Friday 18th and Saturday 19th October 2013
This weekend was one of my weekends off, and as the weather forecast seemed OK (not raining ALL the time), we decided to have a night away in George in Snowdonia.
Claire was (conveniently) working in Betws-y-coed on the Friday, so I spent a few hours window shopping in town and riding my bike in the forest. Now I’m not a particularly adventurous cyclist, so I only really wanted to ride on the forest tracks. The road up to the forest was bad enough, with a gradient of about 95% or so it seemed, and then when I finally got there I accidentally ended up on the Marin trail, which is a proper mountain bike trail for people who know what they’re doing. After thinking I was going to die several times, I finally emerged onto one of the forest tracks and had quite a nice time whizzing around until it was time to meet Claire.
Claire burst out laughing as soon as she saw me, as I was coated in mud from head to toe. I was much more muddy than I’d have liked to have been considering I wouldn’t have access to a shower for over 24 hours. Fortunately I’d worn long legged and sleeved clothes, so a few baby wipes, a bit of elbow grease, and some clean clothes and dry pants was all it took to get me clean and dry again.
After that we went to the Cotswold Rock Bottom store to look at a tent I’d spotted during my window shopping earlier. We’ve been after a very lightweight (less than 2kg) tent for some overnight wild camps on the hills in the warmer months. The tent I’d spotted weighed 1 point something kg, and uses walking poles instead of the usual tent poles supplied with the tent. This may sound strange, but not only does it reduce the weight of the tent, but it also means that if you’ve hardly used your walking poles all day, you wont be so resentful about carrying them around when they form a crucial part of your tent. As it appeared to be brand new, and we’d negotiated a ridiculously cheap price, we snapped it up. We also snapped up some new, designer, lightweight walking poles, so it turned into rather an expensive trip overall.
We stayed the night in the same off road layby as we did last time we went to Snowdonia for the night. I don’t think I blogged about that though. It’s alongside the A5, beneath Tryfan and next to Llyn Ogwen. An ideal spot to park a camper van for free and be ready to leap out straight onto the hills in the morning.
It threw it down with rain all night, and was still doing so until about 9am. We got ourselves up and dressed, wondering whether we needed a plan B, when finally the rain stopped. We wolfed the rest of our porridge down, and at about 10.30am set off on foot towards Ogwen Cottage, which was not only the start point for our walk, but has some nice shiny new toilets complete with Welsh slate floor and wall tiles.
Today’s walk was up Glyder Fawr and Glyder Fach, which are two big mountains next to each other. They had also become a bit of a demon to us, as we’d twice failed to climb them on previous attempts. The first attempt was when we intended to combine them with the ascent of Tryfan when we stayed on Shell Island earlier in the year (I think I forgot to blog about that day too). It turned out that we’d gone the hardest possible way up Tryfan, and by the time we got up there we were so exhausted that a scramble up Bristly Ridge had no appeal whatsoever. The second time was a couple of months ago when we started going up, decided we were too tired, and went to Portmerion and ate cake instead. Today we were determined to conquer them come hell or high water.
The start of the walk was pretty easy. A fairly good path up a not too steep slope. But once we started getting nearer the summit we had to start scrambling over some of those big Welsh rocks that feel like they’re coated with cooking oil when they’re damp. I slipped over once on the way up and twice on the way down and have got the bruises to prove it. Getting to the summit of Glyder Fach was extremely difficult, as by then the rain was coming down sideways, and the Welsh rocks had got even bigger and even greasier. We made it up (and back down onto the summit plateau), but by then I had that sinking feeling you get when it’s not been raining for that long, you’re not even half way through your walk, and you can feel a cold trickle of water running down your leg inside your (supposedly) waterproof trousers. The key word there is COLD in case any of you are starting to think I have a weak bladder.
We pressed on to the summit of Glyder Fawr, by which time my legs were soaked, and the water from my trousers had started to soak upwards into my T shirt. I was cold and grumpy and annoyed with Claire who spent an age putting her gloves on while I got even colder. I was mainly annoyed because this act implied that her hands were the only body part that was cold, which made me rather jealous.
When the rain went off a bit and we got out of the wind I cheered up a bit with a cup of tea and a giant slab of chocolate coated shortbread.
By the time we arrived back at the slate toilets, I’d warmed up nicely and my pants felt only slightly damp.
It’s fair to say that the demon of the Glyders hasn’t really been exorcised yet. We have both vowed never to go near them again unless it is bone dry without a cloud in the sky.
I’d just like to digress now onto the topic of hair. There are many hair disasters that can besiege an outdoorsy person with hair longer than a grade 1. Wind, rain, sweat, mud and headwear play havoc with your locks. You’ve probably noticed that in most of my outdoorsy photos I’m wearing a buff (a type of stretchy bandana). This is an invaluable piece of outdoor equipment both for controlling hair, and well as warming ears and necks, and even filtering water if you were really desperate and didn’t have an antichrist bottle to hand.
However, a couple of days ago I decided I’d had enough of permanently having my long hair tied back or wrapped in a buff, and instructed my hairdresser to chop most of it off, which she did! So whilst I like my new hair, it does make me susceptible to a new range of hair disasters.
The first of the day was “camper van bed head”, which speaks for itself. With only a small sink, cold water, and no mirror you can imagine it’s difficult to make yourself look presentable. So I didn’t bother, especially as Claire had (mis)informed me that I looked fine.
The second was bushy hair. My hair is naturally curly and likes to go big when exposed to a damp breeze. However, bushy hair can easily be counteracted with a buff.
But buffs (and woolly hats) tend to bring on the even more serious problem of hair becoming “matted like felt”. I have stolen this description from Muriel Gray’s book “The First Fifty” which is about a Munro bagging 7 stone peroxide blonde, who also suffers from outdoor hair issues, vertigo, and the occasional tantrum.
My “matted like felt” look involved the front turning into a bushy quiff, and the rest being stuck to my head with dried sweat and gel. Not a good look.
But on arrival at the slate toilets we did spot a woman with an even worse hair disaster than me. She was sporting the “Medusa” look, which is when someone with long hair wears a head band, and the wind, rain and sweat combine to form tendrils of hair which stick out from behind the headband in a wild and hilarious fashion. I really should have passed on my wisdom about buffs, but I thought she might take offence.
I’m now enjoying a glass of wine at home before I take to the shower to wash off all the mud and sweat, and tame the hair.
