Crisp and cold today. A good day for a walk at Nant yr Arian on the edge of the Cambrian mountains with its forest trails and red kite feeding centre.
I had a slightly stressful beginning to my afternoon. I left home in good time to wait by the RNLI station to pick up somebody whom I'd been told on our WhatsApp lift share group, needed a lift to the walk. (Some of our group don't have cars and we also try and be mindful of our fuel usage when we can.) What I'd failed to take into account was the message had come from a third person who though well meaning can be impulsive and the person needing the lift may not even have known I was waiting and didn't turn up. I put out another message, waited 10 minutes and then had to leave. I got to the meeting point just on time but the layby which has space for 20 cars was already full. I jumped out of my car to walk back and let the group know I'd go and park in the official carpark and wait for them there when a woman told me she was just leaving and if I drove out of the layby and round I could fit in her space. Preparing to drive on I was then faced with a van pulling out of its parking space straight towards me. With no space for us to pass each other I asked the van driver to move back so I could pass but no, he just drove at me and forced me to reverse back along the whole length of the layby until he reached the road. Both our windows were open so as he waited to get onto the road I pointed out he could have just let me past only to be told in a most belligerent fashion that I had stopped my car and blocked his way. What a rude man.
Never mind, my fellow walkers listened sympathetically as we strode out over the hills. We were a big group today, almost twenty I think which may have led to the slight mix up at the end of the afternoon.
Here we have stopped at the Giant's Chair. We didn't get a chance to do the usual thing of taking photos as there was a guy there, who told us he was one of the team who had made the chair, doing some sort of photo shoot at the chair.
I stopped to take photos of the sun on the hills and found myself walking along with a group at the end of our strung out group. Lovely people but they walked quite slowly with frequent stops to look at the view. It wasn't long before the rest of the group had marched off out of sight. At the time I didn't think that was a problem since we were on a well defined forest road.
Still we lagged behind and it was only by chance that I caught a sight of our leader's bright yellow jacket in the distance when we stood at a crossroads. But however quickly I tried to speed up my companions eventually we found ourselves alone on the road. That wasn't too much of an issue as the others were familiar with the area and knew how to get back to the car park.
We had walked along the road in the centre of the photo below and at some point the rest of the group had gone uphill (to the right) while we had carried on. As the road would have taken us away (down to the bottom left) from the car park we went up a very steep mountain bike track, 45 degrees of steepness and halfway up the hill we zigzagged back ......
along what ended up as a tiny sheep track (below, bottom left) which met the high main walking path. Eventually we arrived back at the visitor centre where a few of the group were having a last coffee. I might make a point of not being at the back when we're such a big group as I can imagine getting really lost in some of the places we go and often as today mobiles don't work.
Still it was good to be out in the fresh air, I had some lovely chats and saw some new scenery.
First thing this morning I painted over the knots in the wardrobe wood with the special stain stopping varnish. It only took five minutes but that was after ten minutes in the freezing garage using two wrenches and a screwdriver to get the cap off the tin. I made sure to wipe the lip of the tin before replacing the cap so I don't have that problem again. Next step filler.
1 comment:
Looks like a fine walk.
Too bad you had to deal with the rude person!!
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