Humour, Trecking

Cadair Idris

Kahlil Gibran wrote that you may appreciate that which you love most in a friend more in his absence — ‘as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.’

Before we climbed Cadair Idris this week-end we, who are related by divorce, stopped to look at it more clearly from the Wynford Vaughan Thomas monument on the edge of the Cambrian ridge of mountains where we live, which faces Snowdonia across the Dyfi valley.

The Three Peaks of Cadair Idris on the Left

The car park at Minfforth is guarded by machines that must be placated with money, large sums in small denominations; all around there are people turning out their pockets and emptying their ruck-sacks onto the still dewy grass, women grovel under car seats and crying children are parted from their pocket money. The gods or maybe the giant Idris himself takes pity on us and sends down two messengers, wise men who have run to and from the summit before breakfast (2 hours for £2.50), evangelists of physical fitness who press a pound coin into my hand which we add to the other sticky, dog-hairy coins that we have gathered and feed them into the machine. I anoint my nearly-nephew with midge repellent.

The path is initially steep with stone steps which climb up through Cwm Amarch.

The stream is swollen with recent rain and there are spectacular waterfalls in the wooded cwm and dappled shade.

After 300m or so the Cwm opens into a wider basin and we climb on up to Llyn Cau where we resist the temptation of a glacial dip and the greater temptation to fill up our water bottles (there was some discussion here about exactly whose fault it was that one of the water bottles was missing and which of us would die of dehydration first and would you actually kill for water…) 50m further up the path the third water bottle was found, presumably rummaged into obscurity during the search for money.

The path goes up to the left from where the above picture was taken and thence skirts around the top of the rock wall around the lake, the peak in the centre is Craig Cwm Amarch (791m) Mount Ham Sandwich in our nomenclature.. From here you can see the whole of the northern half of Cardigan Bay, all the way to Anglesey.

The intrepid can peek over the edge at the lake below. The summit is called Pen y gadair, which means the top of the chair, that’s Idris, the giant’s chair — Cadair Idris (don’t start me on the Welsh language — it likes to change the first letter of words to make it difficult to find them in dictionaries. My chair would be fe nghadair… I think )

In order to reach the summit we need a pep talk and some motivational counselling to fortify the nearly auntie as we have to go down and up again and over lots of wobbly scree and boulders with the ancient wobbly knees.

At this point the nearly nephew changes into a mountain goat and disappears. It becomes eerily quiet.

Above is the summit.

Here we are at the pinnacle of our achievement –.

me and the mountain goat.

Now it’s a gentle walk along the ridge to the third peak Mynydd Moel (863m) and then down the long, steep scree below Scotch Egg Crag and the total annihilation of the goat’s father’s sister’s first husband’s third wife’s knees.

It was six miles, graded hard (by somebody) over 3000 ft up and, I’m sure, at least 10,000 ft down!

Farm engineering

Building Bridges

Do you remember the tree we cut down last winter, because it was threatening to fall over and cut off the electricity and to block the lane and maybe even catch a passing car.

Felled

Here is Number One Son stripping off the branches —

Stripping

Here is the trunk,cut in half and laid across the stream —

Naked

Here it is clad in recycled larch boards that used to cover the barn — Pedro checks it for stability.

Dressed

It is part of our new Habitat Creation Project — for trolls, but we didn’t get a grant. We just added lots of water and waited three months. Here it is now —

What a difference three months makes. Here is the view from the bridge.

View from the bridge

It hasn’t cost us a penny (maybe a tablespoonful of chainsaw fuel — the nails were recycled) and it’s somewhere nice to sit and eat our sandwiches. This time of the year we are mainly cutting bracken in the pasture. Here in the woodland we live in peace with it as do the shamrocks and the trolls.

Welsh History

Off the Straight and Narrow

There is a long straight road in North Wales running north from near Dolgellau to the lake at Traws. It is so long and so straight that it shouts ‘Roman’ at travellers and sends them to look at their maps for confirmation where they might notice the icon for a Roman fort at the northern end, overlooking the lake, and feel a diversion coming on.

We, the intrepid travellers, turn off the main road and head up hill but we are being watched – by warriors ranged along the crest of the hill? A thousand grave stones watch our progress. Weird, but we have seen similar in the back yards of Darwen and Rossendale in Lancashire, although the slab-walls there were made of local stone – millstone grit. We are near Ffestiniog, the slate capital of Wales and we know that Welsh farmers use whatever is available.

There are no sign posts but, sure enough, we find a gravel parking area in a desolate but raised area in the middle of a great bowl of open landscape bounded in the distance by an unbroken jagged horizon of blue mountains.

