Black Hill and Scald Law

Black Hill (NT188632; 501m) and Scald Law (NT192611; 579m)

I’d not even looked at a weather forecast for yesterday, much less considered any potential hills, as I had expected us to spend a good chunk of the day loitering around a caravan workshop in Livingston*. As things turned out, we were free to go by 9.30am, and found ourselves with a blue-skied day and absolutely no plans.

What to do in such a situation? Well, repair to the nearest supermarket, obviously! (Obvious to us, anyway, as supermarkets generally have level car parks, generously sized parking spaces and, most importantly on this occasion, they sell croissant).

The map was considered over second breakfast, whereupon Bertie’s nose was pointed towards the Pentland Hills, via the worst quality road that we’ve driven in a long time. The hastily-made plan was Black Hill and Scald Law.

Arriving in the Threipmuir Reservoir car park, lunch became our first priority (yes, lunchtime already; second breakfast had been a prolonged affair), but by early afternoon off we strode towards our first objective, which was set off nicely across the reservoir:

There may well be a path up all or most of this hill, but after following a well-trodden line for a short while we struck off uphill and from there just followed trods through the heather until there was no more uphill to be had, and a surprisingly small cairn was found:

The views over Edinburgh and the Firth of Forth were clear, as well as towards our next objective (the lump on the right in this snap):

A reasonably straight line was taken to pick up the good path which runs from Bavelaw to Penicuik and from the col it was a simple ascent up to Scald Law, passing  on our way a chap making hard work of pushing his mountain bike up; his companion waited for him on the top:

Our return route saw us skirt around the end of Black Hill, but otherwise was a repetition of our outward route. Given an earlier start we probably would have made a circuit by nipping over East Kip and West Kip, but we hadn’t, so we didn’t.

It was still the perfect day for a walk as we returned to the (now largely empty) car park having walked 8.2 miles with around 600m of ascent.

(*A week or so ago, I noticed a fault on Bertie’s bed, the nature of which suggested it needed looking at sooner rather than later. An appointment was thus made at Knowepark Caravans in Livingston for next Tuesday, but they’d agreed that, if we popped by on Thursday morning this week then they would have a quick look to try to work out what was causing the problem.

We were outside an hour before they opened, with the expectation of sitting around for at least a couple of hours after opening before they even squeezed us in. To our surprise, they made Bertie’s bed their first job and we were on our way again by 9.30 (unfortunately, without the bed being fixed and with next Tuesday’s appointment cancelled because they didn’t have, and couldn’t get in time, the part required, but at least with confirmation of what the problem is and with instructions as to how to fix it ourselves once we get hold of the part).)

Hafod Ithel, Rhos Ymryson, Frenni Fawr and Foel Cwmcerwyn

It’s been ages since I was last on the Wales Coast Path, so the time had come to fill in the gap left over from my previous trips, from Cardigan to Pembrey. Looking at the map, it also seemed sensible to visit the few Marilyns which lie near to the coastal route we would be driving to get here, so the plan for today featured three Marilyns, six miles of coast and five hours of driving.

The result was a day which was all a bit of a rush, and a revision of my plans to fit in an extra hill, but at the expense of a few miles of coast (which, now that I’ve counted up tomorrow’s mileage, isn’t a problem at all).

Hafod Ithel (SN610678; 361m)

I don’t think that Mick will forget the drive in to this one in a hurry. It turned out that the lane I chose (out of many options) to get to my start point has fallen out of use such that overgrown hedges and trees resulted in it being not only to be narrower than Colin in places, but also lower. A couple of times I had to get out to scramble up a steep bank and hold a branch back for Mick to inch through and there was much flinching as Colin’s flanks were scraped by other trees. We chose a different route for our exit!

As for the hill: it looked, on paper, like it might feel a bit pointless, like a few other road-side ones I’ve done. The difference, as it turned out, was that this wasn’t just a walk into a crop field, but had the feel of a proper hill (and with excellent views) – even if I was at the summit two and a half minutes after leaving Colin!

I padded it out a bit by wandering around the summit and, of course, I took photos, but I was still back within six minutes.

