Climb Every Mountain?

So what have I been up to since I last posted here? Mostly, climbing mountains. Or walking up them. It’s a subtle point but I’ll come to that later. I’ve shied away from describing each one in detail, or indeed at all, because it’d be pretty tedious for me and anyone readng this unless they all happened to be serious mountain people. Even then it would still be tedious for me because a walk up one mountain is very much like a walk up another. This then begs the obvious question – why do it at all? If I had a pound for every time I’ve heard someone on top of a mountain ask himself that question, I’d have a tenner. Everyone who does it knows why, but the why isn’t the same for everybody. In an attempt to answer this question for myself, I’ve come up with a sort of “Mountains for Beginners” in which I try to describe what it’s like.

Firstly, what is a mountain? A mountain is a pointy thing which goes up. Mountains never go down, unless you’re already up, so don’t make that mistake. If you’re going down then you have found what we outdoor types refer to as a ‘valley’, which is the opposite of a mountain. The dictionary, helpfully, defines a mountain as ‘that which is higher and steeper than a hill’. Hills are also things that go up but they’re usually less pointy than mountains. Next time you’re trying to keep your kids quiet on a long car journey try a game of ‘hill or mountain’, where they have to guess which category passing geographical features fall into. It’s educational, though in certain parts of the world also extrememly boring.

 

A valley and some mountains. Note the pointy bits, those are the mountains.

Secondly, what’s it like to go up a mountain? Well, there are two ways – climbing and walking. For my purposes I like to define it as a climb if, at any point, I have to use my hands. But to be honest that’s actually a ‘scramble’. Climbing properly is difficult, dangerous, and requires accessories that look like expensive bondage gear. To put it another way, if when you get to the top all four of your limbs hurt then you have just completed a climb. If your legs hurt and there are bits of rock stuck under your fingernails, you have scrambled. If only your legs hurt then you have walked. If only your arms hurt you are doing something very wrong. If nothing hurts then you are on a hill and should refer to the previous paragraph.

To help you imagine what it’s like try to think of a mountain as a staircase, except the stairs are irregular and made of rock, grass, boggy mud, heather, loose rocks, scree, and poo. Sometimes there are no stairs at all and the surface is slippery so that you slide backwards half a step for every step forwards. Sometimes the stairless slope is so steep that you can only make headway by balancing on your toes. Now imagine climbing this staircase for 3 or 4 hours in the full heat of the sun, or indeed in the pouring rain. On top of all that you’re carrying a rucksack that weighs as much as a small child. That’s pretty much what it’s like. It’s bloody awful.

In a nutshell, when you walk up a mountain you will experience breathlessness, sweating, pain in your legs, and probably blisters on your feet. If you don’t experience any of these then you have probably confused climbing a mountain with a walk to the shops and you should read this again from the start.

It’s this hard work that makes all of us who do it, and nearly everyone who doesn’t, ask the question “Why?” – usually when we arrive at the top with our hearts pounding, sweat pouring into our eyes, on legs that barely function. The answer really depends on the person. Some do it just to say they’ve done it. Some do it for the challenge, some for the exercise, some because they actually enjoy it (keep away from them, they probably have a collection of paddles at home), and some do it for the views from the top. For me, and most, it’s a combination of everything. If I see a beautiful mountain I want to climb it to see what it’s like close up, to stand on the beautiful pinnacle I can see from the road. If it’s a good scramble, the excitement and slight element of danger make it worthwhile on their own. But mainly it’s because of the views. Being on top of the world looking out over miles and miles of gorgeous country is a feeling like no other and frequently takes my breath away, if I have any left. It makes me happy and it makes the sweat and toil worthwhile.

And this is where you can divide walkers into two groups. There are those who, when the clouds come down and the rain starts, will happily don their waterproofs and continue onwards and upwards, whistling away as they disappear into the mist. Me, if I’m not already on top and it looks like the rain is setting in for the day, I happily don my waterproof, turn round, and go back. I’m in a minority, which makes me wonder about how many of the people I meet up mountains have a collection of paddles. I’ve never asked, they all seem so nice.