There is a mound and a small information sign which identifies it as a later Norman motte (earth mound on which to place a keep or tower), built on the site of the old Roman fort; that explains why it is so un-flat (Romans were meticulous).

Norman Motte built on pre-existing Roman site at Toman-y-mur. (Walled heap)

A weather beaten and white haired lady stands gazing over a depression in the ground where rushes grow, ‘Is this an amphitheatre or a pond?’ I ask.

‘I know nothing about this place other than that I am strangely drawn to it… I come back again and again,’ she says, turning startling blue eyes to me – the colour of hair-bells.

Her gaze dances over the landscape, ’Its name, Tomen y Mur, means a rubbish heap in Welsh!’ she says, ‘That’s all I know,’ and strands of white hair lash her face and her thin brown coat, flecked with purple, flaps in the wind together with the reeds, purple thistles and white haired cotton grass that wave in the rough pasture. I feel the chill.

‘It’s Roman, they say,’ says I.

‘Oh no, this place is much, much older than that.’

When we get home we looked it up: Tomen y Mur is thought to be the Castell Mur of legend, as recorded in the Mabinogion. It was the court of Llew Llaw Gyffes who became king of Gwynedd despite the treachery of his wife Blodeuwedd who was magically created from flowers.

The Roman fort was built to pacify (that’s a euphemism for conquer) the local tribe that they called the Ordovices, led in AD50 by Caratacus, who caused a lot of trouble and suffered the brutal wrath of the Roman Governor. in AD70 the Ordovices had recovered enough to massacre a whole Roman regiment for which they were all but wiped out and the Roman fort built.

From the air, the eyes in the sky can see the rectangles of Roman enclosures, albeit scarred by the later Norman boil which erupted in the middle of the old fort, which in turn seems quite likely to have been sited in a place, important and strategic to the vanquished Ordovices, whose legends will have lived on into the mediaeval times when written into the Mabinogion.

That’s the magic of Wales.

Wall of Slate Slabs in Snowdonia

Humour, Racism, Thoughtful

Thames Wash — The Boris Effect?

I am sitting on a slippery leather seat which is angled inappropriately for my personal posterior; it requires more weight and breadth for stability; it has been moulded by myriad larger arses than mine – smokers probably, sitting near the door, not for ease of escape in case of calamity (like me — one eye on the unrolling ribbon of tarmac ahead and one on the little red hammer to smash the escape windows when called upon by cruel fate to do so). No, the usual passenger in this warn National Express coach seat, though placed (like me) for ease of escape, nips out at each stop for a quick drag – a cigarette, one at Shrewsbury, one at Telford, one at Birmingham and a real gasper outside the Coach Station at Victoria.

I have now had a satisfactory and free, unisex wee, or perhaps it was a pee, with a bewildered old lady up from the country and a number of large foreign gentlemen, and now I wait in this sunny travel hubbub to be collected by my daughter, who worries about me getting lost in the metropolis. Secretly I know she thinks that, if left alone to wander the streets, I will provoke personal attack or arrest because of my uncontrollable urge to engage strangers in conversation and to make unwanted eye-contact.

She hugs me then takes me firmly by the arm and steers me into a newsagent’s to top up my oyster card – which I have remembered this time!

I wonder where the poor have gone – the street vendors, the alcoholics, the dog shit, the End-of-the-world-placard-man? London is eerily clean these days (what has Boris done with them all?) I sniff the strangely pleasant air and we decide to walk by the river, through Battersea Park and to sit on pristine, plumped-up cushions on the steps of a modern pub. Frances goes in to get the drinks and a man in a well ironed shirt (and trousers) comes out to have a look at the front elevation of my pretty daughter’s obscured and un-categorised associate — me. He realizes instantly that I must be her Mum, he says “Lovely weather,” and goes back in, and we sip local micro-brewery summer ale and watch the gulls, the cormorant, the geese and the helicopter flying up and down the Thames. A lanky, middle aged man with a shaved head and yellow roller- boots wobbles past and a beautiful girl on a bicycle feeds treats to a little dog in her bicycle-basket.

Phoenix rising in Battersea

That evening we, my two daughters and I, sit at a pavement table outside a restaurant in Clapham replete with Eritrean food and chat to the staff and I remember… I remember travelling this same road, let me see…

Forty years ago, I was in the back of a maroon Jaguar (the sort John Thaw drove in Morse), tired by two weeks on-duty and nauseated by the smell of leather and spent lighter fuel (everyone smoked everywhere then). It was a dismal grey dusk with the traffic lights too bright and splintering into the dingy, sooty, half-light. Young black men were standing in groups on the pavement next to the junction when suddenly my, soon to be, father-in-law wound down his window and shouted racial abuse at what he believed to be the indolent unemployed. I cringe as I write this – as I did then; the lights changed and we sped off towards leafy Surrey. As I look back I catch the sad eye of a boy accustomed but still surprised by such unprovoked and vitriolic hatred.

