Theoretically a relatively easy 5 mile trek over some of the smaller summits of the Rhinogs. But then there’s theory and there’s practice.

Date walked: 16th April 2021

Distance: according to my map as traced out on my phone, 7km, in reality quite a bit more

Maps used:  OS Explorer OL 18- Harlech, Porthmadog and Y Bala

Guide used: Walking the Cambrian Way by George Todd and Richard Tyler (Cicerone Press)

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My last post from The Way was  in September last year when deaths in the UK associated with Covid 19 stood at around 50,000. It is now around 128,000 – that’s a huge number of people but about half the number killed in the UK by the Spanish Flu pandemic of 2018/19. We now have over 34 million of the population in the UK vaccinated and the NHS is no longer under any real threat of being overwhelmed. Its time to remove all government controls over our lives (other than border controls). End of message.

Last September the talk was of a second virus wave. This came, and once again we were all quickly subject to further lockdowns and massive restrictions about what we have been allowed to do. One of the restrictions was that long distance travel was prohibited and pubs and hotels were closed. It was only recently that the travel bans have been lifted in Wales and self catering accommodation has been allowed to take guests. The pubs have remained unable to serve evening meals inside, and so most remain closed. But the lifting of the ban on self catering on March 27th meant that Paul and I could finally return to where we had left off on August 24th 2019 when we had arrived exhausted and seriously dehydrated at the pretty lake of  Cwm Bychan.

This is a pretty lousy map of the walk but I thought it was worth putting in if only for the hilarious estimate of how long it should take us.  More of that anon.

The drive up from home to Moelfryn on the shore of Llyn Trawsfynydd should have taken me about 4 hours with a pee stop. It’s a beautiful drive but when I stopped at Llanbrynmair the car wouldn’t start again. In fact nothing happened when I turned the ignition switch. SHIT! I thought I would look under the bonnet (you know, just to check that no one had nicked the engine when I was in the toilet) and fiddled with the battery. One of the terminals was quite loose. I was, of course, spannerless, but miraculously when I returned to the car for a weep the ignition lights were back on. Huzzah! So for the next half and hour I pootled along hoping to see a garage or anyone who might look like they might have a spanner. I stopped at a service station at Mallwyd who very kindly rummaged around in their drawers but spanner had they not. As I was leaving who should turn up in the shop but Paul who had been following me since Llanbrynmair wondering why I was going so slowly. Amazing! He didn’t have any tools either but then a Man With A Pickup pulled up and his tool collection was impressive and he whipped out a spanner and tightened the nut and we were back on track for our 12.30 rendezvous and I didn’t even have to find Paul.

Moelfryn is pretty well at the end of a single track No Through Road. We were going to park up at a layby near where our intended footpath reaches the road when an officious farmer told us that it was a passing place and we couldn’t park there. Well, you could probably have got three articulated lorries in the space but being a co-operative and non-confrontational soul I accepted his suggestion that we park a little further back on the driveway of a cottage that he said was empty. I was going to leave my car and then we’d drive in Pauls to the start of the walk. I gingerly reversed down the somewhat steep drive and then found I couldn’t go forwards. Getting out I found that a had a rear wheel 15 inches off the ground, and no traction on the front wheels. The car was straddling a big dip in the ground.

How I manged that without the slightest sense of doing anything problematic was and remains a total mystery. But basically I was fucked. Paul and I spent ages heaving stones from a nearby heap to try and get the rear wheel supported and Paul then jacked the front up and we piled loads more stone under the front wheels. It looked like it should have worked but on starting the engine the front wheels flung the stones away and the car slid backwards towards a stone wall. Now those that know me would say that generally I am pretty good in a crisis. I mean I was an Emergency Social Worker for about 20 years and that career provided some pretty hairy crises. But about then I kinda lost it.

At this point you are probably feeling very tense so here is a picture of a pussy cat

I had been apologising profusely to Paul but now it was time for a bit of hysteria and I began to sob and panic and for good measure went tachycardic to the extent that Paul couldn’t find my pulse let alone count it. I sat down and sorted out my tachycardia ( I have a condition called SVT and am very familiar with this  but it was a bit of a pain that it kicked in was I was busy having a meltdown). Feeling a bit better we considered our Plan B. I rang my breakdown service and got booked in (hoping that we could still get ourselves out) and then we thought about towing me out. I had a tow rope! Huzzah! But we couldn’t find the towing point, necessitating a call to Hyundai who assured me that it was where it wasn’t. Jacking the car up again to repeat Plan A revealed the tow point. (Thank you, by the way, to the sympathetic passers by who thought the farmer would help us – HA!). So I linked us up and with all the wheels supported on more stone Paul gently pulled me out. And amazingly without any apparent damage to the car. Huzzah!

OK, we have been through a lot now so I thought a Penguin would help

By now it was around 2 pm. I guess some might think that the sensible thing to do would be to count our blessings and head for our booked cottage at Maentwrog, check in and get pissed. But being sensible was not an option yet so, emboldened by my itinerary that suggested that 3 and a half hours for the walk would be ample and that technically it was a lovely day, we agreed to head for Cwm Bychan, arriving there, via Harlech (that was a surprise) at 3pm.