So, in the month or so I’ve been in Scotland, I’ve seen views that stretch for hundreds of miles in all directions. I’ve met people from all over the world. I’ve scrambled up and down pillars of rock. I’ve sat on rocks and watched golden eagles soaring way over my head. I’ve sweated, I’ve rested, I’ve cooled myself down in a gorgeous waterfall. I’ve sat with a group of three other people, looking out over an entire county, revelling in the total silence. All the theorising aside, that explains why I do it and why I’ll continue to do it until my legs won’t do it any more.

Obscured By Cows

I have a new favourite place and it’s called Eskdale. When you look at a map of the area it’s easy to overlook Eskdale – there is no lake in the valley and it has Wast Water, England’s deepest lake, right next door and the tourist trap of Windermere just over the totally inaccesible road to the east. That road, the Hardknott Pass, is a notorious destroyer of clutches and passable only by cars, and only when dry. As one local farm girl I spoke to said “In t’winter I’ll take t’quad bike and even them I get scared and I’ve been doing it 20 years”.  Eskdale perhaps also suffers from association with the nearby Windscale (as the locals still call it) nuclear power station, the site of England’s worst nuclear accident. It stands starkly on the horizon visble from high on the hills, its reputation echoing through the valleys, filling the uninformed with a warm glow, but not the nice kind.

Eskdale though is a hidden, glorious gem. Because of its remoteness it offers some of the most voluptuous countryside I’ve ever seen, and perhaps in spite of its remoteness it manages to support several wonderful pubs. It’s also fantastic walking country. The upper valley is only accessible by foot, and this gives it a peacefulness and an unspoiled beauty that it’s hard to find anywhere on this island.

But it was in Eskdale that I was forced to confront one of my own personal phobias, and I lost.

It was a damp day, and after sitting around idly wondering what to do I set off to follow a footpath on the map at random. After climbing for about an hour I came to a section of path that funnelled between a wall and some sheer rocks. And occupying this section of path was a herd of cows.

I’ve never liked cows, in fact I’d go so far as to say I am bovinophobic. Their eyes are too big, their bellies too fat, the noises they make sound like gruesome torture machines gone wrong. As a child I once had to be carried screaming through a field of the things because I simply refused, with all the stubborness a 5 year old can muster, to walk through of my own accord. And now here I was, too old and too big and too alone to be carried, face to face with what my imagination had already turned into a gang of thugs out for blood. They were all staring right at me with those big, wild, scary eyes that cows have. I don’t know exactly what it is about cow’s eyes that scares me, they seem too dark, pluck them out and put them in a puppet of the Devil and you’d have the complete embodiment of evil. And as I stood there with twelve pairs of bovine satanoid peepers sucking out my soul all I could feel was fear. A Mexican standoff began, me standing still and watching, they standing still and waiting for my next move.

I decided to try the Attenborough technique – make them like you. Swallowing hard and trying not to shake too much I sat down and ignored them. I drank some water and ate some chocolate, the theory being to make them accustomed to me in the hope they’d lose interest. It’s the same thing David Attenborough does when he spends two months living with chimps in the jungle and ends up getting postcards from them when he gets home. It didn’t work. If there is any Attenborough in me then it’s the unknown brother Keith Attenborough, the one who sits in his bedroom and drools.

I stood again and faced them. There was a gap large enough for me to fit through, but there were those eyes, oily black unreadable appalling …empty. One of the adults had lowered its head and was making quiet but disturbing mooing noises. Her calves ran to her side and joined the staring contest. I contemplated my next move, but the mooing cow pre-empted me. She raised her head and bellowed. This was no moo, no quiet ruminant redigesting her dinner, this was a beast, a feral beast and it obviously had no concept of mercy. Her battle cry resonated down the valley like the blast of a foghorn. And after that, another bellow, this time with the head lowered, the front legs bent as if preparing for a charge. Maybe I’ve seen too many Westerns but the only thought in my head right then was ‘Stampede!’. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end, all my senses were heightened, I was genuinely terrified. Rooted to the spot by fear I felt completely powerless and resigned myself to being trampled into the mud by forty tons of prime beef.

