A Short Week in Wales - Thursday

Moel y Golfa (SJ291125)

Another fine morning greeted me so off I pootled the few miles to the village of Middletown, where a car park that I adjudged to be a general use one (rather than belonging to the nearby pub), offered a safe haven for Colin whilst I trotted off up my fourth and final Marilyn of the trip.

It looked for a while like my attempt was going to be thwarted, when I came across some very clear and prominent ‘No Footpath’ signs exactly along the line I wanted to investigate. I did ignore the first sign, but when I came to the next I lost my nerve. It felt rather indefensible to be trespassing in the face of such signage. I considered giving up the attempt for another day, when a different approach could be used, and contemplated whether I fancied a very round-about walk using footpaths, but the final decision was to trespass anyway, but following the route I remembered reading about in people’s logs on hill-bagging.co.uk.

The route worked well, but the earlier “Don’t come this way under any circumstances” signage had me nervous enough that I almost trotted up the hill and breathed an enormous sigh of relief when I got to the sign below, indicating that I was all legal again:

I was into woodland by then, where I stayed almost until the top. I knew that I was going to find a memorial on the top (as the description of the highest point was ‘rock on knoll 20m NNE of memorial’) but I hadn’t expected it to be quite so big! Nor had I anticipated the quality of the views, although I’m not sure why, considering the shape of the hill.

Apparently the chap who erected the memorial (who himself died in 1986) was never beaten in fisty cuffs from the age of five to sixty, amongst other things:

I had initially been confused, as I’d misread the above, and thought that it said that the memorial was erected for Uriah in 1986, which didn’t tie in with the visible age of the palings surrounding it. It was only when I wandered over to the next knoll across that I noticed this inscription, dating the memorial back to 1960:

Opting to follow public footpaths down the wooded south side of the hill for my descent, I experienced a phenomenon the opposite of what I used to regularly experience back when I ran regularly. In those days I often returned from a circular run feeling like 90% of it had been uphill. On this hill I descended steeply for so long that I felt like I’d lost twice the height I’d gained on my way up, then I looked at the map and realised that I wasn’t even half way down, and descended steeply some more. 

And that was that. My hills had been bagged, my parents’ memorial visited and the weather had been fine throughout. Thus the trip declared a success and off home I went.

The modest stats for this day were 2.5 miles walked with 1000’ of up.