Adventures Archives - David Mosley

Mosley May 7, 2025

Adventures

Chequers Walk – Northern Chilterns: 7th May 2025

Had a lovely day out walking in the Northern Chilterns with P and T on a beautiful sunny day.

It took us a while to navigate out of Wendover station and around the HS2 works that were taking place at the start of the route.

But we were soon in gorgeous woodland, with the sun turning the foliage into a luminous green.

And enjoying the end of the bluebell season:

We got great views at the top of Coombe Hill:

Where there’s also a monument commemorating the Boer War, which I knew naff all about, so I did some Googling, and discovered it wasn’t the proudest moment in British history. There’s a fair bit of context and pre-amble, but in the latter phases the British responded to the Boer’s guerrilla tactics with Lord Kitchener adopting tactics to:

‘… flush out guerrillas in a series of systematic drives, organised like a sporting shoot, with success defined in a weekly ‘bag’ of killed, captured and wounded, and to sweep the country bare of everything that could give sustenance to the guerrillas, including women and children … It was the clearance of civilians—uprooting a whole nation—that would come to dominate the last phase of the war.’
— Pakenham, The Boer War^[²³^]^:⁴⁹³

The ’cleared’ civilians and fighters were put in tented concentration camps: 45 for Boers and 64 for black Africans. Over 46,000 black Africans and Boer women and children died in these camps, many of disease due to poor sanitary conditions.

These tactics rightly prompted a public outcry in Britain, and after the war there was the first war crimes trial in British military history, although only for a small handful of soldiers involved.

Interestingly, the war also brought to attention the poor state of public health in Britain, as up to 40% of recruits were unfit for military service due to conditions like rickets and other poverty-related illnesses.

After discovering the above I’m a bit less enamoured with the monument:

The walk took us past Chequers: country pile of British Prime ministers. The path had lots of unwelcoming signs about straying being a ‘serious organised crime’, so we kept our distance:

In P’s guidebook there’s a great story about when Boris Yeltsin visited John Major here in 1994:

After a series of lengthy meetings with the Russian premier, John Major suggested that they go for a walk to get some fresh air. And so the two world leaders, their wives and a large entourage of diplomats and security officers set out across the Buckinghamshire countryside.

Within a few hundred metres, however, it became apparent that the Russian president was not one of life’s great walkers, and he began to look decidedly grumpy as they climbed up to the brow of a hill. At the top, Major presented Yeltsin with three choices: walk back over the fields to Chequers – to which Yeltsin grunted; climb down the hill to the waiting cars and be driven back to the estate – another grunt; or walk on to the old-fashioned English pub, the Bernard Arms, in the village of Great Kimble.

At this final suggestion, Yeltsin perked up considerably, shouting gleefully, “Gins and tonic! Gins and tonic!” Arriving in Great Kimble, however, they found that the pub was shut. Yeltsin started hammering on the door, yelling, “Open up! This is the President of Russia!” To which the dry reply came from inside: “Oh yes? And I’m the Kaiser.”

When the pub was finally opened, Major ordered a pint, while Yeltsin asked for a bottle of vodka, only to be refused such a large measure by the nonplussed barman; a diplomatic incident was only avoided when the Russian president agreed to drink his vodka one glass at a time like everyone else.

And another quick Google turned up this great footage of a pretty unhappy Yeltsin wandering round the countryside (with entourage) in his shell-suit!

At Little Kimble we popped into All Saints Church, which has early 14^th century wall paintings that are pretty well preserved:

This one just looks like a bunch of people pulling each other’s hair, but I think is supposed to be more spiritually minded (probably the crucifixion).

After that, it was a short walk back to Wendover for a couple of pints before heading home.

Mosley April 25, 2025

Adventures

The Cambrian Way: Eyri / Snowdonia – Barmouth to Conwy. 17-22 April 2025

I’d done quite a lot of micro-adventuring recently and was yearning for something a bit chunkier. After getting a taste of Snowdonia over O’s birthday I realised that this was a massive outage in places I’d spent time in the UK and wanted to explore more. I’d also never actually been up Snowdon. Time to rectify!

