My skin is still tingling this evening after returning home from a weekend of motorcycling and fell walking.
On Thursday, I made the four-hour journey down to Wells in Somerset on the DR650. I like this journey because it takes me across furze-covered moorland, through my teenage stomping ground around Andover, past Stonehenge and then out across the wildness of Salisbury Plain. The journey was only slightly marred on this occasion by the fact that I spent a good deal of the time riding straight into the winter sun which blinded me so thoroughly that I couldn't read the road signs and kept missing my turnings.
My plan was to leave the bike for a week with Gabriel of 'Zen Overland'. Gabriel's business is located just outside Wells in what was originally a magnificent stone-built Victorian train shed with a dramatic wooden roof. He is going to custom-build a pannier rack for the DR and provide it with a set of hard panniers of his own design. He is also going to order a number of goodies for me from the US, Italy and the UK: a sump guard, a 25-litre Acerbis tank, a fuel filter, some decent hand-guards, a Renthal handlebar, a headlight guard, a large side-stand pad, a pair of LED lights, and a Laminar Lip adjustable windscreen. The gear from America he can get cheaper than I can because he makes regular bulk orders, and he is willing to pass the savings onto me.
I talked with him for over an hour about the work I wanted on the bike, and at the same time tossed balls across the workshop floor at the insistence of Bess, his lovable and tirelessly enthusiastic Staffie cross. I think in that hour I learned more from Gabriel about bikes than in any other conversation I've ever had. I also learned a lot about dogs.
Once everything was sorted, I hefted my rucksack off the DR, left my riding gear bagged up in Gabriel's workshop, and settled myself down in his car. He then gave me a lift to the bus station in Wells. It's a lovely old town, with a magnificent and characterful gothic cathedral. One bus trip, two train journeys and three hours later, I was in Malvern and walking down the hill to the home of an old university friend. Tim and I had shared a room back in the early 1970s, and spent most of our time playing loud music, and walking on the fells. Tim was also an avid potholer. Today, he's one of only a handful of people in the world who makes handcrafted wooden recorders. That evening we drove out to a pub/venue to hear a local scratch band play R&B. They only did a short set, but it was immediately clear they were talented musicians. To judge from past experience, Malvern is jam packed with people like this.
For many years, five or six of us have driven to Snowdonia in North Wales on the first full weekend in January to go walking in the mountains. We meet up at Malvern and then drive to Wales through the massive Tanat valley which encloses two iron-age hill forts. The valley is steep-sided, and dramatic. At this time of year its sides are covered in a fiery copper-coloured vegetation which sets the imagination ablaze. By the time we had reached the valley head, the wind was getting up and beginning to unsettle the car on the mountain passes. Down in the next valley, the waters of lake Bala, usually so smooth, were whipping up into high cresting waves. Then the rain came down, and on the hills, shallow, fast-running streams began to form along the edges of the roads.
The old, stone-built cottage where we stay lies at the foot of a craggy hill facing across the valley towards Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales and the second highest in the UK. The cottage has electricity, but the only heating comes from a wood burning stove in the living room. Its water is supplied from a cistern which collects the run-off from the hillside in wet weather. The cottage is damp and run down and the pantry is full of mouse droppings, but it's cosy and warm and welcoming once we have chopped some logs and got the fire going.
We decided, this year, against climbing any of the higher peaks, and headed off towards some of the mid-range crags, a good decision, as we later discovered, since the weather station on the top of Snowdon was recording temperatures of -17 C and 110 mph winds. Apart from the occasional drizzle the weather that weekend stayed dry, but rainfall over the previous month had been exceptionally high, and the rivers were swollen and fast running, and the land was marshy. On Saturday, a path we were following turned unexpectedly into a marsh, and we ended up knee deep in boggy water for several minutes while trying and failing to get across a torrential river into the forest beyond. With no way forward, we detoured over the crags into a neighbouring valley where there was a railway line, and caught a train into Betws-y-coed. The line had one track, and was served by a single locomotive which travelled back and forth all day, picking up locals and walkers. I've never had to stick out my hand to flag down a train before. A couple of buses then got us back to the cottage at Nant Gwynnant. These local vehicles were small, and were driven round the narrow, winding roads at scarily high speeds. We changed buses at the freezing-cold hill station of Pen-y-pass which stands under the huge battlements of Crib Gogh, a ragged, razor-sharp ridge buttressing Snowdon.
On Sunday we set out to climb Yr Aran, a peak close to Snowdon, but rarely visited. By the time we got to the col between the two mountains, though, the winds were so fierce and so bitingly cold, that we decided it would be the better part of valour to carry straight on past the mountain tarn and down the long, undulating hillside beyond into the village of Beddgelert for a cream tea in a local cafe. After feeding our faces, Tim and the others distracted Chris, while I sneaked off to the village shop to buy a cake and candles, as we'd discovered it was his 70th birthday the following day.
After a great day's walking in stunning mountain scenery, I've discovered, there is nothing better than spending the evening cooking, reading, chatting interminably, stoking the wood-burning stove and playing Scrabble. It's the kind of easy-going sociability with friends I rarely have the chance to experience these days at home.
On Monday, we drove back to Malvern, stopping off at Swallow Falls and Dolwyddelan Castle. I've never seen so much water in the river before. At the falls, it forces its way through a cleft in the rock with enormous speed and ferocity, spuming and roaring and filling the air with spray, before tumbling on down the hillside in a series of rapids to the village below.
Dolwyddelan is one of the few castles in Wales built by a Welsh Prince rather than an English King. The castle is formed of a single tall tower erected at the head of the valley on the orders of Llewellyn ap Gruffudd who ruled over Gwynedd (North Wales) before the country was annexed by Edward Longshanks (King Edward I of England). In days gone by, it guarded the entrance to the valley and the mountain fastness beyond.
After Tim dropped me off back in Malvern, I caught an excruciatingly slow train back into London and then a faster one home up to Hertfordshire. I got in at 1.00 am, tired but very happy.
I still don't have a camera, so here are several links to photos of the weekend taken by Tim.
https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hph ... e=552FEEB5
On the slopes of Snowdon
https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hph ... e=5537B122
Evening activities back at the cottage
https://scontent-a-lhr.xx.fbcdn.net/hph ... e=55233A35
Map reading by committee
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 9339dbf070
Llewellyn's castle
