Welsh Marilyn Backpack Day 2

Wednesday 17 July - Llyn Lluncaws to Llangynog

Marilyn visited: Foel Cedig (SH 981 283; 667m)

Distance and ascent: 26.1km, 630m

Weather: Sunny and warm!

 

Short version: A really tough day of really hard-going terrain, but I did it!

Long version:

Compared with my backpacking trip on the Pennine Way a couple of weeks ago, when I barely slept at all, I slept reasonably well on this trip. All relative though, and it’s easy to do something ‘well’ when the benchmark is so low!

I didn’t set an alarm, deciding that I would wake up whenever I woke up. It turned out that was 4am and after half an hour of listening to my book, I thought I may as well make a move. It was a leisurely move, seeing me set out at just before 6am.

I made it about 100m before I found a much better pitch. Predictable, really.

Having opted to skirt the W side of the llyn, my intention had been to continue to the path that leads up the spur to Moel Sych. Part way there, I looked up the steep side of the bowl above me, and pondered whether to just head straight on up. It’s exactly what I would do if I was on some obscure Marilyn without a path. So, that’s what I did. It probably took the same time and the same effort as going the easier way around.

The path that then hugs the rim of the bowl is narrow, close to the edge and with a drop so long and precipitous that a trip in the wrong direction would certainly ruin your day, and likely kill you.

Not at all illustrative of the steepness with which the ground drops away. See those four sheep? I herded them quite a way.

By the time I got to the top, the cloud had burnt off from the summit, even if not from the valleys.

I then had a 5.8km walk, mainly downhill, which I’d expected to be reasonably speedy, but I found myself slowed by the waterlogged terrain:

Not the sign of a good summer when the bogs are this wet in July!

That 5.8k ended up taking me just over an hour and a half (slightly slower than the same distance had taken me going uphill yesterday). As it turned out, that was the easy and speedy part of the day!

The surroundings remained superb, and far more wild than yesterday, but I can emphatically say that if you’re on a mission to bag Foel Cedig, then there are far better ways of doing it than using the approach that I took (just use the perfectly good track from the W, that leads to within 120m of the summit – that would be far more sensible).

Good view, before it all got Very Hard Indeed.

This tractor had a mower on the back. I was soon most grateful that the farmer had so recently used this.

This track is not at all track-ish! Don’t be fooled by the suggestion of a trod.

Phew, now grateful for that mower and the mowing farmer. (The actual line of the alleged track is in the dip just to the right.)

Then I got to the heather, where there was a narrow, but good, trod, but it didn’t half wiggle around.

A few sections of hideous bog, and a few incidents of losing the line, but by and by I reached the high point of the ‘path’ where I was to turn off for just over 2km of pathlessness. There is no grazing up here, thus the heather is old, woody and knee-high (hiding the holes nicely) and there are no trods. I did find an ATV line for a short while, but then it reached a fence and stopped.

I can’t have gone very far before I started to question my route choice for this hill. Serious consideration was given to turning back – which probably would have been the wise choice given that the next 0.5km took me twenty minutes!

No hint of a trodden line and vegetation far deeper than it looks.

During that time Mick phoned and we had a chat that included a hiatus when I plunged one leg down a peaty-bog filled hole, straight up to my knee. Mick had the pleasure of listening to me repeating a certain naughty word until I pulled myself out of the hole and explained that I was rehearsing the script for the opening scenes of Four Weddings and a Funeral what had happened. We decided that maybe I should concentrate on what I was doing, rather than chatting to him.

There were recently felled pine trees dotted around this hillside, so why were there no ATV tracks anywhere near them? Did a group of tree fellers parachute in with chainsaws?! How did they get out?!

Do you see what I see over there? Seldom have I been so delighted to see a track (even if it was only going to be useful to me for 1km).

Hmmm. I hope this path hasn’t come a long way, and I just missed it! (Subsequent research suggests that, no, it only leads to nearby Yr Groes Fagl)

Despite all my moaning, the views were superb…

…and I still mustered a smile for the camera.

The summit of this Marilyn was moved a few years ago from nearby Cyrniau Nod, which I wanted to visit too, just for insurance against it being moved back in the future. First, though, I sat atop Foel Cedig with my shoes and socks off and wished that I had more food with me (I thought I’d had plenty, but had woken so hungry at half past midnight that I’d prematurely eaten second breakfast by way of a midnight feast). As I sat there, I contemplated again: to backtrack along the track before taking the high ground to Cyrniau Nod, or to just deadhead towards it? I opted for the latter.

The relief on reaching Cyrniau Nod (all downhill from here! There’s always a trod next to a fence!) was misplaced. It wasn’t all downhill, there were no trods and, what do you know – it was also rather boggy.

Still excellent views!

Three and a half kilometres (and over an hour) later, and I reached the track alongside Llyn y Mynydd, which was a veritable cause for celebration...

 ...the whole of the rest of the route was on good surfaces. I was also undoubtedly only minutes away from running water. The day was hot, I’d finished the litre I’d started out with, and I’d not passed a stream since just after I crossed the road some hours earlier.

I’d like to say that I had a good lunch break when I got to that water, but as I filtered myself another litre, I flicked a massive tick off one leg and removed an embedded one from the other leg. So, rather than having a lunchbreak amongst the ticks, I ate as I walked. There was no pudding; the tin of fish and two oatcakes was the very last of my food – lessons will be learnt from this!

The descent through the forest made me feel like I was Danny the Champion of the World. I don’t think I have ever seen so many pheasants. I even took a couple of videos of how they were emerging from the embankment to my left as I passed, and I constantly had a whole flock of them running ahead of me on the track.

When Mick had asked me earlier in the day if I wanted a lift from Llangynog, rather than walking 6km along the minor road, or 4.5km along the B road, I’d jumped at the chance. The problem then arose that I lost signal on both of my phones as I descended and never got it back. I thus pinned my hopes on finding Bertie-the-Motorhome sitting in the car park when I got there.

He wasn’t there, but at least there was a phone box, and phone boxes in locations with no phone signal usually still have a phone in them – as this one proved to have. Unfortunately, it hadn’t entered the 21^st century and didn’t accept credit/debit cards and a furtle through my pockets proved that the £2 coin I had in my hipbelt pocket two weeks ago hadn’t been transferred to this week’s pack.

So, I sat on the wall in the car park and waited until I got bored of waiting (which admittedly was probably only a few minutes), at which point I thought I may as well start walking. It would take me less than an hour to walk to the campsite, but I had every confidence that Mick would appear along that road before long, and I had equal confidence that he wouldn’t take the minor back road.

Sure enough, within a few minutes Bertie trundled into sight (Mick would have been there sooner, but the SatNav had initially taken him down the little back road. Thank goodness he realised it wasn’t the best way and turned around, or I could have found myself at the campsite in Penybontfawr whilst he was waiting in the car park in Llangynog. At least he would have had coins for the phone box). I jumped in and headed straight for the fridge. The cold, alcohol-free beer I retrieved therefrom barely hit the sides.

Despite my grumbling about how hard the terrain had been (it really was; I can think of other hills I’ve done with equally tough terrain, but not for such a long distance, and certainly not whilst carrying a backpack … although clearly the distance was entirely my fault for choosing that route), it was satisfying to complete the route* and the hardness of Day 2 didn’t detract from how perfect Day 1 had been and what a wonderful area this is for a backpacking trip.  (*except the final little road walk, but if the campsite in Llangynog had been cheaper, that’s where Bertie would have been and where my walk would have ended anyway).