With the long Easter weekend approaching it seemed like the perfect excuse to get away for longer. I settled on trekking the Cambrian Way from Barmouth to Conwy. At 118km it seemed an achievable length over 4 and a bit days, and also meant that transport to and from London wasn’t too arduous (I’d have dearly loved to start the route a bit earlier to get Cadair Idris in as well, but the extra complexities on travel and increased length meant that I’d have needed an extra day).

The Cambrian Way is a route that runs the entire length of Wales, from Cardiff in the South to Conwy in the North. Despite following many of the old Stone and Bronze age trails it’s a relatively recently recognised ‘official’ route, championed by The Ramblers Association in the 1960s, and particularly by a guy called Tony Drake who spent around a decade working out the route and presented the initial plan for it in 1971. It’s now marked on OS Maps, and signposted (in lowland areas) with a Welsh hat symbol, which I didn’t know was a thing, but Wikipedia informs me is the ‘image of a happy, hearty, healthy, hard-working Welsh woman’

Cambrian Waymarking

She doesn’t look particularly happy, despite the hat.

Day 1: Thursday

I set off early from London and arrived in Barmouth around lunchtime. Barmouth is a weird town. Totally surrounded by absolute beauty; the mountains and the sea. But full of people on mobility scooters drinking cider. However you get your kicks I suppose? But I quickly got out of there, and once I started climbing a hill I felt safe that none of them would/could come after me!

Safe up here

It was an absolutely stunning day and a total joy to be out in it. And very quickly the scenery became pretty exquisite.

I’d roughly planned my route, including potential campsites, through to Monday when I planned to treat myself to a bunk, shower and breakfast at the YHA in Conwy before heading back on Tuesday morning. However pretty early on there were indications that my planning had been a bit overambitious: the climbing in the Welsh mountains can be pretty aggressive, and I was really feeling the weight of a five day pack pretty soon. Still, I was happy, optimistic, and just kept plodding.

And with views like this it’s tough to be in anything other than a joyous mood (the big ridged mountain in the distance is Cadair Idris – I was a bit gutted that I’d missed it this time. A good excuse to go back though!)

After a few hours I stopped for a late lunch, got the feet out, and pondered why these trees were growing like a QR code on the side of the mountain.

Here’s a more immersive experience of my lunch stop, to truly bring it to life:

Then it was onwards and upwards. There were a couple of peaks before finding a spot to bed down. My favourite was Diffwys, at 750m. Here’s me being silly at the top.

Here’s me trying to look cool at the trig point:

And here’s a video of me trying to be silly, but then getting a bit too awed by the landscape to properly style it out.

There was more stunning walking, and then the sun decided to make it even more beautiful by bathing the landscape in gold as it started descending. I decided not to try to attempt the Rhinog mountains in the dusk on my first day out, so found myself a little spot by Llyn Hywel just at the foot of Rhinog Fach.

It was a bit of a scramble down, and a good introductory lesson that nearly everywhere that looks potentially campable in Snowdonia on a map, and from a distance, is actually marshland. As I got increasingly desperate, I even tried to use some common sense, figuring that if I went a bit higher and looked for a slight slope, then surely the excess water would have run down to lower areas. This turned out to be a false assumption. This continued to baffle me a little, so I did some post trek Peatland Hydrology research as to why. It turns out that there’s actually a scientific law to explain this:

“Darcy’s law suggests that water flows through a unit area of wet peat will be determined primarily by the combination of hydraulic conductivity of the material (K, expressed as a speed of transmission of water through the material) and the hydraulic gradient (fall in height over horizontal distance travelled). Bogs remain wet because peat generally has low hydraulic conductivities, retaining water even when there is a relatively high hydraulic gradient.”

In fact, water only moves in the range of mm or cm a day apparently. And it all sits on the surface because the peat is sat on top of impermeable rock. And the presence of cotton grass and sphagnum (mosses) in the bog slows it down even more.

