A very taxing 12 mile walk in the rain on boggy ground, following the Cambrian Way  in Powys from Dyffryn Castell to Dylife via Plynlimon. Not a lot of fun.

Date walked: 23rd October 2017

Distance: 12.6 miles according to the guide book

Maps used:

OS Explorer 213: Aberystwyth&Cwm Rheidol

OS Explorer 214: Llanidloes &Newtown

OS Explorer 215: Newtown & Machynlleth

(just as well that I had downloaded all these and the route onto my phone – not that it stopped us from wading through a lot of boggy ground)

Guide book: Cambrian Way by A.J. Drake

*****

There are days when walking is no fun. This was going to be one of those days. It was raining. Heavily. Paul and I (Neil’s absence is a long story; all you need to know is that I will be doing these next two walks again with him anon) had booked into The Star at Dylife for three nights, and had come up the night before.

This isolated Inn is on the route of the Cambrian Way, so all we needed to do after our Full English (I guess the produce might have been Welsh, but probably not the tinned tomatoes – I have not had them offered in a cooked breakfast for many years) was to get in my car and drive back to where we had left off in June.  Why so long since our last leg? The dedicated followers here will know that in the meantime I have had a painful knee problem investigated and successfully treated by an arthroscopy.

It was 45 minute drive to the car park of the ex-hotel at Dyffryn Castell and the weather had not improved one bit by the time we got there.

Thanks to Paul for setting our somewhat miserable scene 

I was trying out a new pair of Hi-Tec Ravine walking boots. They claim to be waterproof  which was reassuring.

I’m not wearing a silly hat – it’s just how my hood was sitting

Paul had purchased a new Osprey rucksack for the occasion with a day-glo lime green cover.

Paul looking as intrepid as he is able

A finger-post gave us a clear indication of where to start and we set off up the quite steep hillside, following the Nant Bowen …

Another of Paul’s pics

…. which rushed  down the little valley to our left.

A Paul pic of me forging ahead

It was wet, but not cold, and soon I began to overheat and had to lose a layer. As we climbed, so it began to get very misty and our path was quite indistinct at times (well, most of the time, really).

Thanks again to Paul for the pic – I’m not paying him!

We climbed about 1000 feet on this very soggy ground; crossing several stiles…..

The stiles were very slippery!

…..before reaching the edge of a plantation of conifers.

Looking pretty damp

At this point Paul declared his boots to be leaking, which was a bit of a blow, less than two miles into the walk. Mine were holding up.

This degree of wet is a challenge, I think, for any boots

Our route continued to be very boggy at times, though we were grateful that for a while we were on a firm, wide forest track.

Leaving the wood we climbed again for another 400 feet into the mist, following a stock fence as our only visible reference point.

I reckon we could see nor more than about 50 metres

We reached a large cairn as we approached the summit of Plynlimon…

Paul looking ever so slightly pissed off?

….before the trig point at 2,467 feet came into view.

Paul’s pic again

The visibility was so poor that the trig point and its adjacent stone shelter were all we could see here. Still, a selfie had to be taken.

You’ll have to trust me that we at the trig point

We took a break at this point, huddled in the walled “shelter”. Paul took his boots off and wrung out his socks.  This was not good.

Doing our best to be cheerful

It was rather frustrating knowing that from here, on a clear day, we would have had some fabulous views. Here’s a pic I took on an earlier visit.

Tragic!

From Plynlimon the Cambrian Way has no footpath to follow for several miles. The Guide indicates that we should keep to the side of a fence.  We plodded along the rough and saturated ground, passing by the unmarked and unsigned source of the River Wye. Generally, there wasn’t much to see. A small pond we passed was marked on the map. That’s always reassuring when one is on an “undefined” route.

Pond

We both really loved the tapestry of colours in the reedy grasses.

Beautiful

We passed an intriguing stone marked “W.W.W” and dated 1865.  The Cambrian Way website identifies this as a marker stone of the land of one Sir Watkin Williams-Wynne. 

Impossible not to think of the Internet

Other than this, the most interesting feature for a couple more miles was a large lump of peat.

Look, beggars can’t be choosers at this visibility

Our “path” gave us the regular opportunity to wade through and by large puddles, during which my boots began to ship water. What larks.

But we passed another boundary stone to amuse us…..

… and a lot more grass…..

… and another boundary stone.

… and another pond….

… and yet another boundary stone.

We were in danger of getting over-excited at this point, so coming across a stile over the fence and a real footpath made us quite giddy. This point, apparently, was where we might make a half a mile detour to see the source of the River Severn.  We gave this serious consideration and declined; our experience of water that day having already been quite satisfied.

Here our Guide says to “strike down the easy slopes of Carn Fawr to a footbridge”. Hmm. On the map this looked as if it should be a continuation of the direction we had been going in. We tried that and found no hint that other humans had been there. So we went back to the stile and took instead the path crossing the stile. This was a proper path….

But it was not shown on the map

… which led us passed another boundary stone….

Not a good omen

…and then stopped. Or petered out. Or some bastard had hidden it. In any case we found ourselves tramping over a lot of very rough, very wet, very boggy ground. The only good thing to say about this was that the mist had lifted so we knew where we were (in a manner of speaking).

All of which made this very tiring

Oh, there was one other interesting thing. We came across some very gloopy stuff which was a complete mystery. We saw several patches of this in the day.

It was like big blobs of frog spawn without the frog

This section really was quite horrid and to make matters worse at one point Paul cried out in pain when something happened in his groin that shouldn’t have.

Eventually we got to the track where I could say for certain where we were and dosed Paul up with co -codamaol. I was on familiar territory again here as Bob and I had been here two years previously (see https://charleshawes.veddw.com/other-walks/plynlimon/)

There was nowhere to sit and wait for it to kick in so we slowly carried on, grateful that at least that the track’s surface was firm, if still waterlogged in places. It led past a lake called Bugeilyn. 

Do have a look at the link above, it is a description from an agency trying to sell this moor and offers a “tutored wilderness immersion weekend”.

We were experiencing an untutored total immersion day

The track crossed the lake by the old boat house. Pause for a pic

That is not a droopy moob – it’s my camera

One sheep does not a swallow make

….climbing to the ruins of the property also called Bugeilyn.

According to the map a footpath should have taken us off this track and towards our destination but if it was there I missed it (I didn’t tell Paul this for fear he might cry or hit me). In fact it was only a little bit longer to stay on our track which curved eastwards and joined Glyndwr’s Way.

Paul was feeling a bit more comfortable by now and began to pick up speed as he usually does when we approach the finish of a walk (or it might have been because the light was beginning to fade).

Around there, and for the first time in the day, the skies lifted and we finally had a nice view over the Clywedog valley.

The scars of mining were clearly visible in the valley and on the trip that Bob and I had made here a couple of years ago we also walked down there. (click this link for that walk)

I kept a careful eye on our route at this point, making sure that we kept to the path leading away from the valley and towards the Inn. At the crest of the hill the pub was just half  a mile away, which made Paul very happy.

One of those times when you are very happy to think you have nearly finished

What made him less happy was that we had one more rather unpleasant little boggy valley to negotiate which I insisted we take rather than the slightly longer route by the road. Sorry Paul.

Having got to the pub it was extraordinarily hard to face the fact that we couldn’t just shower and change and collapse in the bar as we had to drive back in Paul’s car to retrieve my own.   That was an hour and a half’s round trip and I resented every minute of it. Not a mature position I know.  Also I still feel pretty disappointed that the pub has no draught beer. That is unforgivable.