#009: Perhaps you can tell me what the significance of Stephanie Beacham is?

WARNING: The upcoming post is massive. 'Saga Wales', if you will. Though it is nothing to do with over 55's holidaying in the valleys. It's long because, during the last two weeks, when I wasn't doing actual things, I was alone, in a field, with not much more than reading and writing to keep me occupied. Not only that; it rained. A lot.

Having spent the previous couple of weeks or so on floors of either board or grass, I afforded myself the luxury of a bunk in the Conwy Youth Hostel for a couple of nights. Okay, it's not exactly the lap of luxury, and my first night was punctuated by the old gent I had as a roomy relieving his aging bladder every couple of hours, and my second night included not one but two groups of young 'uns under the same roof, albeit on a different floor...namely the floor directly above my room...at five o'clock in the morning (thank you Miss Robinson) but, by all accounts, YHA hostels have come a long way and will even provide you with cooked meals and packed lunches, should you so wish (and can afford). Me, I chose to cater for myself in the do-it-yourself kitchen, and also sampled the unique local cuisine one night: cod and chips.
Conwy was built by Edward I in the 1280's, and the main portion of the town is held within vast walls whose battlements you can still circumnavigate. In one corner, protecting the valuable river crossing, is a heavily fortified castle which these days lies largely in ruin though, again, battlements and towers are accessible and offer great views of the town, river mouth and valley. Conwy is also home to the 'smallest house in Great Britain' - quite the attraction! You can pay for a tour of the dwelling, though I'd be interested to know what trading standards feel constitutes a tour; the place is tiny...

Hi, this is the, err, house. Thanks. Bye.

Conwy done and dusted, I picked up another hire car, this one about half the size of the one I took in the Beacons. It reminds me of a cross-between one of those pull-back-and-go toy cars you had as a child and a packet of Space Invaders minus the crisps and the cool pictures. I've got it for just over a week, unless the wind picks up and blows it away, so spent the first day getting as far south as I could. It took rather longer than I bargained for, the roads A-class all the way, but single lane in each direction with approximately half the drivers on the road being tourists driving at half the speed limit. I calmed myself with the thought that, if I had tried to drive my car any faster, it would probably turn in on itself anyway. En route I passed a number of slate mining communities. Some of the works were vast; whole mountains seemingly sliced into stacks of flint.
As six hours behind the wheel elapsed (not straight, mother and father; breaks were taken), I found myself near the idyllic city of St Davids, the smallest city in the UK. From smallest house to smallest city in one day. You literally couldn't plan it, could you. (Tomorrow I plan to visit the smallest country in Britain...heh...oh). From St Davids I followed some roadsigns to a nearby campsite where a rather hairy man permitted me to stay in exchange for seven English pounds.