Here’s a couple of diagrams that basically show that until the peat is fully saturated, water doesn’t really start running off it.

If you wanted to know what a cross section of peatland looks like (I appreciate I may be a party of one on this one). Note the two key layers of Acrotelm and Catotelm.

And then this diagram is really supposed to show the effects of erosion on water run-off from peatland, but the key point for me as to why I kept struggling to find somewhere to pitch my tent, is that the vegetation in the Acrotelm section basically just sucks up any available water and holds onto it, until it reaches saturation point and only then allows run-off. Hence wet marsh even on sloped higher ground.

But I digress..

Short story, I found a spot to camp at last. It was stunning. I made some food using my snazzy new camping stove (MSR Pocket Rocket Deluxe baby – so much faster, lighter and easier than my old Trangia!) And I put my head down to sleep…

Day 2: Friday

…And I slept a bit. Fitfully. First night in a tent in the mountains and all that. It’s never the warmest, or most comfortable when you’ve been used to a bed and central heating…

…Until the sun rose, warmed the tent up, and I foolishly convinced myself that I’d just shut my eyes and rest a little longer until my body warmed up enough to face the day…

Cut to 11am. I wake up, look at the time, swear quite loudly. Then I realise it’s raining and am even less happy.

Now listen, I love wildcamping. I love the flexibility of being able to find a spot and settle in for the night wherever and whenever I fancy on a walk. I love the independence. I love the solitude and knowing that there’s no-one around for miles. I love the secrecy of it. I love watching the sun set and rise from my bed. I even love when I have to get up in the middle of the night to pee and get dumbstruck by the clarity and cacophony of the stars that you get when you put some distance between yourself and light pollution.

But I do not love the amount of faff that’s required between the moment of waking and the point when you’ve fed yourself, made coffee for the day, worked out what combination of layers you’re going to start walking in and changed into them in a tent just slightly larger than a coffin, washed up, brushed teeth, sorted your feet out, packed everything away in the tent, taken the tent down and packed that away too and are finally ready to start moving.

So it was basically 1pm by the time I set off. I’d already found out that my plan was overambitious the previous day. This really screwed it. And to top it off, it was raining, the cloud cover was low, and I had two big hairy Rhinog mountains to get over. Things weren’t looking good and I felt like a bit of a muppet.

Any thoughts I might have had of putting my foot on the gas and making up time were quashed almost immediately by another realisation that would take me another day or two to fully internalise:

In Snowdonia, if something looks like a relatively decent path on a map, it’s probably just a ploy by the mountains to lure you in and F you up.

For example, see the nice looking paths that track round the northern side of Llyn Hywel here (the ones without any gradient that look like they should just be a Sunday stroll around the lake)

Well, they actually look like this:

And in the wet these rocks are like jagged little ice rinks.

There’s actually just no paths. The map is lying.

Sometimes the mist cleared and revealed landscapes of deepy hued reds and greens that almost looked slightly overexposed.

And sometimes it didn’t

But none of this meant I wasn’t going to take a silly photo at the summit:

In the valley between the two Rhinogs I made friends with the cutest slug I’ve ever seen:

Decided I’d jump the wall rather than crawling through this pretty stupid crossing in the marsh

And pretended not to be a bit cold and unhappy with my progress when I summitted Rhinog Fawr

On the descent there were more ridiculous ‘paths’ that slowed me to a scrambly crawl

And a load of paths that were basically streams with the rocks so rinky that I’ve never fallen over so many times on a walk before, despite tip toeing down them with burglar like care.

By the time I approached Cwm Bychan I’d had enough. I was wet, cold and sore. It wasn’t long until nightfall. And I’d done about 10km total (vs over 30km in the plan). I pitched my tent, ate some food, went to bed soggy, shivering and grumpy, but resolved to reset the next day and see what I could make happen with a decent start….