(less than half a mile; 30m ascent)

Rhos Ymryson (SN459500; 327m)

A layby right opposite the track which leads up to a covered reservoir gave quick and easy access to this one, but it was to my dismay to find that the covered reservoir was the high point, as it’s firmly locked inside a compound. Fortunately, it was Sunday lunchtime, there was no-one was about and there was a tiny weakness in the security which I exploited.

I was back at Colin before Mick had put the finishing touches on the lunch he was preparing.

(1.1 mile; 50m ascent)

Frenni Fawr (SN203348; 395m)

I was mildly disappointed by my approach to Frenni Fawr. On the drive in I saw a nice heather-clad lump, and that’s what it was – except for one little wedge, running right up to the summit, comprising a grassy field. It was up that wedge that I walked*, only popping out onto what felt like a real hill a handful of paces before the trig point.

It was the third hill of the day that was suitable for running down, making another quick outing.

(*Part way up I glanced back and saw Colin behind me, with a horse standing on his roof. That made me look twice! A couple of paces further up the hill and the horse moved to its real position, which was in the middle of the field behind Colin.)

(2 miles; 125m ascent)

Foel Cwmcerwyn (SN094311; 536m)

It occurred to me, after Frenni Fawr, that this one was close enough to make it sensible to go and do it this afternoon, rather than needing to fit it in either after tomorrow’s coastal walk, or before Tuesday’s, so off to the car park to the NW of this hill we went.

I’d read reports about the going being a bit of the soggy side for this one, and for one relatively short section it was, but it was largely good going. Thus, instead of taking me the couple of hours I expected, I was back in just over an hour, just as the drizzle (which had marred my views a little from another pleasing summit) really got going.

(3.7 miles; 130m ascent)

Hill No 3. The bird above the right side of the trig point is a red kite.

It was already quarter past five, so I’d barely had time to stop the Garmin Gadget before we were off again, to try to find the place from where I’d walked north on the coast, two years since.

Carn na Loine (NJ070361; 549m)

It’s always good to go for a walk with Louise and David. Aside from the excellent company, it means that I don’t have to put any thought into the day. Louise has never yet failed to come up with a good walk for us, and thus I only asked the scantest of information about what the plan was for yesterday (Q: “What sort of terrain?” A: “There’ll be some yomping through heather and it may be boggy”, Q: “How far” A: “Not very far” – that was sufficient information to tell me that it was a suitable outing to try out my ‘new*’ boots). The only other information I knew when we set out was that the main objective was to bag a trig point.

I recognised the first part of our journey to our start point, but after some little lanes had been involved, I confess that I didn’t really know where we were when David parked the car and we set out. Up the lane was the first direction of travel, and you may notice that Louise had (once again) organised some good weather for us:

The lane was soon abandoned in favour of a track and in due course the track was abandoned in favour of a yomp, as our objective was now right before us. The boys soon scuttled on ahead, giving us useful information like “that’s a stream, not a trod”, but in general the going underfoot wasn’t more than a bit squelchy, and the heather and tussocks weren’t extreme either.

Putting a bit of a sprint on, Louise and I reached trig point first and, as you can see, we were happy to be there:

I didn’t take a photo over towards the Cairngorms, but it was a clear day so we did a spot of hill identification before we cooled down enough to encourage us to move on.

I’m certainly glad that we didn’t do this route in reverse, as I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to describe the tussocks on our descent route as ‘severe’. There were quite a few deep holes between them too, some of which I investigated a little too closely. Fortunately, as I keep observing, tussocks and heather in descent are much easier than in ascent, so with some contouring thrown in, we did make it over to the track we wanted, just by where it runs past Huntley’s Cave. Being gone 1330 by now, the first big rock we saw was declared to be the lunch rock.

Our afternoon was quick and easy (except for the little detour to see Hutley’s Cave; if what we think was the cave was in fact the cave then, as caves go, it wasn’t impressive!), being two kilometres gently downhill on a track.

