Scaling The Heights

The peak is behind me, as yet unscaled. (By me)

It is called Yr Wyddfa in Welsh, meaning “the tomb”. It is believed that at least 350,000 people visit it every year. It dominates the topography in North Wales. It is the highest mountain in Wales at 1085 metres. Nowhere in England is as high.

Snowdon.

Having lived in Snowdonia for over four years I felt it was about time I hauled myself up it. All these hundreds of thousands of people were finding their way to it from all over the country and beyond, and it's only 90 minutes drive away for me.

Anna had a bit of time off work so we made a thing of it, booking a tent pitch for two nights at a campsite near the base of the mountain. We studied maps. We arranged for a massive heatwave. And off north we drove on Wednesday afternoon with the car jam-packed with all manner of objects of various utility for our quest.

We stayed at Beddgelert campsite, a beautiful wooded spot with tame rabbits lollopping about. Sadly it's threatened with being turned into a posh glamping site with chalets, you can object to the ongoing planning application here!


Thursday dawned clear and hot. The sky was a solid blue. We walked half an hour through a forest to Beddgelert itself, jumped on a bus, and were carried round to the east side of Snowdon along a spectacular route with views of glittering lakes, jagged peaks and sheer slopes. At Pen-y-Pass we alighted and joined a mass of people of all ages, each one intent on climbing the same route as us, the Pyg Track. It wasn't that much fun being part of this sweating parade but Anna saw a gap and went for it, overtaking a clump of older people on a steep corner, we pushed ourselves up with our hearts hammering and pulses racing, and found ourselves out front.

From then on it was quieter, only occasionally passing or being passed by other walkers with a cheery grunt. The peak came into sight after an hour or so. Suddenly a clattering sound broke the peace, it appeared to be coming from above. Was it the steam train? It stopped, then resumed. No, it was a drum. Someone was drumming at the top. It went on and on. Finally it gave up. As we approached the summit ourselves we met a small group of men carrying a large round covered object, all wearing T-shirts promoting a Northern Irish Children's Hospice Charity. Yes, they said, it was them.

The top wasn't quite as busy as we had expected. No queues for the last little climb up steps to the zenith viewpoint. A haze obscured the furthest vistas but the panorama was still impressive.

View from the top

After a peek inside the visitor centre which seemed implausibly like a plush airport terminal plonked in the middle of the wilderness, we began the descent westwards along the Rhyd-Ddu trail, so named as this is where you end up at the bottom. It was a gentler route on the whole, and less popular with the tourists. About 5 and a half hours after we'd begun the climb, we arrived footsore at Rhyd Ddu and toasted our victory with small glasses of beer from the village's one hotel.

We had been higher in the UK than we'd ever been before, and we were down in time for the bus back. Cheers!

Spot the odd one out amongst these sacks of rocks

Bridging The Gap

The weekend just gone was a sad one. It had two leaving parties, one in Machynlleth and one in Pilsdon, West Dorset. Much as I wanted to be at both, this is not (to my knowledge) possible. I'd previously arranged to head down to Pilsdon to wish farewell to Chris and Jane, long-standing members of the community, so had to miss saying my goodbyes to Sam at a Blossom Party on the Ffriddgate field.


It was also a happy one. Several other ex-volunteers returned to Pilsdon for the occasion and it was quite a reunion. It is always a pleasure to revisit the community and catch up with my friends there. The place is in full bloom, a feast for the eyes that I rarely get to appreciate on my winter sojourns.

Heading back home again on Monday after too short a stay, we shared the driving, Anna and me. I was behind the wheel as we crossed the Severn Bridge into Cymru (Welsh for “Wales”, pronounced Cum-ri). As always seems to happen I chose the slowest queue, and we sat there watching the driver in front fail to pay with his credit card and having to call an assistant with the button.

Eventually he seemed to be waved through without paying. I nudged forward and waved the contactless card past the reader, feeling ever-so-slightly smug when it worked first time. The barrier lifted. My smugness almost instantly vanished as I found myself unable to move the car forward. What was going on? I was in first gear. The handbrake was off. The accelerator seemed to work. But the clutch pedal wasn't behaving. It refused to go down!

Very aware of the cars behind us getting increasingly impatient, there was nothing we could do. I pushed the “help” button outside the car and a woman's voice came through the speaker. I told her the car wasn't working. She thought I said the card wasn't working so it took us a little while to get on the same wavelength.

Eventually someone turned up and were very pleasant to us. “It happens once a day” they said. The cars behind us were asked to find other lanes. The Highways Agency car arrived and towed us to the side of the road, having temporarily closed all the lanes on the left hand side to allow us to cross safely. I felt a little pang of embarrassment.

Cabbages are feeling safe from butterflies under this netting

As it was Anna's car, it was her breakdown recovery we had to rely on. After 45 minutes or so a chap turned up, winched the car onto his truck and drove us to the nearest service station where he spent quite a long time banging things inside the engine. If he couldn't fix it, Anna's insurance wouldn't cover anything else so we were facing the prospect of spending the night down here in a hotel and trying to sort something out in the morning (when Anna should be back at work).