Day 3: Saturday:

…And life got better. Despite it being incredibly windy on the ridges of the Northen Rhinogs

And there being more of those ‘paths’ I’d learned to love:

And at one point sinking into a bog up to my knees and getting my feet soaked:

The sunshine was really trying to make an effort, the landscape felt wild and solitary, but traversable

And I bagged another couple of the lower summits, including Clip at 590m and Moel Ysgfamogod (I have no idea how this is pronounced) at 633m.

After these there was some much easier walking through to Maentwrog, passing by the power station, which despite having a plaque on it saying it’s nuclear electric, was actually hydro-electric (although the same reservoir created by the dam was used to supply coolant to the nearby Trawsfynydd nuclear power plant, which has been in a decommissioning process since 1991, although the Welsh government has been working to redeveloping the site with small nuclear reactors since 2021.

And then I got to Maentwrog. More specifically the Grapes Hotel in Maentwrog, where I cheated.

I cheated hard.

In the form of a burger, chips and halloumi fries.

And a Pepsi.

And a lime and lemonade.

And a latte.

And getting them to fill up my thermos with proper coffee.

It was So. Freaking. Good!

After which life just felt better, and the frustration and cold of the day before melted away. Helped by the fact that the walk out of Maentwrog was stunning, in a really gentle way. There were woods, and bluebells, and waterfalls:

And the narrow gauge Ffestiniog railway, which was built in 1832 to transport slate to Porthmadog, and was initially powered by gravity (with the empty carts then pulled back by ponies). In 1863 they introduced locomotives to the line, but in 1872 a proper main line railway took most of their business and now it’s mostly just a (very cute) tourist attraction.

Then it was time to start climbing again. A speedy 350m of ascent up to Llyn Stwylan with some fun little scrambly bits

I’d intended to camp up by the side of the reservoir, but when I emerged below it I saw this spectacular view of the abandoned quarry and dam and had the idea of camping in one of the dam’s arches.

And it worked really well as a spot. Super sheltered and hidden away, with a spectacular view that got even more stunning as the sun set…

Day 4: Sunday

I woke the next morning happy, and actually warm, and set off to climb to the peak of Moelwyn Mahr, stopping to admire the reflections in the reservoir on the way up.

The views from the top were pretty awesome too. There are a lot of high lying tarns in this bit of the world, and they’re really quite pretty.

But my favourite part of this bit of the walk was passing through the old Rhosydd slate quarry and seeing the scale of the mining enterprise from the 1800w out in the middle of nowhere on the side of a mountain.

The mine went through several phases, and doesn’t ever seem to have been particularly financially successful. But at one point there were 207 men living and working here, mining in 170 underground chambers, producing about 220,000 tons of finished slate and leaving 2.5 million tons of rock in waste tips behind.

The old worker cottages are still standing in pretty good nick given the time that’s passed:

And I think this must have been one of the old mine entrances:

And there are tips everywhere!

But the sheer scale of the enterprise only becomes clear when you get some more distance from it:

It must have been a proper hard job living out here and manual labouring all of this out of the ground.

Meantime, in the soft, modern, millennial world, I had a lot of fun playing slate xylophones with my feet! (Sound required)

As I started traversing round the valley to head to Cnicht, my next peak, something weird starting happening. Other people started appearing! At first this was lovely. I find that when you bump into other figures sporadically on a relatively isolated walk, particularly other solo adventurers, there’s a real sense of meeting a kindred spirit. A brief connection and a shared experience that feels really genuine, with the understanding that after a brief chat you leave each other to your respective solitudes.

It was a sunny Easter Sunday though, and I was entering the much more popular section of Snowdonia, and the volume of people kept increasing. It turned into an interesting study of at what point does the density of people start making it a total ball-ache to be pleasant and nice to everyone (a.k.a. the London effect).

It turns out it’s about this many people. Particularly when they come in groups and it starts feeling a bit silly to say hello to each one of them.

My solution: only engage with the people who have dogs. Dogs are the best.

Cnicht is a stunning, multiple craggy domed peak, with 360 degree views as far as the eye can see (at least on this day), and something like 14 high altitude tarns on show.

I took a quick breather at the top and enjoyed myself watching people stumble, knackered and happy, onto the summit from the ridge as/decent I was just about to head down. All the grumpiness and despondency from the day before were now truly dissipated. My mountain legs had developed. My pack was lighter. I decided it was time to put my foot on the gas and see what I could catch up, and maybe put myself back in with a shot of making it to Conwy before my train home.

I practically skipped down the ridge from Cnicht (stopping only to stroke dogs)

After this was about 10km of pretty much flat ground through Nantmoor, Beddgelert and Lyn Dinas before the next mountain, which just happened to be Snowdon. I reckoned if I got a scoot on I was in with a chance of getting up and over Snowdon before nightfall, but it was going to be super tight.

In the valley on the lead up to Beddgelert is a river path, with the water running rapids through baked, reddish rock (on a sunny day). This felt more like Arizona or Colorado than Wales!

It was around here that I started getting signs that Snowdon is an interesting mountain from the point of view of the safety of the general public. At Nantmoor, as I passed through a car park, there were two mountain rescue teams looking pretty flustered and clearly trying to plan out between them how they were going to split and order a backlog of work between them.

Then, on path out of Beddgelert a slightly lost looking woman in jeans, trainers, t-shirt and jacket spied me with my rucksack and flagged me down. Told me she’d been wandering around most of the afternoon looking for Snowdon (she was still about 6km away), and could I tell her the best way to find it and get up it easily. I pointed it out on a map, pointed her to the peak in the distance, told her I didn’t know an ‘easy’ way up per se, and that it was definitely too late in the day for her to attempt to do it now (feeling like a bit of a hypocrite!)

But yeah, bonkers.

I got to the bottom of the Watkin Path to start the Snowdon Ascent around 4.30pm. We were still in the game, but it was tight. Thankfully this first section of the climb is pretty gentle and well pathed.

It also had these funky Welsh mountain goats.

Pretty waterfalls

And I love it when Wales occasionally looks a bit Jurassic.

And it was busy! In a London park on a sunny day kind of way. Although, at this stage, mostly with people coming back down the mountain.

At around 400m height I broke from the Watkin Path to head to the start of the South Ascent, and then stopped by Bwlch-Cwm Llan to have a quick breather before the final 500m of ascent

At this point things got a bit steeper, scramblier and generally a lot of fun! The views weren’t bad either…

The summit in sight. (I really hate that train station!)

Quick rest at the top:

And as the sun started going down it just got full on majestic.

But there was something odd going on too. I thought I was cutting it fine on time before it got dark, and to be honest had been gunning pretty hard to compensate. I had the reassurance of carrying the gear to spend the night on the mountain if need be (although I really didn’t want to be camping exposed at high altitude). However I kept coming across people who seemed pretty unbothered that there was only an hour or so of daylight left: a couple of blokes I passed struggling up the mountain with what looked like some pretty basic looking camping gear, and who were needing to take rest stops every 50m or so… And then a whole bunch of folks on the summit in t-shirts, with no rucksacks/kit, idling about and chatting. I thought there was no way they were going to get off in time, but maybe they knew something I didn’t? So I kept my mouth shut. And then as I basically jogged down the Pyg track to get down as fast and as far as I could I found myself passing more groups who were similarly gear-less and really slow over the scramblier sections.

Usually I assume that people on mountains know what they’re doing, but I was getting a really uneasy feeling that there were going to be some people in trouble tonight. And there were so many of them!

As an aside, I don’t think it helps that this was the most ‘Disneyfied’ mountain I’d ever been on: it’s got a train going up it, concrete stairs at the top, and some of the paths have basically been as close to paved as you can get on that kind of incline. I suspect that all of this gives people a false sense of security that they are somewhere controlled and safe (as well as also being annoyingly ugly on an otherwise stunning mountain). If it was up to me I’d rip it all out. But then I guess it would cut off access to people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get up there, which would also be a massive shame…

And then it got dark. I pressed on for a while with a headtorch before heading off the path and camping up with just under a kilometre to go before Pen y Pass. I was relieved and ready for food and bed, but had a nagging concern for the (many) people that I knew were still on the mountain behind me.