But the charge never came and slowly, very slowly, I backed away like one of the children in The King and I. The bellows of the overprotective mother chased me as I turned and walked as fast as I could back down the path and chose another route. Even typing it now, almost two weeks later, I can still feel the sweat rolling down my back as I circled around that field.

Further into the walk I looked back and could see the place where it had all happened. The cows had all mooved now and the way was clear but I still chose not to go back that way. When I finally arrived back, a route involving a three mile detour, I went and had steak pie in the pub out of spite. As I sat in the garden chewing the succulent meat I could hear that same bellow resonating down through the silent valley. Didn’t put me off my pie though.

I’m certain that anyone else who was there would have walked right past all those cows without a second thought, saying something like “They’re more scared of you than you are of them”, which in my case would have been bollocks but I would have understood what they meant. I may have the power over swans, but the cow is still my nemesis.

Lord Of The Flies

Note : Sorry for the big time gap after the last post. I’ve been having writer’s block. Or do I mean beer? But, anyway, I was getting bored with ‘I-did-this-and-then-I-did-that’ so from now on I will write about things as they occur to me and publish them as and when I feel they’re finished. This will mean that this blog will lose all pretence at chronology, but really I don’t even know what month it is any more – it just doesn’t seem important. If you really want some idea where I am at any given moment, try Flickr.

Ardgartan, Argyll

1st July 2011

They come in swarms. No, not swarms… plagues. They’re resistant to all the sprays that are supposed to fend them off. They’re probably immune to nuclear attack. I refer of course to Midges.

This is why I don’t believe in God. If he created somewhere as breathtakingly beautiful as Scotland, why would he fill it full of microscopic biting insects that are attracted to human flesh like 10 year olds are to McDonalds?

A very common sight on campsites up here is people wandering around in the evening wearing beekeeper hats. People sit outside their tents reading in the beautiful evening light dressed like the women of the apicultural Taliban. I’ve just sat here and watched a guy actually drink a cup of tea through one of these hats. That’s how bad it is. We swat, we scratch, we light citronella candles like offerings at an altar and still our skin crawls. I have bites on the backs of my knees, and I have not once worn shorts. How does this happen? I tell you how, they must have tested all these repellants on those poncey foreign mosquitos. These Scottish ones are much harder, they drink Irn-Bru and get into fights in pubs. I have sometimes wondered if, when Scottish musician Midge Ure’s parents chose his christian name, they did so because they knew he was going to grow up to be an irritating whiny nuisance that nobody could get rid of.

But I digress. Right now I’m wearing NoSquito clothing, a brand from Craghoppers which is supposed to fend off biting insects. How it is supposed to work I don’t know but I can vouch for the fact that it is like Kryptonite to any Midge that comes within a 2 millimeter radius of it. Which means that unless you wrap yourself from head to foot like a mummy, you’re going to get bitten.

That said, it’s not exclusively a Scottish issue. My first encounter with the little bastards this year was in the Lake District. I was staying on one of those posh campsites – regimented pitches and rules about noise, like a council estate for caravans. I was chatting to one of the wardens when a guy who’d just arrived came over. He was wearing shorts and sandals, nothing else. It wasn’t that warm, I had a fleece on.

“There are flies everywhere,” he said in a bristling Mancunian accent, “can’t you do something about them?”

The warden was patient and polite and explained that it was normal to find flies when you’d parked your caravan four feet from a river in summer. His politeness and refusal to resort to sarcasm was commendable, but the sideways glances he was giving me betrayed the effort it was costing him. He suggested the man buy some citronella candles from the campsite shop.

“Bloody scam that is,” the man retorted and stormed off, presumably to spend the rest of his holiday swatting ferociously.

Later that evening, returning from a walk, I was treated to the wonderful sight of the same man, clad head to toe in NoSquito, sitting in a chair outside his caravan surrounded by about fifteen citronella candles, trying to simultaneously read his newspaper and use it as a fly swat.

