I couldn’t see a pleasing way to include this top within the backpacking trip of the previous two days, but it was easily gettable on the drive home. Had we been in Erica-the-Campervan it could have been as quick and easy as they come, requiring just 0.5km each way on a mast access track. However, we were in Bertie-the-Motorhome, who isn't so fond of tiny lanes, so Mick dropped me in Llangedwyn.
That gave me a longer distance to cover, but entirely on road and track, so you’d think that it was an uneventful outing. So it would have been, if I hadn’t opted to take the track that runs W of, and parallel to, the road on the outward leg.
There’s a bungalow that sits along that track, and as I got there I saw a sizeable black dog. The dog barked, but made no move towards me, so no problem … until it’s mate, an equally large but light coloured one, came running at me. It stopped uncomfortably close up and proceeded to snarl and lunge in between its barks. I talked to it nicely, but every time I twitched a muscle it lunged again and clearly wasn’t going to let me move from the spot. Oh, to have my poles with me (not to hit it; I find that holding the pointy ends towards a dog discourages them from coming too close)!
Eventually (by which I mean 'three minutes later', but it felt much longer), the owner came out to see what the commotion was about, and thus released me. I entered not into communication with her, but made my escape, soon pursued again by the dog, but by then I was the other side of a gate. It then pursued me up the boundary, on the other side of the fence.
The mast access track is steep, but short, and even through there is no public right of way to the summit, beyond the masts (actually, there’s no RoW up the mast access track either), there’s such a formal stile over the fence that one has to deduce that access is tolerated. On that basis I spent longer on the summit than I would, had I felt unwelcome. The views were excellent (except when looking back at the mast).
Unsurprisingly, I opted to use the entirety of the mast access track to return to the road, rather than taking the bridleway past the bungalow, and I jogged back down to Bertie.
Well handled with the dog.
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