a gentle slope, before starting our descent.
This was the bit I hadn't been looking forward to. Since childhood, I've always found downhill more difficult than uphill (thanks for the inherited knees Dad), and it's got more difficult the older I've got. Today's downhill was a particularly big and steep one. I'd been wearing a pre-emptive knee support all day, in anticipation of this moment, and, at the time of writing, it seems to have done a good job. My knees feel better than after coming down Shutlingsloe last week, and that's only about a third of the size. We'll see how they feel tomorrow.
We made it back to the car, checked the clock, and found that our speed for the day was approximately 1mph! 6 miles in just under 6 hours! That does include two generous food and tea breaks, and plenty of mini-breaks to admire the view/check the map/tie shoelace or any number of excuses for a breather.
We've had some nice barbecued chicken and cous cous for dinner and are planning an easier day tomorrow walking along the beach.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Shell Island
No comments:
Post a Comment