3/3 A comedy of errors.
So I was booked on to a course at Llandudno last Wednesday. Hmm! Llandudno is close to Dulyn Bothy. That'll do for my March bivvy. But the course started at 8:45 and I didn't fancy driving up early that day, so booked a B&B for Tuesday night. There's a particularly good chippy in Conway so I partook of a fish supper and headed off to the digs. Only later did I find that my Buff had gone missing. The only chance to get another was in the lunch break so I dashed around the corner to Blacks where they relieved me of 25 quid for a replacement.
After the course I quickly donned my riding gear and found a place to leave the car overnight on the West Shore. After a mile and a half of mostly soft sand on the cycle path I realised that I'd left my phone in the car. Back at the car, I've done 3 miles already and no nearer to my goal. And my front brake has started squealing. I tried fiddling about with it but eventually gave up and squealed off into the darkness. And rain.
Somewhere on the lanes before Tal-y-Bont my GPS flashed a low battery message so I turned it off until I would really need it, using Viewranger on my phone to navigate instead. But I had to take a glove off every time I wanted to check where I was so I stuffed it into my coat. It was only after some very steep climbs that I found that the glove had fallen out, who knew how far back. I wasn't ready to backtrack for a cheap glove, but all the same that was another £10 or £12 gone.
By the time I reached Llyn Eigiau parking I was getting tired and soon afterwards this:-
loomed out of the darkness. Forget the bothy, I'll doss here instead. But it was just a rock. A house shaped rock, but a rock nonetheless. Pedal on then. A couple of miles further up hill I stopped to check how far I'd got and found no phone in my pocket. Luckily I just had to trudge back a quarter of a mile to the last gate I'd opened and there it was, lying there, laughing at me.
Now, on Youtube there's a video of someone riding to Dulyn bothy, so I foolishly assumed that I could ride there too. How wrong I was! The path down from Melynllyn is no more than a goat track, steep, rocky, twisty. I finally reached the bothy at midnight, to the surprise of a pair or walkers and to the alarm of their little dog who didn't stop barking for a good 15 minutes. They had a nice warm fire lit but they'd already bedded down for the night and I didn't want to be crashing around getting food ready, so removed to the other room, having first hung my damp clothes to dry near the fire.
Next morning was cold and clear, but by the time I was fed and packed to go, a thick fog had set in.
At first I couldn't find the path but after blundering around for a while I found something I recognised from the previous night and was able to drag myself back to the double track at Melynllyn. It was a hellish climb.
This is the remains of the Llyn Eigiau dam that burst in the early 20th century and flooded down the valley to Dolgarrog, taking out the Coedty dam on the way and killing 17 people.
I made a couple of bad choices of track to reach Llyn Cowlyd, opting for bridle path where a solid track was available and I wish I hadn't skirted Llyn Cowlyd at all. The track is mostly unrideable (for one of my ability on a loaded bike) in that it is either too rocky or the sides or the track are too close together and too deep to allow the pedals to turn. The climb out at the top is like the one out of Dulyn though thankfully not as high. I was too fed up to stop and take any photos of this bit.
Once at the top, the sun started to show and the trail became easy. Even, wide, grassy. There are lots of little bridges over the worst of the boggy bits but you have to be careful, because the lead up to the bridge can be deceptively deep.
And smelly! It was at one of these that I discovered that my Cateye rear light, that had been fastened to one of the seat bag straps, had gone.
The run down to Capel Curig was straightforward. Here I decided to cut my losses and catch the train from Betws-y-Coed instead of more cross-country to my original destination at Dolwyddelan. But there are no trains running due to track works. The shock of my heart hitting the floor would have been enough to start a tsunami. Or a butterfly to flap its wings in Brazil or somewhere. When I called the Arriva trains helpline, the man told me that there is a bus sevice running, but they don't take bikes. I could beg the driver, but it would be his decision.
When the bus turned up, it wasn't a bus but one of those big smart international coaches wiith tellies and toilets and the driver said "No Problem, I can take bikes", and opened up a door to the cavernous luggage hold. When I asked him where I should pay he said "don't worry about it"
The final tally then, is Buff, £25, gloves £12, Cateye lamp another £25 making £62. Less £9 for the train fare not paid makes £53 in all. More than I thought it would cost me but still cheap at the price for 2 days of memories.
I left at first light with a slightly flattened area of leafs as the only clue I'd been there. 3 out of 3 done far and another grid square ticked off, SZ5090. Home before 07:00 ready for 2 days of gardening.