And then my fears were realised. A Mountain Rescue helicopter passed over and headed upwards to the summit. The first time I’ve ever seen one in action. I had a really uncomfortable feeling that I really should have done more to check with/warn the people I’d seen of their situation.

It wasn’t over yet though. Around midnight, just after I’d bedded down, I had the surreal experience of hearing voices quite far off, and as I listened close I realised that they were discussing me! ‘Is that a tent?’ and torchlight swept across and lit up my tent. My first thought was that I’d screwed up and set up camp in view of a landowner. I’m usually pretty careful to camp late, get out the way, and be gone before anyone would realistically be able to reach and see me in the daylight. But maybe I’d made a mistake in the dark?

I unzipped and stuck my head out of the tent, ready to make my apologies, and promise to be gone with no trace in the morning. But when I looked I saw there were multiple lights, some of the most powerful torches I’ve ever seen, descending in a pattern down the mountainside, still quite a long way up the valley. The wind direction and shape of the valley were bringing their voices down to me really clearly and I realised it was a Mountain Rescue team sweeping the area, wondering whether I was in need of help. As they were discussing my positioning and evaluating whether I was in trouble; ‘It’s camped out of the way, I think it’s fine’ I racked my brain for a way to make an ‘I’m fine’ signal in the dark that couldn’t be misinterpreted as ‘I need help’. I couldn’t think of one. Thankfully they decided that I should be left alone, and hopefully went on to help anyone else who needed it.

I vowed that in future, I’ll never suspect that someone could be in unwitting trouble on a mountain without at least checking in with them that they are aware of their situation and have a plan. I really hope everyone was ok…

Day 5: Monday

In my original plan, this was going to be my last day of walking, rewarded with a night in a bed, a hot shower, and an all you can eat breakfast at the YHA Conwy. With over 40km and 2,700m of ascent left to go, that was looking like a pipe dream right now. But I’d made up enough ground to at least realistically finish the route in time for my train home on Tuesday morning if I got a wriggle on. I woke early to beautiful, eerie clouds moving through the landscape.

I had a quick stop to top up on supplies (well, chocolate) at the YHA in Pen y Pass, and then hit the ascent up to the Glyders; Fawr and Fach.

This was the only section of the walk that I was familiar with, having walked Tryfan and the Glyders the month before (on a beautiful sunny day), so I already knew the plateau between the two Glyders was a pretty magical place, covered in alien looking jagged rock formations caused by freeze-thaw shattering.

But in the mist it had a whole new mystical (Macbeth witchy, but in a fun way) vibe up there, probably helped by the fact that I seemed to have the place to myself this time! I took about a hundred photos of strange rocky outcrops looming through the mist. Here’s just a few:

(Can you tell I love this place!?)

And then, as I exited the Glyders, turned the corner, and started the descent to Ogwen, the sun came out and I got to see Tryfan in all it’s rocky, pointed glory (no time to climb it this time sadly).

I had a little break at Ogwen car park to get my feet ready for the next stage, stuffed my face with a pasty and sausage roll from the café, and tried to set off at speed to do as much of the final stage as I could get under my belt before nightfall.

Rocking the Billy Bunter look

I’d clearly forgotten that Snowdonia has it in for anyone trying to move at speed. The flat first section along the valley, that I thought I’d zip through, ended up looking like this:

Cue lots more slowly picking a route through boulder fields!

And then it was climbing time. 700m of ascent, which again started relatively normally, but became a bit more aggressive than I was anticipating towards the end.

Genuinely surprised this wasn’t flagged in my guidebook. This was a proper scramble climb!

But then I was up, and the next section of the walk was a clear ridge walk, bagging a clutch of the ‘Welsh 3000’ peaks on the way: Pen yr Ole Wen (978m), Carnedd Dafydd (1,044m) and peaking at Carnedd Llewelyn (at 1,064 only 21m shy of Snowdon) before descending through Foel-fras (942m), Drum (770m), and Tal y Fan (610m).