They’re a part of life up here in the summer. As one fisherman I spoke to said, gesturing to the fantastic view before us, “They’re the price you pay for all this”. Amen to that.

 

Postscript : I’ve learned, from a local no less, that the most effective Midge repellant by far is actually a beauty product – Avon Skin So Soft. Apparently it works like a charm and also “gives you cheeks like a baby’s bum”. I will report back on this as soon as I can find some.

Dances With Swans

Alnwick

This morning I was feeding the ducks on Ullswater under a cloudy sky on a warm day. The weekend crowds had dispersed and it was mostly me and some pensioners who tottered along on the gravel, doing the robot shuffle that is the only way to walk on that kind of stuff.
Ullswater was how it always is – one of my favourite places, tranquil, beautiful, a place to sit and just stare. The ducks were quacking around my feet picking up the morsels of bread I was dropping to them as a way of getting them to pose for photographs. They weren’t being very cooperative. A swan approcahed across the lake, its effortless glide so fitting in those tranquil surroundings. The ducks watched it warily as if sensing danger.
The swan, on arriving at the shore next to me, glared at the ducks. The ducks moved away respectfully and the swan, like royalty moving through a parting throng, walked right up the beach and gave me a glare, too. I was sitting on a rock and in that position my eyes were level with the swan’s. It’s black, beady, expressionless gaze was fixed on the bread in my hand and its posture implied “Come on then, this is my lake, where’s my bread?” It lunged to grab the food from my hand. I snatched it away. It lunged again.
“Oi!” I shouted, “No, wait your turn.”
The swan eyed me suspiciously, like an axe murderer contemplating taking on a man with a gun. It didn’t step back. By now it was leaning against my knees and I could feel the water from its belly soaking through my jeans. I pushed it away. It growled. I had no idea swans could growl, it was unsettling. I’ve heard all the stories about how a swan can break a man’s arm with its neck and while I’m pretty sure they’re apocryphal I didn’t feel like being the one to find out they’re true. This swan was clearly not afraid of people and was used to getting its own way. I tossed some bread at it, which bounced off its back and was snatched up by a brave duck which then backed away almost reverentially as the swan gave it a stare and hissed. If the duck had a forelock I have no doubt it would have tugged it.
I tossed more bread on the floor. In one fluid motion of its neck the swan hoovered it up and swatted away a couple of ducks who had come over to watch. This swan was badass.
“OK then,” I said to it as it fixed me with a royal glare, “If you want to play rough.”
I made a hole in a slice of bread and, in a deft move of my own, hung it over the swan’s beak. The greedy bugger tried to eat it from there, tossing its head back and forth. The bread swung around but the swan had its head tilted back and soon had a slice of Hovis plastered across its face. The ducks quacked in unison, I think they were finding it quite amusing. I took advantage of the swan’s temporary blindness to toss a load more bread to the ducks, who had by now formed a neat row behind the swan on the edge of the water, no doubt to get a better look at proceedings.
Eventually the bread fell off the swan and onto the floor. The ducks, bouyed by the way their new hero had confounded the dreaded swan, pounced on it. The swan hissed and growled at them but they all got a piece of the bread and waddled off, this time with their backs to the beast. The swan, coolly, picked up the rest of the bread and ate it, all the while keeping one eye on me and one on the ducks.
I’d run out of bread so I stood up. The ducks backed off but the swan, sensing a new challenge to its dominance, reared up and stretched out its wings. It was an impressive sight so close up and it was a little scary. Swans are big, and this one was hissing at me while ducking its head and lunging. It definitely looked like it was preparing for something, perhaps a pre-emptive strike against a much larger opponent. I pointed the camera at it. This only enraged it even more and it started flapping and stomping. The ducks took to the water in a cacophony of quacks, but I wasn’t going to be intimidated by an animal half my size.
“Boo!” I shouted.
The swan stopped moving, its wings half outstretched slowly folded back up. It shifted its weight from one foot to the other.
“Boo!” I shouted again.
The swan folded its neck. It was almost bowing to me. Then, with a regal swish it turned around, walked back into the water, and swam off. Never looking back, holding its head high. I’d just said Boo to a Swan. Not a goose, a bloody swan.
I realied two things at this point. Firstly, my heart rate was quite a few beats faster than normal. Secondly, behind me up on the edge of the road, a group of Japanese tourists was laughing and taking pictures. Some of them were clapping. I smiled back. They smiled at me.
“You please take picture of us?” one asked, offering me a camera. I obliged, it’s what you have to do when you’re a celebrity these days.
So, if you see any Japanese websites reporting the amazing story of the English swan tamer, that was me. You read it here first.