It was a fine outing, in fine company, but the real surprise about the route didn’t come until much later in the evening. I happened to be looking at the mapping on my computer and, now knowing the name of the hill up which we had been, I looked it up, only to find that it was, in fact, a Marilyn. Bonus! And quite amusing that I’d managed to bag a Marilyn without any knowledge that I was so doing. (There was a minor panic as to whether we’d been to the true summit, but it didn’t take me many seconds to confirm that this is a hill on which the trig is at the highest point.)

Here’s the hill in question (the lump just slightly left of centre): 

Thanks, as ever, go to Louise and David for all of their hospitality.

(*The boots aren’t new at all. I’ve had them in the wardrobe since at least 2007, and they can’t have been used more than half a dozen times before they fell out of my favour for being too big and heavy. Being the most expensive boots I’ve owned, and with all of my other boots now leaking badly, I dusted this pair off to see if I can get on with them. Yesterday’s outing indicated that they will be fine and thus the new boot purchase can be put off for a while yet.)

Hill of the Wangie and Burgiehill

Hill of the Wangie (NJ137537; 319m)

It wasn’t a good morning for going up a hill, with cloud down as low as 250m. Fortunately, Mick was quite happy to go out in the dull showery weather, so whilst I devoted some time to reading, off Mick went to run 4 miles out and 4 miles back along the Dava Way. By the time we reached the start point for my first hill, it was early afternoon and the cloud base had lifted, even if it was still a bit grey out.

Hill of the Wangie is such a fabulous name. Unfortunately, it’s not a hill which lives up to its name; in fact, it’s rather a dull lump of forestry. Happily, it’s a forest which houses some well established mountain bike trails (which looked quite technical to me, although I’ve never mountain biked in my life, so I’m really not the best person to express an opinion on the subject) which, provided you don’t meet any bikes, gives a good route to walk to within a short distance of the summit.

Even though I chose the wrong break in the forest at the top of the mountain bike trail (I looked at the map and looked at the break in front of me, completely failing to notice that there was another break to my left which would take me even nearer to the trig) and found myself climbing over blow-downs, followed by a straight-line through the forest when I realised my error, it was still a very easy hill, and I even managed to come out exactly at the trig point:

I thought that such a dull hill, with no view whatsoever, deserved something different from my usual ‘fixed grin’ selfie, so I experimented with a couple of facial expressions, including the ‘oh my god, there’s a bear running at me’ look:

Making my way back down, I might have struggled to remember where I’d left the mountain bike trail, if it wasn’t for this handy bit of engineering, which stood out:

An impressive bit of informal engineering, using tree trunks and logs to build a bridge

Thirty two minutes after setting out, I was back (which was, to the minute, the time Mick had guessed it would take me), having covered a whole mile and a half with 170m of ascent.

Burgiehill (NJ097559; 254m)

Neither of today’s hills was going to fill much time, and this one was even more straightforward than Hill of the Wangie, even if I did throw in a little bit of spice by not entirely following the track which leads the whole way to the summit. At the point where it started heading slightly downhill, before reascending, I could see no reason why I couldn’t just yomp across a felled area of the forest, so that’s what I did. The bonus of this route was that it brought me out at the trig point, which apparently proves a little elusive for some people.

The trig isn’t at the very top, so I did the usual wandering around before deciding that the break which runs through the forest to the NE looked perfectly doable, so that’s the way I headed down.

With a whole 35m of ascent, and a total distance of two miles, it wasn’t a taxing outing and I was back in 39 minutes. A bit freakily, that was (to the minute) the time Mick had guessed it would take me. He’s getting good at this ‘guess the time’ game!

Pen Llithrig y Wrach and Creigiau Gleision

Thursday 17 August

Having kicked myself for not extending Wednesday’s walk to go over Pen Llithrig y Wrach, it was the first summit on my agenda for Thursday. A considerable amount of time had been spent poring over the map, internally debating the merits of various route options, and what I decided (absolutely definitely, and on good sound bases) to do was not this:

For one thing, I’d decided to take a longer-but-easier approach to the hill by walking up the reservoir access track, just to the west of where my GPS track starts, then along the leat (the man-made water channel which contours this hill). Mick duly pulled into my chosen start point and I had my bag on my back and sticks in my hand, when it suddenly struck me (despite all thought put into the subject the evening prior) to use the path a couple or three hundred metres to the east. Asking Mick to drop me there instead, he then found himself with a car on his tail and had to go on past before he could stop safely. I may just as well have walked down the road from the original start point, or even have stuck with my original plan.

