Tag Archives: Glyndwr’s Way

0 miles. A day of rest, recuperation, recovery and reconsideration. We have at this point walked 175 miles including supposedly (I’m wondering whether I remembered to reset this , or not, at the beginning of the trip) 7693 meters of total elevation gain. If that’s correct we’ve walked up even more hillsides than I realized!

After a breakfast conversation with our innkeeper and two men who’ve spent some time visiting this are, we decided to spend the day on the train, going up the Cambrian coast. Lovely area, this. Many birds in the estuaries, Edwardian castles and WWII defenses looking over the coast and some nice views inland toward Snowdon. This is an area we hadn’t originally planned on visiting, and the change from walking to sitting felt good indeed!

For a short part of our journey we were set upon by a man named, I believe, John. John was old and crazy, with blubbery lips and drool on his chin. He was also clearly a regular on the train, and we simply his hapless targets for the day. Once John discovered we werefrom the USA, he spent a half-hour regaling us with the names of American tv and movie stars, claiming to know many and be owed money by a few. Shari says I encouraged him but she’s wrong – I simply didn’t want to be rude. In any event, I think when I’m old and crazy I shall spend my days riding trains and talking to tourists!

We’re reconsidering how best to make our way through Snowdonia, having come to the conclusion that we may have bitten off more than wecan chew with our original plan. We’ll spend an additional day here, researching routes and lodging options, before heading out again.

13.2 miles, and the end of the second leg. Oh, the joy of having a short day! We were up early, not wanting to overstay our welcome in the barn, and repacked our more or less dry belongings, had some coffee and a light breakfast and then headed out, arriving in town around 1400. This day, unlike the previous, had weather which steadily improved such that it was warm and sunny by the time we descended into Machynlleth. The countryside is becoming more rugged, with stone outcroppings more common in the fields and much steeper slopes on the hillsides. The colors are different as well – the omnipresent verdant green pastures have been partially replaced by the deep green of conifer plantations and the rust and gold of bracken.

We’ve been eating a “full English” virtually every morning since we arrived. It’s an obscene amount of food: 1-2 eggs; thick, hsm-like slabs of bacon, sausages, fried toast, dry toast, cooked tomatoes, cooked mushrooms, baked beans and sometimes even hash browns. It does, however, give one the energy to hike about 5 hours before needing any additional sustenance. Our light breakfast (yogurt, muesli, a roll with jam and half a banana) this morning lasted us only about 2.5 hours before growling stomachs made us stop for lunch around 1030. So, in spite of the dubious health benefits of a “full English,” I shall continue to eat one on my hiking days!

21.3 miles. A politically correct term for today might be “challenging.” We knew it was going to be a long day; our guidebook listed the day’s walk at 18.5, and as we’d found no listings for lodging we were prepared to camp for the night and so were carrying more weight in food than we might have otherwise. The day started out well enough; though we were running a bit late the weather was sunny and breezy and it seemed we’d have a pleasant if long day of walking. But I was tired, my large muscles like glutes and quads just plain tired for the first time since we started this trek, and I couldn’t shake the weariness. So, we weren’t matching our normal morning pace, plus we stopped to visit the Bryntail Mine and oh, did I mention our guidebook has been off by about 15% on it’s mileage estimates, meaning our 18-mile day would likely be closer to 20 or even 21 miles? We finally made it sbout halfway – 10 miles – in early afternoon, around 1400, and had just started climbing through some fairly remote hills – probably with gorgeous views – when the rain began. No fresh breeze like we’d had earlier in the day. No broken clouds either. No, this rain just sat right over top of us, close and gray and motionless as the miles and hours crept by and the sun began to set. It wasn’t cold, or windy, it simply rained without stop. My feet were causing excruciating pain on the descents, making my already slow pace a crawl rather than a walk, and still the rain kept falling. Shari had long since tuned in to her ipod and tuned out the miserable afternoon, something I probably should’ve done to take my mind off my feet and the slippery path we were on.

Our gear was dry, but the constant rain had rendered a dry campsite for the night a veritable impossibility.
After 21 some odd miles, still not at the end of our “18-mile” walk but with it becoming too dark for us to safely continue, we stumbled upon a farm, with a barn and with someone in the house. We’d been dreading, without actually discussing, the idea of setting up camp in this rain and keeping anything even remotely dry, and this barn seemed a godsend. A knock on the front door, answered shortly by a man and his dog. Could we possibly sleep in your barn tonight? How could any proper Welshman refuse such a request from two sopping, muddy, bedraggled Yanks? And so, thanks to this unnamed man’s kindness, we did in fact have a warm and dry night, on a bed of hay in a barn somewhere near Nantyfydda.

17.2 miles. Fine night camping in the ruins of the 12th century abbey at Abbeycymhir. How cool is that? Weather was good – cool and crisp, like autumn should be, with no rain – and we were visited by no ghosts of the Welsh or English variety. The fact that the cows were taken out of the ruins especially for us ensured we had an obstacle course of cow patties to run any time we needed to move around.

Walk today was nice, through some slightly different terrain thsn weve seen before including a really neat bog forest with a lot of different mushrooms (I’ve now decided I should start photographing the many fungi we’ve seen on this trip). During the second half of the day we climbed, and climbed, and climbed to the top of a hill from which we could see the upper Severn valley stretching out in front of us for miles. Many wind turbines visible from here as well; there is apparently some controversy about them here but in spite of the damage they do to birds and bats I think they’re better than a large open pit mine.

We’re both suffering a bit from hopefully minor injuries: Shari’s got a sharp twinge in her right knee and my feet are still enormously painful by the end of the day, especially if we’ve walked on a lot of pavement. I can’t believe that my shoes, which gave me no problems all summer, put my feet in such agony now.

18.4 miles. I’m enjoying this Glyndwr’s Way path. Whether we are on roads or off, we seem to be in much more remote areas, with more expansive views and broader horizons. Today’s walk was almost exclusively on trails, giving my feet a break from the pounding of walking miles on pavement.

Our destination, Abbeycymhir, is a small village with few options for food or lodging. We were granted access to camp in a field and offered breakfast for the next morning. But we were on our own for dinner on a place with no restaurants, a pub that doesn’t serve food and a tiny store stocked with more cleaning supplies and pet food than human food. Fortunately we had prepared for such an eventuality, and broke out one of the two freeze-dried meals we brought with us. That, some cup-o-noodles and a can of fruit cocktail comprised our evening meal, eaten in the shadows of the crumbling walks of the original Abbeycymhir abbey.