Down With The Twitchers

Cwmrywddfor Farm Campsite

29 May 2001

Evening

A dull day. By which I mean, cloudy and wet. Anyway I was tired from yesterday’s walk so I didn’t feel like doing much. I went for a drive and picked up some shopping. But on the way I passed a big sign announcing “The Osprey Project” so I stopped off for a look.

The Osprey, I now know, is a very rare bird round these parts and worthy of interest. This particular Osprey pair is the most southerly in the British Isles and some lunatics have devoted their time to looking after them. They’ve built a nesting platform and provided a hide for people to gawp from. Best of all though, there’s a camera right next to the nest so people can come in and watch the birds on a huge TV screen in a hut.

I’ve never been a big birdwatcher. I do like birds of prey, but I like to watch them flying or hunting. Watching one on a TV screen sitting on a nest was like watching an ornithological version of Big Brother, and there weren’t even any tits (those were feeding on the nuts left out for them). It held my attention for a minute or less and I decided to have a look up in the hide where I was told there were telescopes provided.

In the hide were two men. One was earnestly inspecting his camera which was fitted with the longest lens I have ever seen. He was fiddling with the controls and looking confused. The other man was dressed in army fatigues and wearing a deerstalker hat. Neither of them was paying any attention to the telescopes. I immediately pegged them as twitchers. They’re a wierd bunch, twitchers. I don’t think any of them are really that interested in birds. They’re collectors, obsessives, ticking things off a list in a way that is truly competitive but might as well be about moss or bricks for all it has to do with birds. I dislike them as a breed.

Perhaps it was my camera, perhaps it was the fact I was alone and therefore appeared to have no friends, but deerstalker gauged me for one of his own. In the following transcript I have invented most of the names of people and birds because I was taking as little notice as it’s possible to take of a man who is using your left ear as a megaphone.

“Not much going on here,” he said by way of an opening gambit.

“Mmmmm?” I replied in a way I hoped conveyed, politely but insistently, the sentiment “Leave me alone you deranged bastard.”

“Not much going on apart from the Osprey, but of course I got one of them last year in Scotland. Were you there?”

“Where?” I asked, peering through a telescope. The Osprey was a tiny dot inside a tiny circle. It might as well have been a brick.

“Scotland last year when the Osprey came down? I was there with Derek Bum. You know Derek?”

“No.”

“Ah well there was a bunch of us up there. Jonathan Arse. You must know Jonathan?”

“No. Never heard of him.” I feigned interest in the telescope.

“Ah well, we all got the Osprey. Missed the Dappled Gannet though. Apparently it left about an hour before we arrived.”

“Had somebody told it you were coming?”

His friend was now banging the camera on the table. “It’s broken,” he declared.

“Congratulations,” I said, assuming he’d succeeded in some objective.

“Bloody thing can’t focus.”

I knew how it felt.

Deerstalker was not to be purturbed. “I saw a Long-Legged Crackfarter here a few years back but I didn’t get it. At the time I was one of only three people in the world to have seen a Long-Legged Crackfarter. Your normal Crackfarter, I got one of them ages ago but nobody had ever seen a Long-Legged Crackfarter in this country. I was down there, in the grass,” he pointed out of the window at the grass below, “taking a shit and this bird just flew out of me arse! And I was shouting ‘It’s a Long-Legged Crackfarter, get a picture!’ but nobody was down there with me otherwise we’d have got the proof, see?”

I saw, and I let him know that I saw by looking at him in the way I would look at someone on crack holding a baby over a fire.

He was oblivious. “There was me, James Wobblebottom, you know him? No? Chris Cornflakes? Carrier-Bag McChisel? Iolo Williams, the bird man off the telly, you must know him?”

I did, and I indicated such by continuing to look through the telescope, but now with my eyes closed.

“They was all there but I was the only one that saw it so I got no proof. Right bugger it was.” He tailed off, at last perhaps realising that I was a normal person.

His freind had removed the lens from the camera and was poking inside it with his finger.

“Nikon?” I asked.

“Canon,” he replied.

“Ah,” I said. At least this conversation was making sense.

“I got 214 species in a day a while ago. Still got the record for that in this country,” deerstalker rambled. I gave up replying and scanned the walls for signs of drying paint.

“Come on Joe, let’s go up the Nature Reserve. There’s supposed to be some Lesser-Spotted Humdingers coming in. You going up the reserve?”

This question was addressed to me. “No, I don’t think so,” I said.

“Ah well, have a nice day,” he said as he left. His friend followed, shaking his camera up and down as if it were a bottle of ketchup.

I waited in the hide long enough to be sure I wouldn’t meet them in the car park, then returned to the campsite and got very drunk.

 

Cadaver Idris

Cwmrywddfor Farm Campsite

28 May 2001

Morning

Yesterday was a fine day. Cool and windy, some clouds. When I woke up it was dank and wet, rain coursed across the campsite creating pools. But by late morning it had brightened up. There were clouds in the sky and a strong wind, but the sun was out more than in and so I hastily prepared some sandwiches, packed a rucksac, and set off down the road to climb Cadaer Idris.

As I walked down the road I thought about the walk two days ago and wondered how much my legs would complain about this. I tried to put these thoughts out of my mind but the anticipation that I would fail was strong. Suddenly there was the beep of a car horn. I looked round to find the couple from the tent next door waving at me. I waved back and smiled.

“You climbing it?” the man shouted.

“Yes, well trying,” I replied.

“Good luck!” he shouted back and then added, cryptically, “Turn left!” and with that they drove off.

His instruction rang round my head as I turned, to the right, into the car park which is the start of the walk. Turn left? Where? Why? But soon I had other thoughts on my mind – aching legs, sweating, thirst, and breathlessness being but four of them. What kept me going was the memory of how, two years earlier, I had come back to North Wales after many years of inactivity and just managed to climb the Glyders. I’d felt this bad then and made it so I soldiered on, pausing frequently to rest.

After a while I came to a fork in the path. Cadaer Idris is basically a big horsehoe ridge enclosing the beautiful Llyn Cau and the walk circumnavigates the cwm. It’s possible to go either way round and this was obviously the point at which you could decide which way to go. Which way was I going to go? Turn Left, I thought, and so I did, taking the path which goes directly to the lake.

After the initial slog the going wasn’t too bad. It was boggy after all the rain but it undulated gently until I rounded a corner and was presented with my first view of the impressive crags above the lake. I sat by the lake and protected my sandwiches from an inquisitive seagull, snatching bites whenever the big shitting bastard wasn’t looking.

The walk to the summit was an uneventful slog. At times I was just putting one foot in front of the other. I was passed by a couple of groups of people. Mind you at the speed I was going I think I could have been passed by someone with a zimmer frame. But I kept going and made the top in reasonable time. On a clearer day the views would have been very impressive – out to Barmouth and the coast to the west, and right over all of Snowdonia to the North. But the cloud was dusting the summit and the wind was ferocious, gusty, and cold so I didn’t stop long.

The second half of the horseshoe was much easier going until I started the descent. For the first few hundred vertical meters the path was not marked at all. I was glad it wasn’t foggy because I would have had to turn round. The only way I knew I was going the right way was because I could see the campsite, right down at the bottom, my van a tiny white speck. Once I picked up the marked path it became very steep indeed and at this point the advice to turn left made sense. Coming up this way would have been really hard work.