It soon came back to me why I’d decided to take the longer route. Instead of moseying up a tarmac track for a while, up to a nice level path alongside the leat, I found myself playing ‘hunt the path’ through bracken and gorse, and wading through bog. I probably saved myself about 500m of distance, at the cost of very wet feet and with no time benefit.

My next deviation from plan came below the pass Bwlch y Tri Marchog, when I decided that heading up to the pass would be a much nicer route, even though I could clearly see that between me and it lay a huge area of bog and tussock. As it goes, this was a good decision, and undoubtedly more pleasing that my intended out-and-back up the south spur of the hill. My feet were wet anyway, so there was no point in dancing around the bog; I just waded on through.

The views from the pass were excellent, and the path from there good and easy.

It was 0840 when I reached the top, and in spite of having had breakfast before I set out, I was starving and wondering whether it was a reasonable hour to eat my packed lunch. I settled on having just one of my sandwiches, before heading down to the the path which runs along Llyn Colwyn Reservoir (along whose length we walked on our Length of Wales walk in 2012).

Just beyond the end of the reservoir was a good viewpoint for both of the day’s hills. The long-named one is on the left; Creigiau Gleision is on the right.

The Cicerone ‘Hillwalking in Wales’ book said that the only problem with my chosen route up Creigiau Gleision was one of boredom. I don’t think there was a single walk that I did last week where I agreed with that author’s perception of a route. I was not bored for a moment on this ascent – I was far too busy wading through bog, high-stepping on every pace, trying to pick out the best line and wondering if there was a trodden line hidden in the heather/bilberry/tussocks somewhere (possibly even a few feet away; the problem with this sort of terrain is that you can generally only see a trod if you’re on top of it). I was also thinking that shorts are not the best legwear for walking through woody knee-deep heather.

After no small amount of energy expenditure, I picked up the ridge path and from there it was easy. I even managed to make myself look composed for the summit selfie:

My first hill of the day had been that one in the centre of the snap.

My second sandwich met my stomach on top of this hill, whilst I considered the map some more and contemplated the option of calling Mick and asking him to meet me in Trefriw, on the east side of the hill, so that I wouldn’t have to wade through the heather again. But heather, bog and tussocks are always much easier in descent, so the original plan held and down I went. I even found the trodden line for the first and last bit of the descent. (As I’d started my ascent from the bridge at the end of the reservoir, I found myself with a choice of two trods, and (per my usual policy) chose the one which was best trodden (the left fork), but which soon ceased to be useful to me. I now know that if I’d followed my first instinct and retraced to the right fork, I would have had a happier ascent.)

It was a joy to get onto the bridleway which lies between the bridge and the A5, which (contrary to what the Cicerone book told me) wasn’t a bogfest at all. In fact, I got back to the road without any more water entering my shoes. It could have been what saved me from getting webbed feet after what had been the boggiest walk of the week.

With 8.1 miles walked, and around 2500’ of ascent, I entered the car park in Capel Curig and found Mick exactly where I expected him to be, poised ready to put the kettle on for me.

Pen yr Ole Wen, Carnedd Dafydd, Carnedd Llewelyn

Tuesday 16 August

Tuesday gave us another grand day out!

The gap is because the battery of the Garmin Gadget expired. It had lasted for almost exactly 12 hours over the course of two days. Quite impressive, considering the age of the Gadget, I thought.

The hill of real interest of these three was Carnedd Llewelyn (Marilyn, 1064m), but as the Ogwen Valley seemed like the most logistically sensible start point (from our night-stop at Betws-y-Coed), the most obvious way I could see to get to it was via Pen yr Ole Wen and Carnedd Dafydd.