Guess what? It rained that night. It seems the beings that hand out the Karma sweets have decided it's my turn for the Black Jacks, while they keep all the Fruit Salads to themselves. And I thought I was on to a winner, spending Spring/Summer in the unusually warm northern hemisphere before heading south of the equator for Christmas on the beach. Scotland was clearly a false dawn and has left it to Wales to show me just how foolish I was being. Still, I've got the tiniest car alive (they didn't even bother giving it a boot) and my own choice of lightweight one-man tent to keep me dry. The tent, now I look at it from the outside, doesn't even seem to be as long as I am tall, and I'm fairly positive the BBC would sue under the trade descriptions act if anyone dared label it a T.A.R.D.I.S. The old adage 'don't touch the sides' was clearly lost on the designer of the Vango Banshee 200.
I moved north along the Pembrokeshire coastline and, according to my landlady for the following couple of nights, Thursday would be a good day for climbing 'the Cadair'. Cadair Idris, to give it its' full name, has long held a certain fascination for me. Aged seven, my childhood summer holiday was spent in a cottage at the foot of this mountain. All I can now recall of that fortnight was the proximity to Fairbourne Steam Railway, the layout of the kitchen, and the fact that we didn't climb to the top of Cadair Idris, despite living on it. Whether this was by design due to our young age, I do not know, but there has since been a slight nag in me that, having started up the path one day, we turned around and came back long before the peak. (If childish insolence was anything to do with this decision, I now offer a belated apology.)
The campsite upon which I stayed was chosen due to its usefulness as a base camp. My route - from the south - proved to be an inspired choice: I emerged from the treeline (a woodland path followed a rather eye-catching waterfall to that point) under the right end of the Cadair Idris range, a large horseshoe around a lake, belittling that of Carneddau (for those of you who are familiar with the lake and horseshoe there). I took the path up the left end of the horseshoe and followed the ridge all the way around. The views down both sides were quite spectacular: one back down the crags to the mountain lake, the other across the remainder of the national park, its peaks and valleys to the south, and out to the sea to the west. I, strangely, had "Now You Are Pregnant" by The Wave Pictures stuck in my head for the duration. I can only surmise that this corner of Snowdonia is up the duff with someone else's baby, and yet I kind of adore her...
I've been having some incredibly vivid dreams recently. Perhaps this is due to getting a more than normal amount of sleep by not feeling I have to maximise my allocation of 'day' time, because of the lack of work. Last night - the one after climbing Cadair - I dreamt that Stephanie Beacham was presenting a sex documentary. It wasn't fleeting; I got a full hour I reckon, no adverts either. And Ms. Beacham was fully involved. None of this off-camera stuff, making do with a celebrity studio voiceover. Oh no. She narrated and presented to camera, and she was at the heart of all demostrations. Throughout. Leaving no stone unturned. And yes, in the depths of my subconscious she is doing very well for herself. Aged sixty-four. Anyway, if any of you is particularly adept at dream-reading, perhaps you can tell me what the significance of Stephanie Beacham is?
I moved north, into the shadow of Snowdon, and spent a day pootling around in the car. Went into Caernarfon for the morning then crossed the Menai Strait onto Anglesey, finding a quiet woodland spot to read the paper. The best thing about Anglesey was the view back to the mainland: foothills backed by the huge frame of Snowdon, and its near neighbours, reaching up and piercing the cloudline. As I drove along the coastal path I considered taking a detour into the sea, just in case Wills was on duty. I wondered how the immediate aftermath of my rescue might go...