Relief flooded through us as the repairman informed us he'd fixed it, although he didn't offer a 100% vote of confidence in the repair. “You'll probably be alright getting back” he said, “Just stay in fifth gear if you can”. So we drove the last 100 miles of the journey using the clutch as little as we could and were mighty glad to get home. 

The first runner bean plant to find its pole

Three Steps to Heaven

The "Show Allotment" in town. Anyone can pick the veg for free

The nice people at Three (my phone network) must have known it was my birthday this week and decided to give me what I always wanted - 3G on my land! Ever since I arrived here four years ago I have been making do with 2G, the old-fashioned network that allows just calls and texts.

Like all the best gifts, it was a total surprise. I was just going about my watering of seedlings, it being as dry here in Wales as the rest of the nation, when my phone made this little bleep that wasn't a text or an event reminder. It was a Facebook message notification. Facebook requires internet. Internet requires 3G. I got it out and checked the screen. There was the icon at the top of the screen, and next to it the signal indicator with a telltale H, short for HSPA (the souped-up 3G, no less.)

My hotbed in the polytunnel has tomato seedlings, sweetcorn, basil, cucumber, patty-pan squash and more

OK so it's not 4G. I'm not quite up there with you city folk yet, streaming Netflix videos whilst you Snapchat each other clips of your pets falling off things. But 3G will do me just fine. I'll be able to check emails from my caravan, or research how much to water asparagus, all there and then on my phone.

Hang on though. It's not going to be the same, is it? I'll be less off-grid now, and more contactable than I have been for some time. If I'm going to be interrupted by some inane status update as I plant out my bean seedlings, what passes for my train of thought will be broken and I'll lose that zen-like serenity I've been so carefully cultivating.

Runner bean "Lady Di"

I will need to tweak the notification settings to a massive OFF to ensure Facebook is put back in its place, a simple app that will only speak when it's spoken to. Ditto with the mail app. Or I could go all-out and do the unthinkable: switch the darn thing off.

The gamekeepers came today and fixed the garden's fenceposts that were broken or leaning in

Swing Low Sweet Chariot

A giant radish from my polytunnel

For the first time ever I am living in a swing seat.


Since I've been old enough to vote, here is where I was for each General Election:

1997 : Fylde (in Lancashire). Safe Conservative seat.

2001 : Hampstead and Highgate. Safe Labour seat (Glenda Jackson)

2005 : Vauxhall. Safe Labour seat (Kate Hoey)

2010 : Camberwell and Peckham. Safe Labour seat (Harriet Harman).

2015 : West Dorset. Safe Conservative seat (Oliver Letwin).

Whichever party I voted for, my vote had a negligible impact on who actually became MP.

In this happy-snappy General Election of 2017 I happen to be living in Wales in the constituency of Montgomeryshire. (I was in Wales in 2015 too of course but not yet on the electoral roll owing to the fact that my caravan has no address.)


Montgomeryshire has a long history of voting Liberal or Liberal Democrats. Lembit Opik was the MP here from 1997 till 2010 when he got pipped to the post by a Tory, Glyn Davies. That must have been annoying for Opik since 2010 was of course the only time the LibDems have managed to get into government in any form (albeit in league with the Tories.)

Glyn Davies kept his seat in 2015, trouncing the LibDem candidate Jane Dodds by getting 45% of the vote against her 29%.


However I think the seat is still entitled to be labelled “swing” as it is just about conceivable that the LibDems might snatch the seat back from the Tories. Jane Dodds has announced she will be standing again. The other parties trailed abysmally in 2015 - UKIP on 11%, Labour 6%, Plaid Cymru 5%, Greens 4%.

Although I couldn't attend, I heard all about a packed meeting in Mach last Wednesday on the subject of Tactical Voting in Montgomeryshire. Things apparently got very heated as arguments let fly over the pros and cons of voting tactically. Do you vote for the party you want or against the party you don't want? Are the LibDems on a terminal decline, or do they stand a chance?


Whatever happens, my vote will at least have a little more weight than in all previous General Elections.

Some of my tomatoes are in the ground, and two in a homemade growbag

Game For A Laugh

Our "Edible Table" with a Comedy Festival tent

This weekend Machynlleth will be invaded by hundreds of (mostly) young and (on the whole) trendy people. They are coming from all over the UK to be entertained, but thankfully not by me. Whatever the collective noun is for stand-up comedians (a heckle?) is arriving to do the entertaining. Yes it's Machynlleth Comedy Festival once again and the town will be buzzing.

I will be there anyway, partly as a punter - I have a ticket for someone called Lolly Adefope - and partly as a promoter of local food in the form of our weekly veg bag scheme and Edible Mach. A few of us will have a stall somewhere central to ply people with smiles, flyers and possibly cakes. Obviously we'll have to sort the locals from the out-of-towners, the latter being less obviously our target market.

Chives

This week I led my first volunteer session for Edible Mach to smarten up the “Crop Circles” veg beds near the main focus of the Comedy Festival, the big tents put up by the Town Hall. It was a cool but sunny afternoon and about 6 or 7 of us spent a happy couple of hours weeding, removing old bolted plants and replacing them with blackcurrant bushes, strawberry runners and broad beans, all donated for free by local growers.