I’ve always been faster at descents than ascents. I tend to let gravity take over and simply use my leg muscles as brakes. Towards the bottom I caught and overtook two of the groups of people who had passed me on the way up, and I spent the last half hour of the descent chatting to a guy from a Swansea walking club. He was very interested to learn about my plans, although I don’t have any. It was a nice way to end the walk. A guy in the car park gave me a lift up the road back to the campsite, which was much appreciated, especially by my legs. I was a dead man, but happy.

Cup of tea, then into the shower. For fifteen quid a night I expect a decent shower. I was to be disappointed. Firstly, there was a coin meter. Twenty pence for 3 minutes. As I only had one 20p coin on me this entailed some planning. First, get into the shower cubicle – in itself an exercise in topology because to close the door it was necessary to stand in the shower basin. Then undress, wrap towel around waist, and then open the shower door again to access the coin meter which was inexplicably mounted outside. The coin dropped and the countdown started. Back into the cubicle, contorting myself around the door like a rubber man. Switch the shower on, remove towel, wait for water to warm up. 30 seconds gone. I had the quickest shower I’ve ever had. It wasn’t relaxing or pleasant as a shower should be. Not impressed. This was The Farmer’s revenge, and the speed he does things I wasn’t surprised it took 2 days to happen. I did feel refreshed though and went back, had dinner, and fell asleep in front of a film on the laptop.

The Travels Commence

Cwmrywddfor Farm Campsite

25 May 2001

Evening

Where I’ve been is unimportant. Where I am is unpronouceable. It’s not unforgettable, a small field near an A road and by a stream. I’d have a lovely view of Cadaer Idris behind me if it weren’t for the trees. Fifteen pounds a night. For that I get a few square feet of field, mains electricity, and shared use of a shower with a vole in it. The nearest shop might as well be on the moon. No mobile phone signal, no internet, the radio is just about able to suck enough longwave from the air to let me hear Radio 4. This is as away from it all as away from it all gets, if you don’t count the main road that is.

If solitude is good for anything, it’s good for writing. So that’s what I find myself doing to fill the hours before dark. I’m exhausted after a night of not much sleep and a bit of a drive, not to mention a walk, but I simply won’t sleep before dark. I’m not ten.

It’s not all solitude. Shortly after arriving I got into a conversation with an old guy in a caravan setting up opposite. He’s been coming here for nigh-on twenty years. I wanted to ask if he has nothing better to do, but that would just have been rude and he’d done nothing to deserve that. He was nice, friendly, and gave me some ideas of places to go where the views were spectacular. He even showed me on his map. What a nice man. This is typical of many campsites I’ve visited – old men pounce on whoever comes along and make smalltalk. I appreciate it – they’re solitary too and I understand exactly how that feels – but I also take it as a warning not to end up that way. Old and solitary, I mean. His demeanour was friendly but the obsessive attention to minutiae in his conversation was evidence of a mind that, while not unhinged, was definitely banging in the wind. It could happen to us all.

After some tea I went for a walk. Tal-y-llyn lake was a few miles away and looked like it might enjoy good vistas and I was keen to get the camera out and practice because I haven’t been keeping my hand in lately.

Walking is one of the first things we learn. What we don’t often appreciate is how easy it is to forget how to do it. 6 months of idleness have left my legs in a confused state. They don’t quite remember which muscles to use and when. For the first couple of miles I strutted stiffy, as if I’d just got up off the sofa to go the shop. As I covered ground my legs remembered what they were supposed to be doing, but it was like my muscles were made of rubber bands – I wobbled from side to side like a drunkard in stiletto heels. Sinews I’d forgotten about complained and stretched and made their uncomfortable presence felt . My knees did not want to straighten and once straight did not want to bend again.

