I'll share my
interesting experience where I was saved by my Swiss Army penknife.
Riding South from Bwlch-y-Groes I turned off at Nant-yr-Onog on to a permissive path. A horrible path, as it happens, with deep rutted mud and wind-blown branches between deep banks. In short, a push. I breathed a sigh of relief when it passed into some forestry and flattened out. Not for long though, because the trees had been knocked down across the track meaning I had to climb the very steep bank to get around them.
It doesn't look steep in the photo but the only way to do it was to first get a firm footing, then push the bike up a foot or so, apply the rear brake and then repeat. Going down and around was not an option because of the 20-30ft drop into a rocky valley with a river in it. So having got above, I could see another tree-jam and another after that, but unless I could detour much much higher I was still stuck because the bank had slipped leaving a deep, steep, loose valley to get down then back up again. I got back down to the track could see that the trunks had bridged across leaving a gap below, but this was closed by branches wedged into the ground.
Sorry about the picture but the camera lens was steamed up. What looks like a field above the obvious trunk is another, bigger tree trunk. Nowt else for it but to bring out the SAK and start sawing, eventually making a hole big enough to drag the bike through on its side. Phew!
I had to do this twice, but then it became possible to get down to the river and wade upstream for a hundred yards or so before pushing up another, this time soggy boggy mossy steep bank to a track. The sun had come out by this time and when, after a couple of hundred yards or so I took off my waterproofs, I thought I'd left my phone down
there somewhere.
"There's no way I'm going back down there" I thought, "I'll just have to buy a new phone". Then I remembered I'd put it in another pocket.
So all this faffing about took me at least an hour to get 200 yards. Type Two fun this,and no mistake.
. Oh go on then, Tywyn. Hey DPM, it was you then that nearly got taken out by the seagull! Good to meet you guys. That was excellent entertainment that place wasn't it? We've only shown people the "external shot" so far. Here's one taken inside:
