Month: July 2016

The image above shows the view on a good day.

What if it’s not a good day?

Rather one like this:

Where the temperature is approaching 4-5C (30 40F), it’s windy and wet.

If you’re prepared, these are excellent conditions for a walk. If you’re not … well, let’s just say “may the force be with you.” You’ll need it.

What do I mean by being prepared? Here’s my gear list.

• Rain gear
• Winter coat
• Thin hiking sweater (Marks and Sparks has an excellent one – wool and silk.)
• Wind shirt.
• Dry bag in pack containing Fleece, change of clothes. I use a trash-compacter bag as a pack liner.
• Food and water.
• The rest of the “10 Essentials.” Map, compass, headlamp, first aid kit, and cell-phone.

This looks like an enormous amount to carry. Especially if you add in my camera and GPS. It isn’t. I’ve chosen light-weight gear. The single heaviest think I carried was water (@ 1 kilogram/liter). The total weight was about 3-4 kilograms.

Route Selection

There are five major routes up the mountain. They range from long (following the train) to short and steep (Watkin and Pig trails). We’ve used the Ranger Trail and Rhyd ddu paths. The Ranger Trail is probably the easiest with children. The Pig trail is the shortest climb, but it’s decidedly steep and the parking lot at the base is always a zoo. An informal survey of the people in the restaurant at the top suggested that most either come up the Pig trail or take the train.

Our route this year was up and down the Rhyd ddu path. My wife and I did this path when we were just married. I think we actually made better time as old-codgers. (Walking poles help, a lot.)

This map shows a trip we made a few years ago. We thought hard about coming back this way, as the Ranger Trail is a lot easier to follow in the dense fog. The path across the bottom, through the abandoned slate quarry, is swampy even in a dry summer. Therefore, rather than face the mire, we decided to take it slowly on the way down.

The slate quarry, close up.

The trail starts with a well-maintained track of large stones embedded in the soft peaty ground. It’s land covered with sheep. We chose shearing day for our stroll; the local farmer had gathered his flock and we started to the noise of distraught ovines.
The trail rises faster than you think. I thought we’d been walking on the flat when we stopped here. About 1/3-1/2 the way up, the fog descended. It usually burns off by mid-day. I started out looking forward to purchasing a pint at the top. A few minutes later, a cup of tea seemed a much better idea.  Leaving us with this view from the top.

You may have noticed that I like to walk. Maybe it’s all those trailmaps I’ve posted. (A big thank you to this site for their help with tracks.)

Anyway one of the joys of the UK is the public footpaths or rights of way. They’re designated with red dashed lines on the 1:50000 landranger series and green dashed, dotted and other lines on the 1:25000 explorer series from the ordnance survey. The symbols are a little different from the USGS maps, but close enough that if you can read one, you can read the other. Like the US maps they have a blue background grid that is a kilometer grid based on a zero point. (Canada does something similar, and shares the datum with the USA, but they sometimes use an older one that’s about 300 meters off. Be warned.) The British use their own national grid that is similar to the US one, but based on their own origin. You’ll see numbers like SN339486 which refers to a specific location. You can interpolate the numbers from the map, enter them into your gps and find a specific neolithic stone circle on a heath in Exmoor. (it was literally a circle of small stones.)

In England, the footpaths generally go where the map says they are. There are exceptions, but if you navigate stile to stile, you’ll be OK. The picture shows a style on a typically beautiful summer day. Or perhaps one good enough to be typical. Many of the styles are gates, and the rule is to leave the gate the way you found it.

Many of the footpaths follow historic tracks or roads. Often these are sunken lanes where the effort of expanding them for even a single track ‘metalled’ (paved) road would exceed the effort needed to just build a new road nearby. These paths can be ancient. The ridgeway that runs from near Reading to south of Bath dates to the time of the pyramids. It’s sort of exciting to walk on a road that was old and in use when Julius Caesar was a boy.

The public footpaths can go through people’s back gardens – including quite famous people’s back gardens. (There’s a rock star near Dorchester (near Oxford), whose back garden is crossed by one.)

The footpaths often cross fields with livestock. Cows are a real hazard. They are not the calm sweet animals from cartoons and milk advertisements. Big and sometimes ornery, especially the beef cattle which are not handled by people on a routine basis, they need to be treated with respect. Every now and then someone who doesn’t treat them with respect gets trampled. Sheep are extremely common, but other than decorating the trail in their own unique manner, not much of a bother. There are also a fair number of horses, especially in wilder areas.

Wales, however, is another story. While there are plenty of footpaths and they are marked on the maps, they are often not there in reality. This map from 2013 shows our path … digressing from the footpath. What started as a gentle walk to a pub in a nearby town, became an almost epic journey as we worked our way around closed footpaths. We took the bus home.

Trail conditions range from smooth and dry, to bogs, and on to mud pits. The paths can be wide and easy walking or narrow and filled with nettles. Fortunately, outside of Kew Gardens, there’s no poison ivy.

Water sources are few, and you will need to be prepared. I’ll put it up in another post, but my wife and I did Snowdon last week. We were prepared, and needed to be. It wasn’t a bad climb, but the temperature changed from a balmy 20C at the base to about 5C at the top, in dense fog, dripping wet. Hypothermia was a real risk. Especially as you’d be damp from sweating on the climb. So we carried rain gear, winter coats, dry change of clothes, my backcountry first aid kit (which contains a space blanket for a bivy), water, and extra food. We needed the warm clothes by the time we arrived at the top. The point of this is that you have to do your research and be prepared for what you may encounter.

This is a fine, relatively unused, 7 mile 2000 foot climb walk. The rain finally held off so we grabbed the chance.

The trail map shows the house we’ve hired, but you can park for free near the top of the paved road.

We walked in the original quarry road, along a stream and waterfalls. The people in this picture were getting ready to explore one of the many mines on the mountain.  Off picture, to the left, is a steep hill of tailings and various miner paths that leads up to an abandoned quarry. We came back that way.

 Once inside you skirt a lake and then follow an old road to an abandoned village. There’s a bitter-sweet poem, in Welsh, attached to the start of this slate fence. It says they have a new school, an new pub, an new hotel, and it’s all gone.

We ate lunch in the middle of the ruins. Our choice dictated by the availability of dry seats.

Following the path uphill, did I mention there’s a lot of that in this hike, you reach another abandoned quarry. It’s only the second of six. The vertical bar in the background, next to a mine opening, is the reliable and dry footpath. How did we find that out? By trying the others.
When we got here we realized that we didn’t want to walk down Cwm Creosoe.

Following the old gravity slides (only 20% grade or so), leads to a saddle with views like this.

We followed the footpath down. Until it disappeared into a swamp. So we ended up following informal paths (Sheep trails) to a final abandoned quarry. Then after a steep decline, we found the path we came up.

All in all an enjoyable exploration. Just be prepared for bogs, lots of bogs.