As I walked down the road a car pulled out of a house a few hundred yards up ahead. As it was a narrow road I stepped in to the side to let him pass, glancing over my shoulder as I did so. I saw a lorry approaching from the other direction, going quite fast. With me in the road and vehicles approaching from both directions one of them was going to have to slow down because this road wasn’t big enough for the three of us. The lorry, though, didn’t slow down. It growled up the road towards me and I readied myself to leap over the low wall to safety. I thought a collision was inevitable and I didn’t want to be in the middle of it. I looked back towards the car. It had barely moved. I could just make out the figure of the driver, hunched over the steering wheel, snarling like a trapped weasel. His progress, in contrast to the lorry, was pedestrian and he was still a long way off. As I stared at him the lorry rushed past, throwing up a cloud of gravel. The car continued on at the same pace. I leaned back and waited to see what would happen. Time passed. Sheep munched on grass, birds sang in the trees, continental plates moved. The car covered a few hundred more yards then the driver sounded his horn. I looked round, confused. There was nobody else in sight. I wasn’t even in the way, having by now settled down to sit on the wall and await whatever was going to happen. The sun moved across the sky, my beard grew, and eventually the car slid past me. The driver didn’t look at me but remained in his hunched position, that rictus expression never changing, and continued down the road at the same speed as before. I shrugged and continued on my way.

When I got back to the campsite a familiar looking stooped figure was waiting for me. It was the driver of the car. A man as old as the hills he lives amongst and older than his hair introduced himself in a voice like a shifting sand dune as “The Farmer”. He didn’t say why having a mafioso-style epithet was significant so I congratulated him on owning a farm and awaited a response. He simply stood exactly as he was – the same stoop, the same facial expression, probably even the same heart rate. There was an uncomfortable moment. I wondered if he wanted to discuss road safety. He looked at me expectantly. I looked at him dumbly. I wondered if he was trying to remember the word ‘roadhog’. But then it struck me. I was on a farm, he was the farmer and he was politely pointing out that I’d parked in his field and connected to his electricity and that while he was happy for me to do this the privilege was not free of charge. I parted with sixty quid, which is cheap for a protection racket.

Some people say solitude does them good. I’m not so sure, I think it’s hard. I make an effort to talk to people all the time, like the couple who were pitching a large tent next to me this evening. A very large tent. Apparently the instructions came on a DVD. That’s overcomplicated if you ask me and not much use in a field, which is where tents are generally used. They seem very nice people and like everyone on campsites are happy to chat and exchange stories. They’ve just this minute returned from a trip to somewhere in their car. Sometimes I wish I was in a tent, transport separate from living space. I envy their ability to just jump behind the wheel and spin off somewhere wihtout having to unplug from the mains, put the roof down, stow things so they don’t fly around as I go round corners, batten down the hatches, splice the mainbrace, etc etc. Why did I buy a campervan? What part of my brain was in operation when I made THAT descision? Ah yes, the lazy part, the part that just wanted to pitch up anywhere and have nothing further to do. The part that wanted a heater and electric hook-up and a fridge. I guess what I gain in arrival convenience I lose in leaving convenience. As I pulled a cold beer from the fridge I felt this was fair trade off.

And suddenly it was pissing with rain. Nothing lets you know you’re in North Wales more than when a day that started beautifully ends up pissing with rain. Or indeed when a day that started out pissing with rain ends up pissing with rain. Do you see, it’s the rain that’s the factor here? The van feels more like a tent when it’s raining, what with having the roof up and it being canvas. The two in the tent next to me were just about to light a campfire. I hold them no ill-will and have nothing whatsoever against campfires, it was simply their reaction to the rain – it was priceless. Basically, imagine the way this paragraph started but add more swearing, running about, and screaming from a woman evidently not dressed for weather of any description and you’ll get the idea. But why I mention them at all is that the fact they were there and that I could hear Oasis warbling from within their tent and that was comforting.

You know, I was in danger of slipping into melanchoy there until Oasis came on. Christ, when was the last time Oasis saved me from anything? Never, that’s when. This must be a sign of middle age! Bring out the slippers grandad, let’s do the crossword!