Here’s Paul getting ready

So, clutching my Guide book, we set off up the lane by the farm….

…. passed through our first gates….

…. and was delighted to find on the gate post a Cambrian Way waymark.

These markers have only been posted in the last couple of  years and offer reassurance that one is one the right route. Understandably though, they have not been placed on posts in the open landscape so getting off route is still possible (likely in my case). The new Cicerone Guide is a huge improvement on A.J.Drake’s original guide to the walk as it has usefully added compass directions for the main changes of direction.

Neither of us had done any hill walking for months so it was slow going as we picked our way between the boulders above the lake.

A stile over a wall carried a marker. So far so good.

My inattentiveness to the subsequent directions meant that rather than climbing to the mini summit called Clip, we struggled somewhat in thick heather for some time…

…..before reaching the more benign ground of the ridge called Craig Ddrwg.

Pause to take pic

The guide helpfully says that “there is no right or wrong way, provided progress is made along the ridge in a northerly direction”. I think that’s roughly what we did, though I am not sure why I didn’t take snaps of the small lakes that we should have passed that were markers for being on the path. I may have been distracted by our first sighting of some mountain goats which are said to inhabit the Rhinogs but which so far had stubbornly hidden from us.

Pale blobs roughly in the centre of the pic

My zoom on the camera was required to be fully extended in order to get a half decent shot of these elusive creatures.

I realized at this point that we had not kept to the route and the small lakes we should have skirted were way above us. A post that would have carried the waymark sign if we had been on track didn’t.

Looking up, we convinced ourselves that there was a path climbing steeply up the side of the hill and decided that that was our best bet.

After a hefty climb ….

… we found a ladder over a wall with the Cambrian Way marker and congratulated ourselves on our recovery.

We’d taken an hour and a half at this point to walk about a mile and a half which is slow going by anyone’s standards! For a short while the route was relatively easy….

…. and we were able to take in the beautiful surroundings illuminated by increasingly lovely light.

But Moel Ysgyfarnogod loomed over us and we need to make its summit, which soon meant, after a pause to double check our location…

Thanks to Paul for this pic

….some more steep climbing up its lower slopes.

It was after 5.30pm before we had sight of our mountain summit…..

Another of Pauls pics, obvs

…. and even from here we some challenging rock faces to find our way through.

Another half an hour of scrambling brought us increasingly fabulous views to the sea and the Lleyn peninsular…

… and of the Trig point of our hill.

Moel Ysgyfarnogod Means “bare hill of hares”, is 2044 feet above sea level and is Checkpoint 28 of the Cambrian Way.

I must have had a bit of a meltdown at this point as this pic seems to have been the last one I took, so from here on the images are all from Paul. The Guide gives clear directions to climb over the nearby summit of Foel Penblau and then Diffwys but I had somehow mapped out a route on my phone which took us south-west of both these hills and following this line on my phone took over from following the Guide’s directions. A mistake.

This  gave us some challenging walking on the side of the hills, where probably only sheep had passed before us.

A wall ahead took us in the right direction, but it wasn’t easy.

At least we were going downhill, which was reassuring. But we were very slow as we picked our way between the rocks. Meanwhile the sun was getting quite low in the sky, its warm light making the most of the copper coloured bracken.

According to the data on this next pic it was 8.20pm when we had sight of Lake Trawsfynydd but I reckon the camera hadn’t put its clock back as it would have been dark by then.

Rather lovely pic of Pauls

This last pic of Pauls has me looking at the Guide; something I should have done rather more of and which I resolved to do tomorrow.

We did reunite with the official route for the last descent to Moelfryn (check point 29). I was hugely relieved to find my car hadn’t been carted off by anyone and still had four inflated tyres. By the time we got back to Paul’s car at Cwm Bychan it was dark. The approach to the lake from Harlech is on very narrow, twisting roads with high stone walls on both sides. Hairy in daylight. Extremely threatening at night. Paul was following me and shortly after we set off for out cottage at Maentwrog my sat nav gave me a right turn we had not taken on the way in.

Not knowing the roads it would take a brave person to overrule the satnav but I wished that I had. For about an hour (it seemed much, much more) we twisted and turned though hairpin bends, climbing most of the time and having to stop at about a dozen times at gates across the road, each one adding to what truly felt like a nightmare. I ceased to believe that the sat nav was getting us to where we wanted to be and suspected that it had been possessed by a demon spirit that would have us drive all night in this maze of tortuous lanes.

But it hadn’t and we were finally deposited back on the A 496, arriving at the cottage around 10pm. All plans to have a proper meal were abandoned so we opened the bottle of wine that had kindly been left for us and snacked on crisps and chocolate and talked ourselves down from what, for me at least, was one of the most traumatic days I can remember.

Many of these images are available at Getty images. Here’s a link. The prices quoted are a fantasy – mostly I get about a dollar an image through big picture buyers having what’s called Premium Access.