Training Walk: climbing five mountains is ok as long as there's hot chocolate
On my last post, someone (not naming any names) asked how long the walk to Table Mountain was.
It was 4.07 miles according to my GPS. The graphs on my GPS are utterly hilarious because the elevation graph is almost exactly what a small child would draw for a mountain, and the pace graph is an almost exact inverse.
On Saturday (yes, over a week ago, but who's counting?) my friend Sarah and I walked nearly 11 and a half miles and in that time climbed five mountains (she says). I should probably have looked at the maps before agreeing to this route because it turns out that when the contour lines get too close together, I get grumpy. It didn't help that the route description kept telling us to stop and admire panoramic views which were completely obscured by mist which bordered on fog. There was a good long period where, because I had been not-sensible and hadn't downloaded the maps beforehand, we walked along what felt like the top of something with no visibility and only the vaguest of ideas where we were while the GPS helpfully showed us in the middle of a screen of precise map-grid-like squares of grey. It was shortly after this that we stumbled- almost literally - across an obelisk erected at the point where the body of a 5-year-old had been found in 1900 after he got lost on the mountain and died of exposure. We were so relieved to see it that I took a cheery photo of a very-much-alive Sarah with a beautiful backdrop of fog and posted it to Instagram. The rest of the day featured many subsequent photos of one or both of us with a beautiful backdrop of fog.
There are summit photos from Corn Du, Pen Y Fan, and Cribyn - which we only climbed because we didn't like the vagueness of the path that didn't take us up the mountain, given the mist. We were rewarded for this by the only bit of clear skies all day coinciding neatly with our arrival at "the Gap" (or Bwlch ar y fan, if you like) and some lovely views - probably part of the lovely views we were meant to get all along, to be honest.
I was thrilled that this was followed by a long stretch of gently-down. I'd been buoyed up by some hot chocolate, courtesy of our B&B and Sarah's Thermos, just after Corn Du (where we had the alarming experience of being asked by a man in tracksuit bottoms what had happened to the "Pen Y Fan" plaque...'it's on the other mountain, mate'), and then by lunch, somewhere near the lowest point of yet another "saddle" between Pen y Fan and Cribyn, but by this point I was just a bit fed up of clambering over contour lines, so downwards was lovely. We even saw some birds.
Then we made it round the reservoirs, had another snack break and finished the hot chocolate, and the fun really started: a path which the route noted was "particularly muddy" running straight over 21 consecutive contour lines. A valiant effort was being made to improve it, but unfortunately the nice path covered just the top most-agonising part and the bottom, dumping you in mire for the middle section. It'll be lovely by summer, I'm sure. Even Sarah agreed that this bit was "too steep", which I had been telling her for a while.
We then trotted along a ridge which seemed much further than the map made it look and happily found the path leading off the mountain and back to the car just before it got a little too dark to be scampering around exposed mountainsides. We did get treated to a very dramatic view of the sun sinking through the mist and some Welsh ponies wandering around the hillside in silhouette. Thankfully, when we reached it, the car was not entirely sunk into the mud, although I did have a hilariously anxious moment trying to reverse it off the mud over the curb.
Tomorrow is another long walk - so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make a slightly different mistake from last time I did this on my own, and pop out to the supermarkets at almost-bed-time to try and forage something that may constitute a lunch.
Boot cost per mile: £2.13
New blisters: this is getting boring, I don't think I had any. I'll tell you about it if I get one
Blood/sweat/tears: no/yes/no but it was a bit close because I think if Sarah had tried to lead me up even a single extra slope I'd have cried.
It was 4.07 miles according to my GPS. The graphs on my GPS are utterly hilarious because the elevation graph is almost exactly what a small child would draw for a mountain, and the pace graph is an almost exact inverse.
On Saturday (yes, over a week ago, but who's counting?) my friend Sarah and I walked nearly 11 and a half miles and in that time climbed five mountains (she says). I should probably have looked at the maps before agreeing to this route because it turns out that when the contour lines get too close together, I get grumpy. It didn't help that the route description kept telling us to stop and admire panoramic views which were completely obscured by mist which bordered on fog. There was a good long period where, because I had been not-sensible and hadn't downloaded the maps beforehand, we walked along what felt like the top of something with no visibility and only the vaguest of ideas where we were while the GPS helpfully showed us in the middle of a screen of precise map-grid-like squares of grey. It was shortly after this that we stumbled- almost literally - across an obelisk erected at the point where the body of a 5-year-old had been found in 1900 after he got lost on the mountain and died of exposure. We were so relieved to see it that I took a cheery photo of a very-much-alive Sarah with a beautiful backdrop of fog and posted it to Instagram. The rest of the day featured many subsequent photos of one or both of us with a beautiful backdrop of fog.
There are summit photos from Corn Du, Pen Y Fan, and Cribyn - which we only climbed because we didn't like the vagueness of the path that didn't take us up the mountain, given the mist. We were rewarded for this by the only bit of clear skies all day coinciding neatly with our arrival at "the Gap" (or Bwlch ar y fan, if you like) and some lovely views - probably part of the lovely views we were meant to get all along, to be honest.
I was thrilled that this was followed by a long stretch of gently-down. I'd been buoyed up by some hot chocolate, courtesy of our B&B and Sarah's Thermos, just after Corn Du (where we had the alarming experience of being asked by a man in tracksuit bottoms what had happened to the "Pen Y Fan" plaque...'it's on the other mountain, mate'), and then by lunch, somewhere near the lowest point of yet another "saddle" between Pen y Fan and Cribyn, but by this point I was just a bit fed up of clambering over contour lines, so downwards was lovely. We even saw some birds.
Then we made it round the reservoirs, had another snack break and finished the hot chocolate, and the fun really started: a path which the route noted was "particularly muddy" running straight over 21 consecutive contour lines. A valiant effort was being made to improve it, but unfortunately the nice path covered just the top most-agonising part and the bottom, dumping you in mire for the middle section. It'll be lovely by summer, I'm sure. Even Sarah agreed that this bit was "too steep", which I had been telling her for a while.
We then trotted along a ridge which seemed much further than the map made it look and happily found the path leading off the mountain and back to the car just before it got a little too dark to be scampering around exposed mountainsides. We did get treated to a very dramatic view of the sun sinking through the mist and some Welsh ponies wandering around the hillside in silhouette. Thankfully, when we reached it, the car was not entirely sunk into the mud, although I did have a hilariously anxious moment trying to reverse it off the mud over the curb.
Tomorrow is another long walk - so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make a slightly different mistake from last time I did this on my own, and pop out to the supermarkets at almost-bed-time to try and forage something that may constitute a lunch.
Boot cost per mile: £2.13
New blisters: this is getting boring, I don't think I had any. I'll tell you about it if I get one
Blood/sweat/tears: no/yes/no but it was a bit close because I think if Sarah had tried to lead me up even a single extra slope I'd have cried.
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