A Wild Vista

Three months ago today, I was enjoying a weekend in Northern Snowdonia. Specifically, at Rowen Youth Hostel, which revels in a fantastically scenic location, perched on the steep western slopes of the Conwy Valley. The Carneddau range, comprising by far the largest contiguous area of high ground over 3000 feet south of Scotland, is on the doorstep.

The closest I’d come to this locality before was some eight years earlier, though under rather different circumstances. Back then, above Abergwyngregyn, perhaps five miles from the hostel as the crow flies, I’d sat shivering in a parked car with my walking companion, Chris, listening to the rain bouncing off the roof. For over an hour. At 04:30 in the morning. The only vaguely sane explanation for such behaviour is that we were on a mission to do the Welsh 3000s — a mission which never got off the ground due to the appalling weather from the get go.

As it happens, last October, the weekend at Rowen YHA didn’t get off to a brilliant start either. Having driven 214¾ of the 215 miles from Cambridge to Rowen without incident, the final ¼-mile to the hostel proved too much for the Pug. I’d have found it hard to believe that there was a surfaced road in the UK which was physically too steep to drive up for an average road car, but this proved to be the case. It’s more than a little disconcerting to find oneself gradually moving backwards downhill, whilst simultaneously stamping on the footbrake, and ratcheting up the handbrake to the max. I blame a combination of rain, wet leaves, and a gradient in excess of 1:3 on the inside of the hairpins.

Having inadvertently backed the car into a ditch while trying to reverse back down the hill in the dark, I abandoned it there for the night (this was going to need a tow, or at least the combined efforts of most of the other folk expected that weekend, to push it out), and walked the final 400 yards to the hostel. Everyone else had arrived within an hour, with at least one other car becoming stuck on the hill and having to execute a careful retreat. Still, nothing a couple of beers couldn’t help me forget about.

The following day, we all enjoyed a walk from the hostel, up over Drum and onto Foel-Fras. Though a little windy and dreich on the way up, the clouds cleared to give us some great views as we descended back to Rowen by the same route.

Back at the hostel, relaxing before we headed down the hill to the pub for the evening, I was fetching a bag of coal for the fire when the second sting-in-the-tail for the weekend caught me out. None too pleased at being disturbed from her hibernation among the coal sacks, a queen wasp stung me on the cuticle as I hefted a bag from the pile.

Queen wasp (from Flickr, user bramblejungle, CC-BY-NC-2 license)

I was too surprised to have the wherewithall to dispatch the creature and merely flicked it away. So, if you’re up at Rowen YHA during summer 2010, and are being bothered by a wasp nest, then I apologise in advance. It’s astonishing how such a little thing can inflict so much pain. After an initially eye-watering five-minute period where my finger felt as though it was being held in the fire that I’d been retrieving the coal for, it settled down somewhat. Imagine having your hand slammed in a door every few minutes for a couple of hours and you’ve got the idea. Beer didn’t help this time around.

There was one more unforeseen and unwelcome incident that weekend, when the hostel fire alarm malfunctioned at some ungodly hour on Sunday morning, and, having been silenced, proceeded to bleat about a fault until we eventually left on Sunday morning. At this point, the water had run out too. We’d been warned about this earlier in the week by the warden, and so had brought a fair amount of bottled water along. Talk about coals to Newcastle…

Overall though, this was a very enjoyable weekend, despite a few mishaps. The next time the travel instructions warn of an extremely steep hill that one may well be better parking at the bottom of, I might just do as they say…

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