Arriving in the nearest free parking area to the west end of Llyn Ogwen, and after pausing for tea, breakfast and more tea, we finally got ourselves out of the door and walked along to the foot of the lake under glorious blue skies:

It’s a steep haul straight up the side of Pen yr Ole Wen (even more so if you should temporarily lose the easiest line and find yourself scrambling for a while…), but there is something pleasing about gaining height so quickly. That was even more the case today as we knew that on reaching our first summit the majority of the climbing was behind us. From there, a ridge-walk awaited us.

The brisk wind was cool once we gained height. Windshirts went on and didn’t come back off until part way down our descent.

The ridge was as pleasing as it looked on the map and after going over the easy grassy summit of Pen yr Ole Wen, and the rocky summit of Carnedd Dafydd, onwards we went to our main objective. By the time we reached its sizeable summit plateau we had passed three other people. There were another couple on the summit. That surprised me; I expected it to be much busier up there on such a nice day in August. It really was a superb day for it, with excellent clear views:

Reaching the pass between Carnedd Llewelyn and Pen yr Helgi Du, I dithered. Then I dithered some more. Mick was heading down from there and I was torn as to whether to join him, or whether to continue over Pen yr Helgi Du to Pen Llithrig y Wrach – the next Marilyn on the ridge.

Decision made, we started the descent, only for me to get about 20 metres and dither some more. I so nearly went back up, but Mick was quite right when he pointed out that I didn’t have enough food or water with me, so down we went, past Ffynon Llugwy Reservoir, from where we had a good view back to where we’d just been:

The downside of this circuit was the trudge required along the A5 to get back to Colin, but it passed quickly and proved not to be as bad as it looked on paper (the ‘pavement’ is loose surfaced most of the way, so it wasn’t even a trudge on tarmac, and the road seemed to be having a relatively quiet spell). We reached Colin having walked 9.7 miles with somewhere around 3200’ of ascent.

Good registration number!

Later I perused the map again, making plans for Wednesday, whereupon I kicked myself for not having continued along over the next top to the next Marilyn. Moreover, when it struck me that as Mick was descending anyway, I could have asked him to move Colin up the road, such that I could have done the extra summits with just 250m of extra ascent, no extra distance and have avoided the road walk in its entirety too.

Bradnor Hill, Great Rhos and Gwaunceste Hill

What a contrast to yesterday! I had a lovely time on three hills this morning, without a single sting or prickle incurred

Bradnor Hill (SO282584; 391m)

(Post blog note: 12 October 2016 – After this trip I bought 1:25k mapping for the whole of the UK and have just noticed that the relevant land around Bradnor Hill is designated as Access Land. Thus all of my reference to trespass in this post are incorrect. I had every right to be there!)

This hill was originally scheduled into our Offa’s Dyke jaunt in April, but got omitted due to the blatant trespass across a golf course at a busy time of day. It was far from busy this morning, which I attribute to the fact that I set out at 6am.

Consideration had been given to driving up to the Club House, but when I weighed the time it would take to relocate myself there, versus the time it would take to just walk from Kington town car park, I opted for the longer walk, revisiting a part of Offa’s Dyke Path which was still fresh in my mind.

Only one person was met on the entire outing, and that was a groundsman/greenkeeper. He was a friendly chap and didn’t bat an eyelid at my plans to walk across the golf course. A golf course, incidentally, which was covered in sheep and in sheep-poo at the moment. Either the course isn’t open, or surely sheep must regularly get hit, not to mention the likelihood of the golfballs rolling in poo.

Having taken a photo of myself beaming at the top…

…I opted for a different descent route. Well, if I was going to trespass across a golf course, I thought I may as well make a thorough job of it and cover as much ground as possible!

I’d covered 3.4 miles with 800’ of ascent when I got back to Colin at a couple of minutes past seven, and I didn’t even pause for tea or second breakfast before I made haste towards my next hill. Why the rush? Rain was forecast at noon and I didn’t want to get wet!