The "Crop Circles"

It used to be that leaders of these sessions were paid but unfortunately the funding for that ran out so now we're transitioning into getting people to do it for free, on a rota basis. I've put my name down for a couple of sessions as I want to see the Edible Mach veg beds continue looking great. Without these targeted gardening sessions they would quickly become a mass of weeds and thirsty or dead plants.

At least Edible Mach does have funding for running workshops, of which we have several coming up on all manner of things - fermentation, soil, bread making, sowing, building raised beds and compost to name a few. And they're all free to attend! If you're a local and you're reading this, do check them out as I'm sure there's something of interest for everyone.

Enough tapping on this keyboard now - I'm off out to my garden to plant loads of beetroot!

We sowed some wheat as well!

Woods Ancient And Modern

A young foal and its mother nearby 

Immersing oneself in the austere and dramatic beauty of the Welsh countryside can have a profound effect on people. For many, a strenuous hike across the verdant mountains here will bring a chance to reflect on what's really important and perhaps offer a new sense of perspective on our daily troubles. For our Prime Minister, however, it brought about a decision to call a snap General Election. Yes, you can blame Wales for that too.

But this post isn't about the General Election, you may be relieved to discover. It's about the Welsh countryside.

The view from the window here as I look out is of the hills northwards across the winding Dyfi river. They recede into the distance, and today the mist hangs low over them. They slope sharply down to the river, partly covered in conifers and partly sheep pasture, but young broadleaved trees are in the near distance, framing the view and coming quietly into verdant leaf.

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There are pockets of ancient woodland around Wales. I attended a fascinating talk by Adam Thorogood of the Woodland Trust on Wednesday. His job is to locate woodlands which he suspects are (or were) ancient and sweet-talk the landowner into letting him do a survey for them, which will suggest ways of managing the woodland to help restore it.

Ancient in this context means covered in trees since at least 1600 when decent maps start to become available. It doesn't mean untouched as human activity reaches everywhere, so the phrase “ancient semi-natural” is used. They are precious because of the unique wildlife habitats, flora and fauna, that they offer, as well as the trees themselves of course. 

Other classifications of ancient woodland are “Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites” (PAWS) where ancient woods have been felled and replanted with timber trees, and “Restored Ancient Woodland Sites” (RAWS) which are PAWS that have or are being sensitively restored. It is mainly these types of woodlands that Adam Thorogood is surveying.

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Wales' Ancient Woodlands Inventory from 2011 is available online here to browse to your heart's content. It shows that part of my land contains ancient woodland, that on the slope down from the road, but not apparently the big trees that line the river.

I've also been delving into old tithe maps from the 1850's which have now been digitised and are available on the National Library of Wales site here (http://cynefin.archiveswales.org.uk/). There are no trees indicated for my land or the surrounding area on these maps. But I have learned that it was owned by a Thomas Hartley Esq as part of a larger land parcel, and that Mr Ellis Williams who lived in the house up the road and presumably farmed the land had to pay 13 shillings a year to the Rector. Glad I don't have to do that!

Tree Cheers

A pea shoot reaches for the sun

As you can tell from many of the photos on this blog, my plot of land has more than its fair share of big trees. In fact it's probably more woodland than open land. All along the high bank of the river there are oaks, birch, hazel, ash, small-leaved lime, hawthorn, rowan and crab apple, their roots keeping them precariously clinging to the rocky ground, their branches stretching out and upwards, the better to catch the sunlight.

Along by the roadside and the steep slope down below it are planted stands of large firs and spruce, several of them fallen over the years and leaning at crazy angles, caught by their neighbours. There are a lot of big larch trees at the western end, as well as semi-natural broadleaved woodland - beech, elder, blackthorn, hawthorn, oak, birch and so on. Big Christmas trees dot the level area, left over from a previous landowner's attempt to grow them for cash.

Serried rows of broad beans

I have a few less trees now though, ever since Storm Doris hurtled through in March. It has torn down four big trees, the worst devastation I've seen on my land in the years I've been here. Two of them unfortunately fell across the boundary stream I share with my neighbours. The huge ivy-covered ash was uprooted near where the stream reaches the river, and caused no damage other than ripping a couple of big branches off one of the trees on the other side. But the oak tree was further upstream and landed inches above my neighbour's water pump unit.

This was a bit concerning to both of us to say the least. It was a lucky thing that it hadn't smashed it to bits, rendering their house entirely without water. So we got a tree surgeon to have a look and within a few days he and a mate came and sorted it. They brought their jeep down the steep slope and used the winch at the back to drag the tree sideways out of harms way. The chap with the big chainsaw could then get down into the stream, saw it into pieces and haul them up to the side of the bank. They were done and dusted within two hours.

The ash tree he'll deal with another time - he had to rush off to deal with the lambing. And I am dealing with the branches, dragging them off back onto my land to burn them. All the firewood I'll be sharing with my neighbours, which is the silver lining of this particular stormcloud.