Again, I was super lucky with the weather and the views:

Finally, around 7.30pm, I got my first sight of the destination:

I think wind turbines are magnificently beautiful. This was a joyous view!

I pushed on for a while longer as the sun started to set:

And then for a bit longer with a headtorch…

…And then, at about 10pm I basically collapsed off the path and set up camp with about 10km left to roll into Conwy.

Day 6: Tuesday

I’d missed my YHA stay to finish the walk, but was fixated on getting into Conwy with enough time for a fry-up before my late morning train. That galvanised me for an early start! Given that I was pretty shattered by this stage, the fact that most of the remaining walk was much more pastoral and gentle to what I’d been used to was a very welcome relief.

The final stretch humped over Conwy Mountain, and as I rounded the top Conwy Castle came into view

And then, before I knew it, I was there!

With time to fulfil the dream before jumping on (several) trains home

Very few things have ever tasted so good

It took a day or so to adjust being back from this trip to be honest. The smells of the city, and just the number of people kicking around felt pretty aggressive until I’d had a good sleep in a bed. To be fair, I was also pretty knackered/ragged by the time I was done, so that probably didn’t help things…

BUT, my key takeaways from the trip were:

-I have absolutely fallen head over heels in love with this part of the world. I can’t believe I’ve gone all this time without exploring it properly. I will be back for sure!

-High on my hit list are Cadair Idris – it looked stunning from a distance. And also heading back to the Rhinogs for a re-do on a sunny day with views, and when I’m not grumpy with myself for sleeping in!

-I’d also like to hit Snowdon again and try a couple of different routes on a non-bank holiday, when there are fewer people around (my favourite days in the mountains are the ones where I don’t meet anyone else).

-I got a full-on route planning reality check. I was way too optimistic about covering rough ground with a heavy pack, with the greatest discrepancy being that I thought all flat ground would be speedy to cross.

-I also hugely underestimated the calorie intake required. My Apple Watch tells me I burned over 6,000 calories on some days. I know it’s unreliable, but the ravenous way I ate anything extra I could get my hands on en-route tells me that I was definitely under-egging it with what I’d brought.

-And I’ll never back down from addressing a suspicion that someone else might not be totally safe and on top of things on a mountain again, even if it’s just to be kindly inquisitive about their plans.

Mosley March 31, 2025

Adventures

Ivinghoe Beacon: 30 March 2025

A quick post for a little day walk.

I’ve had a post it stuck in this page of my Rough Guides Walks in and Around London book for a while.

I had a spare Sunday and the sun came out, so I jumped on the train to Tring and took advantage.

The weather was glorious, the sky and the views were crystal clear, and the butterflies were out threading drunken, neon parabolas in the breeze. Spring had sprung and it was great to be out.

Back on the Ridgeway

Ancient beech woodland in Aldbury Nowers

A small section of Grim’s Ditch Earthworks. Probably used to demarcate territory. Fun fact: in Old English the names Grim (and subsequently Graeme and Graham) were associated with the devil. Hence Grimsby translates as ‘place of the devil’, which seems about right. Also, there’s a strong link between earthwork naming and the devil. Hence various Devil’s Dykes around Britain.

Ivinghoe Beacon is the last hill on the right.

Views for miles…

The Whipsnade White Lion. Definitely not an ancient chalk carving. Instead it’s a 1933 invention to advertise Whipsnade Wildlife Park.

In The Coombe

The only downside of being out somewhere relatively accessible on a day like this was that everyone else clearly had the same idea. When I got near the National Trust tea room and Bridgewater Memorial it seemed like every family and person with access to a telescopic walking pole had come out for the day.

Bridgewater (the canal guy) Memorial. (Yes it does look like someone just made a really ugly tower out of breeze blocks).

Strong urge to plan something a bit wilder asap… 🙂

Mosley March 21, 2025

Adventures

O’s 40th in Eryi/Snowdonia: 14-17 March 2025

It was my good friend O’s 40^th birthday over this weekend, so a group of us assembled at Hendre Isaf Bunkhouse in Eryi (a.k.a. Snowdonia) for a weekend of adventures and celebrating.

