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Day 6 - Easter Sunday
So bad was the weather that I packed very slowly and ate an extremely leisurely breakfast hoping for the brighter showery conditions which the forecast had promised. I seriously contemplated spending another night in this luxury but eventually decided to start in the hope of better things to come. Indeed it was looking a little brighter when I set off about 10am. Table Mountain could now be seen and when I reached it I could look back at the delights of Crickhowell still visible below and ahead to a wall of mist. I was also struck by a strong east wind and both this and the rain continued for the rest of the day. So much for optimistic weather forecasts!
The first two summits, Pen Cerrig-calch and Pen Allt-mawr, had trig points and alongside the second was a very snug shelter in which I consumed the Easter egg which I had been given at breakfast. Groups of people appeared from time to time through the mist and vanished again after a friendly greeting. It was Easter Sunday so they were not going to be kept off the hills by a bit of rain. The third top, Pen Twyn Glas, required a short deviation from the very clear path which runs along the ridge. The book said it was unmarked but somebody had rustled up stones from somewhere and built a respectable cairn amongst the bog. Just to be sure I went to the south top and checked for the boundary stone mentioned in the book. There it was lying flat in a puddle.
As I climbed the ridge to the next top, Mynydd Llysiau, the mist suddenly cleared to the west and I could see Mynydd Troed and the suntrap where we had eaten lunch a few weeks before. The respite was short lived and the mist thicker than ever as I climbed to the highest top, Waun Fach. The remnants of the trig point are surrounded by an impenetrable morass of black peat. I decided to photograph it rather than attempt to touch it, my only picture of the day. The plateau seemed entirely flat, a uniform dappled landscape of black mud trampled into pits of silvery water stretching into the mist indistinguishably in every direction. Its total lack of features gave it a kind of surreal beauty but one appreciated more in retrospect perhaps. For the moment the main concern was to avoid sinking inextricably into the peat. Footprints were everywhere, like the marks of a lost army wandering in hopeless circles they gave no clue to a useful route. The army had departed, there were no groups of cheerful walkers up here, no sheep, no birds, no sign of life whatsoever. This utter desolation and isolation sharpened my senses into a tingle of apprehension but once I had escaped onto the ridge the tingle subsided slowly into gloomy resignation as my left side, which had remained relatively dry up to now, took the brunt of the driving wind and rain. The compass was now unnecessary, for as well as the constant battering of rain on the left shoulder the path was clear, a line of brown bog trampled out through the grassy bog of the natural hillside. Wallowing through this world of water I visited in turn the large cairn on Pen y Gadair Fawr and the small one on Pen Twyn Mawr.
With some relief I reached the point where a right of way enters the forest over an encouraging stile. It was quite sheltered here in the lee of the trees and would have made a splendid campsite but the only flat spot was occupied by a fallen gate which I was unable to move. So I plunged into the forest on a good path which very soon disappeared under fallen trees. After a desperate scramble over prickly branches followed by a near vertical slide onto a forest road the path continued waymarked and clear again but the same thing happened just before the next forest road and this time there was no hope of continuing below it. I carried on using forest roads and instinct. There was nowhere flat to pitch a tent except in the middle of the road! The waymarked path reappeared and just before it met the tarmaced road I found a flat but not very pleasant spot beside a corrugated iron barn. The only water was that running in the ditch beside the forest road. Time decreed that I had to accept this third rate site.
All my clothes were wet. The combination of wind and rain had percolated everything. Fortunately the unworn stuff, protected in double plastic bags, was dry but only damp clothes were left to put in the stuff sac for a pillow. I felt a lot better after the hot soup but what really made this evening special was the fact that I tuned in to Classic FM just in time to hear Mahler's Symphony No. 2, 'The Resurrection' announced. It was being put on especially for Easter Sunday. I got marvellous stereo reception of this beautiful music through the headphones of my tiny radio which had cost me only £9.99 and weighs just a few grams, both money and weight well spent. I lay there utterly entranced and probably appreciated it more in this inhospitable spot and after a real battering of a day than I might have done at home or in a comfortable concert hall. There was an extra line in the score tonight, the beating of rain on the roof of the tent.
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