This was something we'd talked about nearly a year ago. Parched brown grass, clear blue skies with little fluffy white clouds and a pleasant 25 degrees was probably what we'd both pictured. However, time slips by and before you know it, the year is drawing to a close and another 'plan' has fallen by the wayside ... it felt a bit like now or never.
Our timing was 'perfect'. The initial ascent up to 560m was dry with a slight breeze but the minute we escaped the sheltered confines of the conifers, all hell broke loose, albeit a cold hell. We held onto a decent track for the remainder of the grid square. Under normal conditions it would be completely rideable but the wind made forward progress while balancing nearly impossible, so we settled into a steady push and pointed our internal compass towards the summit of Pen Pumlumon Arwystli.
The stone track had deserted us earlier, now we had tussock, sheep path and a fence-line to help guide us. The rain had also gone but had been replaced by hail, hail that when combined with the wind, seemed quite capable of stripping flesh from bone ... I donned my 'Minion' goggles and we pressed on.
The following 3km was a roller-coaster, we went from 740m down to 680m, back up to 730m and back down to 690m. We stood and stared at the last incline before the summit of Pumlumon Fawr and the highest point of the Cambrian mountains, it might only have been another 70m higher than where we stood but it was a steep 70m. Snow greeted us at the top, great big fist sized flakes, this really wasn't somewhere you wanted to hang around.
It's fair to say that we were both now wet to the skin. Our waterproof armour had been no match for the driving rain, hail and snow, we clapped our hands, stamped our feet and set off in search of the exit. What awaited us was much better than either of us had expected. The swollen lump on my thigh will testify to just how slippery it was but it was a kilometre and a half of singletrack winding and dropping off the mountain and as long as you stayed tyre side down, every inch was rideable. Long abandoned mine workings heralded the halfway point of our free fall. We took a moment to bang our hands and feet against blunt instruments in a vain effort to coax frozen nerves back into life ... not knowing whether you're pulling the brake levers or not had raised the excitement level one notch too high.
The old mine track escorted us the remainder of the way off the mountain, it wasn't the singletrack we'd enjoyed previously but it was fast and rough enough to keep you on your toes ... or would have been, had you been able to actually feel your toes. With the 'excitement' over, the remainder of our day consisted largely of drinking tea, eating and doing whatever we could dream up, to get warm and a little drier ... perhaps we shouldn't have been too surprised to get just as cold and wet the following day on our way home
Big thank you to Mike for being stupid enough to go with me
PC310059 by mjc_226, on Flickr
PC310063 by mjc_226, on Flickr
PC310071 by mjc_226, on Flickr
PC310073 by mjc_226, on Flickr
PC310079 by mjc_226, on Flickr
PC310082 by mjc_226, on Flickr