Times have changed.

Thames Wash

Hill Farming, Humour, lifestyle

Suddenly Summer!

‘We’ll do that in the Summer!’ we say, ‘In the long balmy days, free of water-proofs and wellies; when the sheep look after themselves and we can enjoy all the things that drew us to this place.’

Summer

‘We’ll do it after shearing, and after we’ve wormed the ewes and caught all the lambs and sprayed them against “fly strike” and after we’ve immunised them all (it’s too hot to tag their ears yet), and after we’ve sprayed the nettles and cut the thistles (and Alan’s mended the rough cutter — and by the way, the dish-washer’s broken), meanwhile we’ll spray ourselves with midge repellent and cut the thistles by hand — will you sharpen the sickle and the bill hook.

Digger rests, engulfed by Summer

And while our rough cutter waits for Alan and the digger with its poorly track awaits attention from the mechanic, all around us grass grows, you can almost hear it, and men work through the long days into the nights to cut silage and bale it all before the thunder storms come. The mechanic rushes from farm to farm to keep the wheels turning.

The bracken, which should have been cut by now, stretches to the sky and spreads to shade the sheep, who far from being relieved by the removal from each of a couple of kilograms of organic insulation and carpet fibre, are now bothered by the sun.

Seeking shade in summer pasture

Sheep shadow

They use their bodies to mark out the exact outlines of trees on the hillsides — sheep shadows, and they pant and look at me accusingly as we might ask the Almighty why we have to suffer so at the hand of cruel destiny.

We sheared them on the day before the heat wave struck and as I walked into the first hot summer sun where they had been lying the buzz was deafening so that we looked about for a cause (continuing the biblical) — a plague of flies had hatched that day and roared in anticipation.

That day we lead them through the woodland to our upper field where the orchids grow and where there is hardly a fly in this shady pasture — like us, they don’t know how fortunate they are.

Orchid in the Summer Pasture

animal psychology, Ecology

Opportunist crime in the South West

Mastermind and Lookout

At The first opportunity they swoop

They divide the loot.

Intrusion from a rival gang

Rich chippings!

Bold, remorseless and organised

Never underestimate the adaptability of a Corvid — this gang of rooks cooperate to exploit the opportunities at the beer garden at the Ship Inn, Pentewan, Cornwall, ousting the traditional scavengers.

Humour, Travel

Hot Tarmac Addiction?

Our friend Glyn is drowsy with counting sheep, coming up the valley every day, after a day’s work, to be jostled by our impatient flock because this is the time of year that we go gallivanting.

In the last ten days we’ve travelled 1300 miles (that’s not far –I hear you New World readers say). It’s far enough in this overcrowded island!

We picked our way over the mountain pass to South Wales at walking pace, avoiding the hundreds of road-runners who were jogging up on the hottest day of the year. We gave them wide berth to allow for heat-exhaustion-wobble, weave and collapse while also avoiding the pulses of road racers on two wheels coming the other way (only two lanes – this is Wales) – pelotons of cyclists, who had just crested the summit, had heads down and were hurtling in squadrons, turbocharged with huge potential energy and suicidal intent, lemming like, towards Brecon.

We glanced at the stunning scenery and at the idyllic path on the other side of the valley, made for walkers and wondered what it is that draws humans in such numbers to tarmac. Our musing was ended abruptly by the thud of a discarded plastic bottle flung, elite-runner like, against our windscreen by a mature but plucky lady with exceptional BMI and poor aim, probably due to chaffing.

As we eventually sped away from the last — or rather, the first of the runners and the last of the cyclists, the bikers started to overtake us, flashing past at every opportunity, like when one slows down to turn right! I have a horror of killing a biker and they come to Wales in huge migrations at holiday times: Hell’s Angels – 1950’s re-enactors on vintage Nortons with side-cars – even an intrepid band of ladies, several with L-plates, on Honda ‘50’s almost grinding to wobbly halts on the hills (though that was on the A30 high-speed dual carriageway in Cornwall!)

We made it to Cornwall without fatality, and back.

Just when we thought we were out of danger, we had to set off again for a family funeral in Scunthorpe – more of that later.

Ecology

Nymphs and Shepherds

Just two years ago we put the bung into the plug hole of our newly dug pond and let Nature do the rest.

Common Hawker Dragonfly defending his new territory.

Last summer this Common Hawker Dragonfly patrolled its banks and skirmished with intruders for the territory, occasionally looping the loop with a yellow spotted female of his species who must have gone on to lay her eggs in the water, because look what we just found!

Aeshna juncea — Common Hawker Dragonfly Nymph

And that wasn’t all — the water is alive with biological activity, a million tadpoles whizz around our pond-dipping bucket, getting in the way and obscuring our view of the newts and myriad nymphs — not so easy to identify in life because most of the pictures are of exuvia (the dried up skins of the nymphs, abandoned by the adults after they emerge). The harder you look the more nymphs appear and all are interacting — some snapping at passers by, others knocked over by a clumsy water beetle — a microcosm.

Here are a few that my grand-daughter helped sort out and photograph–

Damselfly nymph — probably Enallagma cyathigerum being buzzed by a Common Water Boatman

The identification is more to do with common things being common and having seen a lot of the adults flitting about last summer — here’s one of them —

Common Blue Damselfly (probably).

Blue and Azure damselflies are tricky to distinguish — especially when they are alive!

And what about our friend Libellulia depressa, the Broad Bodied Chaser, the first Dragonfly we spotted by the new pond (often the first to colonise a new pond, said the book, and they were) —

Broad Bodied Chaser August 2013.

Broad Bodied Chaser-male

Libellulia depressa — Broad Bodied Chaser

I think this could be one of his offspring

Fat bottomed nymph — maybe an early Chaser (Libelullia depressa) or a Darter (Sympetrum spp.)

Please comment if you think I am wrong in any of my identification — I may well be, but you have to start somewhere!

animal psychology, Humour

Domestic Deity or Just a Damned Cat

The cat sits, ears a point, disdainful of his subjects, on a laundry basket throne or next to the TV. All eyes upon him, (of course) he gazes at nothing in particular, waiting to be served. I have never questioned this — I am a cat-person, in his thrall, trained since birth, a hand maiden of the mighty Mog.

‘Don’t get up and feed him the instant he meows!’

‘But he’s hungry.’

‘He’s just a damned cat!’

My husband is not a cat-person — here’s the dilemma — the main cause of tension in our household.

Guinness, The Fat Cat, epitomises the power of self-confidence. He strutted into our house three years ago, stood his ground when the dog rushed up to him. Their noses touched for an instant, the dog was transfixed, then wham, the paw of steel, the dog was dismissed, blooded, dominated.

Guinness moved in with his own household — his man, Midnight. Cat psychologists say domestic cats are solitary, that is nonsense — Guinness has a butler, his own Jeeves, someone to see to his personal grooming, to suffer fur balls on his behalf, to hunt for him, to taste his food, to intercede with the other servants (me and the dog) and to do his meowing.

Midnight, (‘now he’s a proper cat!’ says Alan) is The Fat Cat’s batman, they met in a previous life, not in the army, but in prison — prisoner of war camp — Stalag 46, in Brighton, in the war on the Feral Feline Freedom Forces. The Fat Cat was in charge of escape and very good at it, but so confident was he that he would present himself every morning outside the prison, at the camp commandant’s bungalow for breakfast. After breakfast he was marched back to the pound where the other prisoners greeted him as a hero ( the Steve McQueen of the Cat Rescue). He would eat again and sleep all day, Midnight, The Proper Cat, watching his back.

He, The Fat Cat and his side kick, were released on licence to live under house arrest in Worthing, that pit of iniquity (I was chased by a mugger once in that East Sussex town fallen from glory). Once respectable, it is now a forest of parking meters roamed by drug addicts, prostitutes and cats. Still uncontainable, it was here that he forged links with the underworld — colluding with local foxes, pimps and mini-cab drivers, wandering the streets at night, his were the green eyes under every illegally parked car, his DNA was on every discarded take-away carton.

He came to Wales, under cover — he’s a sleeper, don’t tell anyone. Urban gangster lying low — some say he worked for a Russian bank, no one knows the full story. Now he’s free to come and go he mainly does what he does best — he’s a sleeper after all. Under his protection, Midnight (his faithful lieutenant and proper cat) does the rest — Farm Cats Inc. (Non-exec. Chairman: Guinness, ‘The Fat Cat’)

Farm Cats Inc. — FC and the Hit-man

Natural Beauty

In the Rain Shadow…

…mythical creatures claw themselves free of the forest floor…

rise up on the verges of the ancient tracks…

and stretch out to drag you into their gully.

Warriors stand above their own graves and gaze through the larch vale, wind at their backs, looking down the valley to where we live in this land of spirits.

The tups on the hill are uneasy…

they feel it too. Something stirring beneath the wet grass — everywhere, everything — waking — stretching — on the move.

Nature’s Show Garden!

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