"Is that Captain Windsor at the controls? Mind if I say hello?
"Hello your Royal Highness, how you doing? Just say if you need to concentrate on flying the helicopter - I've heard they're rather tricky.
"I'm from Maidenhead, as it goes. Do you know it? Just down the road from Windsor of course. Used to be the same electoral constituency even. Do you get to vote, being a Royal and all, or does political bias come into it?
"I just thought, Maidenhead is on the way from Kate's folks back to your nan's place, isn't it? You should pop by and have a drink one evening, break up the journey.
"You know, they'd love to see the pair of you in Smokey's, Jagers all round! Its even got a VIP room and it'd only be twenty quid in a cab back to the castle after midnight, that's only a tenner each. Bargain!"

Snowdon. Once again I picked my campsite carefully, giving me a choice of routes up the mountain. I'd climbed it before, as a youth, and we had naturally taken the miners track up. This time I was keen on a little more of a challenge; a ridge extends round to the south and to the north from Snowdon's peak, so I decided to tackle the whole thing. What's the point in going to the beach if you don't see the sea, eh? (Next time, Ben Nevis, I promise.)
First off, though, I needed to get to Pen Y Pass - the point where it seems everyone else starts climbing the mountain from - which involved a short trek across farmland from the campsite. Or so I thought...
The problem with pathways in popular bits of mountainous regions - popular areas anywhere I guess - is that they get too popular. As paths wear, people start making new paths, and it can be terribly difficult to find the one you actually require. Within fifteen minutes of starting out I found myself ankle-deep in marshland rather than farmland. Not a good start. The map suggested the path I wanted ran alongside a stream so I followed that, still in marsh rather than on path. Another ten minutes of my feet intermittently disappearing into the swamp and I'd had enough. I paused, checked the map again: one path only. I decided to head in the direction where I knew Pen Y Pass to be, through more marsh, and eventually found another path, this time leading in the right direction. Hooray. The map said there was a single path, I was on a path, everything was okay. Five minutes later...a second jigging path! (Jigging, and its various tenses, is the replacement swear word in the set of novels I have been reading the last month or so...as in 'jigger this for a game of jigging soldiers', 'jigger you', etc.). Clearly unhappy by this point I had to resort to advanced rough rambler techniques and go it alone without the path(s). Fortunately I had the right number of rocks in my knapsack. Of course, this was in direct contravention of all the ranting I have been doing. My vitriol is extinguished. I reached Pen Y Pass fully one hour after leaving the campsite, while the rest of the general public were still finishing their breakfasts, the jiggers.
I made my way up the miners track (bits of which were really well tarmacked, I mean really well) to the point where the route up to the south ridge splits off. Forty-five minutes or so later I was up on the ridge and had an astonishing view all around. I'd definitely made the right decision to come this way, even if I do say so myself. Of course, it had the added advantage of avoiding the hoards of tourists making their way up the main mountain paths that day. The rest of the way round was fairly uneventful. I was lucky enough to have it clear of cloud on the top, and a random guy I saw was lucky enough to have made it to the top. In wellies. Bravo, sir.
The north ridge was something else. Less of a path along a ridge...more the point of a mile-long undulating isosceles triangle made of granite. The drops on both sides were pretty severe but, by leaning into the mountain just shy of the top on either side, there were plenty of places to find secure footing and hand-holds. I promise. It definitely wasn't a foolish thing to have done. On my own. Because I could see. Through the now-descended clouds. A bit. Canyoning aside (because with canyoning you actually let go of the mountain), it ranks as the most extreme rope-free mountaineering I've done...kind of like climbing over a style in the countryside, except the style is a kilometer in the air. Bits along the top were almost like the constituent parts of Superman's arctic lair (large polygonal struts), just without the ghostly images of his long-dead parents - hardly anyone gets to see that (the struts, not the parents). It was wholly worth it and I'd race back there given the chance.

I awake the next day to a strange sensation. No, not that. The walls of the tent were a dazzling glow and I myself was...surely not. I was hot! I hurriedly unzipped the tent door to verify the look of the sky. There was actual sky! Blue yonder! Not a single cloud in sight. I had intended to spend today moving campsite and generally ambling about doing tourist kind of things, but jigger that! I'm going up Tryfan!
Tryfan is another mountain that I hold somewhat in awe, for two reasons. First, on my only other visit to that particular range of Snowdonia, I was just out of the scouts and thought I knew a thing or two about hiking and the sort of kit you should take along. Before we'd even set foot on Tryfan, I realised I had over-packed and my things had to be redistributed amongst the group lest I drop dead from exhaustion. Very embarrassing. That day, we weren't even tackling the full beast that is Tryfan, with its north face. We were merely skimming around the side along what is known as the Heather Terrace. The second reason Tryfan and, particularly, its north face, held such an aura for me was because, one night on that same trip we were relaxing in our campsite and spotted a flashing light up on the mountain - dot dot dot dash dash dash dot dot dot - a distress signal! We alerted mountain rescue and it turned out someone had fallen and broken their leg trying to descend in the dark. Plonkers. So, you can see, for those reasons (getting it wrong myself and witnessing near tragedy there), I was keen to conquer Tryfan and its north face myself. And I reckoned a bright, sunny, cloudless day would be a much better one to give it a try than the overcast, thundery, windswept days forecast to follow.
Within 100ft of starting the climb, my body said something to me along these lines:

"Er, what's this? A mountain? I thought we did this yesterday. For seven hours straight. It's what mountain?! No, no you've got to turn back.
"You're not stopping are you. You really expect me to do this again. You b******."