Great Rhos (SO182639; 660m)

My intention had been to start this one from a car park next to the school in New Radnor, but when I got there the whim took me to go and look at the Water-Break-Its-Neck car park a couple of miles up the road. I probably would have abandoned Colin in the picnic area I’d spotted on my on-line explorations of this area, if it hadn’t been for a sign indicating that there was another car park a kilometre up the track. Onwards I went, almost losing my nerve as I wondered if I’d misunderstood the sign and whether it was telling me that the car park was by the road, and the waterfall was a kilometre further on. By then though I was already committed to a lengthy reverse, so thought I may as well plough on in the hope of finding a Colin-sized turning area if nothing else. What I found was a car park a kilometre further on. Excellent! That cut an out-and-back walk up a dull track from my outing.

The going on this one was varied indeed, featuring forest paths, forest tracks, mown bits of forest…

…a hill track so long abandoned that it is now but a vague suggestion of a trod on the ground, and a couple of hundred metres or so of very rough yomping. On arriving at the trig I found that the latter had been unnecessary; I took the good path on the way back!

Two possible circuits had been plotted for this outing, one taking in just this hill, the other taking in a series of tops. In the event, I did neither, but retraced my steps instead. For the eagle-eyed, who pay great attention to my selfies, the clue as to why is in the next photo:

Yikes! Where are my sunglasses? Presumably somewhere in the forest where I’d dropped them whilst adjusting my layers. Retracing my steps seemed the most likely way of recovering them, so that’s what I did, trying hard to concentrate on looking at the ground.

So hard did I look that I noticed this skeleton, which I’d missed on my outward leg. Is it a dog?

A few minutes before getting back to Colin, it seemed rude to pass by the turn for Water-Break-Its-Neck without going for a look. Worth the short detour, I thought:

I arrived back at Colin with 6.4 miles walked with around 1600’ of ascent. And the sunglasses, I hear you ask, were they found? Yep – sitting on Colin’s sofa…

Gwaunceste Hill (SO158555; 542m)

I came up with two plans for this trip, imaginatively called Plan A and Plan B. Plan A was the conservative Plan. Plan B was more ambitious and included more hills. Having finished today’s Plan A hills before 10am, and with no sign of approaching rain, it was a no-brainer to skip to Plan B, which saw me heading over to Gwaunceste Hill.

Many people start this walk from just before the farm at Rhewey, and many others start from the layby on the main road at the bottom of Rhewey’s access road. Those options give shorter walks, but they also involve passing through a farm with reports of vocal, although tethered, dogs. Tethered dogs are better than untethered, but I still prefer to avoid walking through farms where there’s an obvious alternative, so I opted for a slightly longer walk in from Llynheilyn.

Good decision! What a lovely walk that was on some gorgeous grassy hill tracks. Even the final yomp through deep heather, when I realised that the ‘path’ I was on was so poor that it would be easier to go straight up than to continue onwards to the track which would (theorectically) take me more easily to the top.

The skies were starting to look ominous by the time I took my summit photos, so pausing only to text Mick to tell him of my whereabouts, down I headed.

The rain had been forecast to arrive at noon. At 1209 the first drops were felt. At 1212 I arrived back at Colin. Twenty minutes later it was lashing down. I’m so glad I wasn’t out in that! Alas, I watched the BBC forecast this lunchtime which has confirmed that there will be no avoiding getting wet tomorrow – unless I set out at 5am or after 5pm.

This final hill of the day came in at 4.4 miles with 700’ of ascent.

Wapley Hill and Shobdon Hill

Unless my memory is selective and is doing that ‘it was always sunny when I was young’ thing, I think it would be true to say that I enjoy well over 99% of my walks. Probably over 99.9% in fact. Today’s walk fell into the very tiny minority. In fact, it fell so far down the scale of enjoyment, that there isn’t even a glimmer of it transforing into a ‘good walk in hindsight’ (you know, like those outings where something happens that’s really trying at the time, but looking back on it it becomes either fun or funny).

It wasn’t entirely bad as an outing. The first bit, from the Wapley Hill Forestry Commission car park, whilst a bit muddy in places, was perfectly pleasant and very straightforward as I simply followed the red way-markers uphill. The evidence of the hill fort atop my objective was the undisputed highlight of the day, with more banks and dips than I ever recall seeing at a hill fort before. I even easily located the correct ‘oak tree on a mound’, which is the summit feature of this top.

