By: Blonde Two
DAY TWO
If you recall, Day One of my Welsh Bothy trip saw Running Girl and I setting off; a) Far too late. b) From the wrong place. c) With very heavy packs.
I knew that Day Two was going to include a longer walk (15K) across the hills from one reservoir valley to another, so we dragged ourselves out of our sleeping bags reasonably early … and then faffed … a lot!
Actually, most of the faffing occurred whilst still inside the sleeping bags. An experienced girl can eat breakfast, brush her teeth and put on a pre-warmed bra without extricating herself from her snuggly cocoon. She can also discuss men, beards, politics and poo (often in the same sentence!)
The Ordnance Survey map snippet above shows most of our route. Up from the Lluest Cwm Bach bothy to the top of the Craig Goch Reservoir (sounds easy but we chose the bog instead of the long detour); and then over the hills along the byway or Monks Trod to the top of the Claerwyn reservoir. We didn’t see any monks or 4×4 vehicles, but I have a theory about this. From either end the track does everything a track should; it is clearly defined, has an element of width to it and sports marvellous views.
In the middle section (about 5K) however this track does not behave well; in fact, it does a very good impression of being a bog instead of a track. Not just any bog either (part of it is actually a nature reserve) this bog was too wide to go round, too confusing to navigate and too cold to go fall over in. It was, in fact, so cold that we discovered a new Blonde phenomenon i.e. Bog-Snow! Note the, “I’m only pretending to smile now!” expression on my face.
I had a bit of a moment in the bog; but I will tell you about that another day.
Because I thought our track was a Roman Road, Running Girl and I were cursing (in ever more vulgar terms) the Romans for choosing such a stupid route. As it turns out it was Cistercian Monks we should have been castigating, so apologies to Caesar!
We made it to the other side eventually, but ran out of water (ironic because we were surrounded by its many forms), lost a lot of time (ironic because we could have got out of bed earlier) and got a bit confused about our precise location (ironic because I am supposed to know how to do that!)
Despite the bogs, the snow and the irony, we just about made it off the hill before dark (there were stars); but that was the good news. The not-so-good but completely-our-fault news was that we still had 5K to go before we reached the bothy. Luckily we had found our way to this one in the dark on our visit last year (are you spotting a theme here?) so we didn’t have too much to worry about …
Except that is, for Emily …
Great stuff. This is the real thing. Akin to Scottish sections on a LEJOG. You do need to know what you are doing, part of which hangs on accomplished faffing skills, so no need to worry on that score.
Sounds as though Emily succumbed to cannibalism ?
I was amazed how much I learnt just from the two days. I really want to go back again now!
Who knows about Emily, she is a scary character when you need to pop out in the middle of the night, but we are kind of getting to like her!
Long time since I was lost in a WELSH bog – perhaps I should sample its delights (?) again. (When the weather is warmer and preferably without ysbryd and tylwyth teg in ty bach.) Don’t think the Romans bothered much about routes. Think they just picked a compass point and marched relentlessly to it, trampling all under foot on the way. If they marched across Wales, you have probably been paddling on their heads because the weight of their 30 kilograms of armour and equipment would have dragged them down in the bogs.
[…] were a few bothy type things missing but I was quite pleased about that, they included: damp walls, scary graffiti messages, bags of strange food, ghosts and mice (these last two may be the same […]