The first ten or fifteen minutes weren't so bad: big rock-sized steps up under the northern face of the mountain. After that it got a bit more exciting; hands required as well as feet to work my way up. Twenty minutes in and it was a case of carefully picking the route up, as some demanded a fair amount of climbing, choosing foot and hand-holds, to get to the next bit of 'path'. I saw my first cairn after an hour, about the same point I bumped into another chap making his first attempt at the north face. He said he had been advised never to climb down the north face of Tryfan, only up, so was somewhat taken aback at my mountain rescue anecdote. He did, though, say that a mountain in the area called Crib Goch was even more demanding and dangerous, so we should be alright. We moved on at intervals, overtaking each other once or twice, and overtook some other climbers on our way. I arrived at a plateau with a huge cairn on it and figured I must be at least three-quarters of the way up. In front of me was what seemed to be big buttresses with no discernible climb past. I spotted a track leading round to the left of the mountain, but found only deep gulleys cutting into its side and disappearing hundreds of feet below. After some contemplation, aided by the fact no-one else had caught up with me, I returned to the huge cairn to find some of the others had picked their way up the buttress. A couple of lads who were there with, remarkably, their dog Tess, followed me up. The climbing was now as difficult as it got on the whole mountain; a slip could mean a fall long enough to break bones for sure. Ahead of me a couple turned back, but I pressed on and eventually found the climbing got easier, seemingly sheer walls with scant hand-holds replaced by jutting and interlocking boulders, ripe for scrambling across. After near enough two hours I had made it, and enjoyed my mountaintop lunch in glorious sunshine. I got chatting to the guy again on our descent of the south of the peak, and it transpires Crag Goch was the route I chose to climb down from Snowdon...ignorance is bliss!
Given the weather was holding, I decided to stay up the mountain and round the Glyderau: Glyder Fach and Glyder Fawr. They have lost none of the magic I remember of them. The tops (995 and 999m above sea level respectively) are a spectacular collection of huge rocks and boulders, as far as the eye can see. And the peaks themselves themselves could be man-made prototypes for the exterior of Superman's lair. Having got to the bottom, I found myself a local campsite, pitched and had dinner, then started reading the book I bought a couple of days prior, for the second time. I should probably stop buying children's literature.

It transpired over the course of the following twelve hours, the beautiful weather of Monday was just a joke at my expense, as my tent is battered by wind, rain and cold the whole night. I get hardly any sleep, despite the exertions of the previous couple of days, and what little I do get is butchered by awful dreams of arguments, fallouts and crying. I decide that over a week in my capsule of a tent is doing it more than justice, so will allow it one further night with me inside before it gets supplanted in favour of a hostel room for my final night in north Wales.
I spent the next day negotiating my way to Bleanau Ffestiniog to take the steam train to Porthmadog and back. I didn't quite anticipate how much of an effect taking it would have upon me - thoughts of the innocence of youth! Me, someone who grew up in the diesel and electric age, almost overcome with emotion at views of the engine out of the window as the train rounds a corner - the glory of steam! I can guarantee I have my dad to thank for these unexpected thoughts. Tales of being permitted to stand on the footplate on his way to school, rides on steam trains with him as a child, dropping his camera lens under a locomotive in his eagerness to capture the perfect shot, the excitement in his eyes at the sound of a whistle and a shunt on the line at home. Thanks dad. I think its fair to say that a small portion of that enthusiasm has passed on a generation.
I get a new new book in Porthmadog, this from the adult section, as in the normal books section rather than the top shelf. It is called "How to live safely in a Science Fictional Universe" and features a non-existent dog called Ed. The same evening I return to my encampment below Tryfan to find it still embattled by the relentless elements. This volume of wind and water on this volume of tentage is about as unfair a match-up as I'm ever likely to witness. A new level of violence. My abode doesn't even have a catapult, let alone the opposable thumbs and hand-eye coordination to wield one. I retire, ball-shaped, into the snug of my sleeping bag, hoping to dream of indulgent rugs before grand fireplaces, gentle glowing lava flows from the bellies of rich, dormant volcanoes, the delicate whispered lullabys of angels and the warm, caring touch of two duvets at same time. Please.
As I become fully awake (5:50am), it is to the sound of a sheep mowing the lawn just outside of my tent. My dreams were much better than the previous night. I shan't divulge them here...