Oak tree on a mound, otherwise known as the Marilyn summit

There were snippets of views to be had in a few directions too:

It was in between Wapley Hill and Shobdon Hill that the wheels started falling off my day. It all started with me missing my path and merrily skipping onwards, almost back to the car park, before I noticed. I could have just continued back down and walked along the road (in hindsight, that would have been a good plan) or even driven to my next objective (in hindsight, that would have been a *really* good plan), but the Mortimer Trail, which follows a byway along the ridge, looked pleasant on the map so I went back uphill to find it. No wonder I missed it on my first pass:

For the next mile, I battled through overgrown 6’ bracken, intertwined with spikey, grabby and stingy things. Seldom have I been so pleased to reach tarmac as I was when the awfulness of it came to an end (also, seldom have I been so pleased, on such a warm day, to have chosen to wear trousers. They’re not nettle-proof, but they’re more so than bare legs).

At the village of Byton, finding no evidence of the footpath I wanted (which would have lopped off a bit of road walking), I stuck with the Mortimer Trail and went the slightly longer way around, taking an extra detour for a quick look at the pretty little church, the name of which I have already forgotten:

After another short backtrack for another missed turn, the bracken/brambles/nettles nightmare started all over again. Wet bracken too, even though it was a nice day. I would have been pleased to get to the top, if it hadn’t been for the knowledge that the only sensible way back was to repeat the last mile of overgrowth.

I’m pretty sure that the place where I’m standing in the next snap is the top, although ‘ground by oak tree’ isn’t a massively helpful clue in an area of oak trees! It’s also difficult, in tall bracken, to spot where the ground might be higher, but it seemed to me that this was the highest spot, and it tied i with the 10-digit grid reference I had noted. And there was a trodden line which dead-ended nearby.

With no views to admire…

…I didn’t tarry on this one, but strode off back the way I’d come. Or, at least, I tried to. Then came the point when I realised that I wasn’t heading in the right direction (something I tried to deny for a while, until the compass proved the point). Then came some more backtracking and back-and-forthing until I eventually spotted my overgrown trail.

It was at a positive march that I took the last mile and a half of road back to Colin, desperate to get the outing over with. It was perhaps a tiny bit funny, after such an unpleasing afternoon that two agressive dogs legged it the whole length of the car park to try to tear me limb from limb as I got within sight of my destination, particularly as the owner didn’t even acknowledge my presence, much less apologise for her lack of control over her beasts in a public place. The icing on the cake really.

The stats came in at 8.3 miles with 1500’ of ascent and arms and legs covered in nettle stings and bramble scratches.

Stiperstones

Sunday 6 December; Stiperstones (SO368986)

Whilst the weather forecast had been unduly optimistic about the dryness of the day, the prediction of falling winds was correct and thus by the time we made our way (via an interesting route) back up to the same car park as we had abandoned at 1.30 on Saturday morning, it was looking to be a suitable day for my final Marilyn in Section 38A.

Considering that we didn’t get moving until gone 11am, there were far fewer people out and about than I had expected on this distinctive hill in a popular walking area, and we passed just three duos as we made our way via the shortest route to the top.

Catching sight of the trig point I adjudged it to be the most impressively placed one I have visited this year – and, upon clocking the small size and exposed position of the top, also realised that there was absolutely no chance that I could have made my way up to it in Saturday’s >50mph winds, even if I had battled my way up the hill:

We even got a shot of both of us on the top (also showing off nicely the nature of the summit), thanks to a random act of kindness by a passing stranger, who shouted up to us that she would take a photo and send it to us. This was the result:

Thank you kind stranger, should you ever see this!

Even though the day was a bit damper than expected (albeit only drizzle) we didn’t simply retrace our steps on this one, as a number of obvious circuits presented themselves. The one we chose was modest, taking us northwards for a while before dropping down to the Shropshire Way, which took us to and along a track, back to our start point. It was in the final few hundred yards of that track that we rued not setting out five minutes earlier as the drizzle turned to heavy rain.

With all of our intended hills now visited, and with 24 hours still at our disposal before we needed to head home, we consulted the map and pondered where to go next …