Side note, I didn’t know the Welsh called Snowdonia anything other than Snowdonia before this trip, but the Welsh name of Eryi translates to ‘abode of eagles’ (like the eagles nest ‘eyrie’), which is a bit more poetic than the literal ‘Snowdonia (from the Old English elements ‘snāw’ – snow and ‘dūn’ -hill). The actual mountain Snowdon is called Yr Wyddfa in Welsh, and legend goes that the giant Rhita, who had a penchant for killing kings and using their bears to make a cloak for himself, was killed and then buried by King Arthur here. I.e. it’s actually a giant burial cairn. (Huge appreciation to the Welsh contingent who bubbled over with Welsh language, tradition and knowledge throughout the trip.)

We left the dead giant alone though, and spent our first (glorious) day climbing Tryfan and the two Glyders of Fach and Fawr instead. Here’s (roughly) our route:

It was an absolute beaut of a day to be out on the hills, feeling like the first day of Spring aggressively asserting itself.

As Miley Cyrus (and later Joe Mcelderry) so profoundly stated: ‘It’s the climb!’

Here’s the birthday boy himself. Sultry.

Can you tell we lived in Japan together?

The views from the top of the Heather Terrace were stunning!

And then there was a quick, fun scramble to the peak of Tryfan.

At the top of the mountain are two stones, nicknamed ‘Adam and Eve’ (or, given as we’re doing Welsh now, Siôn a Siân). Apparently if you jump from one to the other you attain the ‘Freedom of Tryfan’, but with a pretty hairy drop in case of failure, and frankly a lack of clarity about the benefits accorded under said ‘Freedom’, we gave it a miss.

JUMP!

So far, so stunning, but my favourite part of the walk was yet to come. Once we got up on to the plateau between the two Glyders, the landscape became otherworldly. Shattered rock extruded and assembled out of the reflective snow in bizarre formations. (Think if Game of Thrones had a love-child with a paleo-alien civilisation.)

Here’s the view after climbing up one.

From there, it was a pretty steep decent, stopping half way at Llyn y Cŵn for a moment of Zen…

…before the landscape switched from a Game of Thrones to a more Lord of the Rings vibe.

And then back to the car and done, a very happy bunch of walkers.

The next day started with a proper birthday breakfast and celebrations, before we headed out to visit Coed Felenrhyd & Llennyrch (‘Coed’ meaning ‘wood’ or ‘trees’.) This is a rare, Atlantic oak woodland and full of rare lichens, mosses and liverworts (I didn’t know the latter was a thing before this trip). Apparently, whilst they are both non-vascular plants (bryophytes), liverworts have either flat, lobe-like structures (called a thallus), or leafy structures, whereas mosses have distinct stems and leaves arranged around a central axis.

Lichen, moss, or liverwort?

The woods were simultaneously beautiful, damp and epic, in a Jurassic kind of way.

And here are a few of my favourite trees:

And at the waterfall B and C taught us (well, taught the children really, but we all got involved) how to make miniature boats out of reeds, which we then set sail down the river.

The final evening was spent with P teaching us how to sing Bulgarian folk songs. I mainly sat out and listened, because it was stunning and I didn’t want to ruin it! Video below:

And then we were heading home, all too soon. High hopes for a re-run at some point though!

It feels only appropriate to finish with a Sonnet, written by PJ, in honour of the occasion:

Upon the hills where ancient Georgia sings,

We climbed through mists to Tryfan mighty crown,

And Glyders watched us, bold with winded wings,

As laughter echoed, never tumbling down.

The lakes lay silvered in the spring light,

Reflecting joy upon each smiling face,

While hearts were full, and spirits lifted bright—

Each step a gift, each breath a kind embrace.

With hummus, feasts, and bananas by the pile,

We dined like kings beneath the mountain skies.

Old friendships warmed, new ones began to smile,

And love shone clear in children’s gleaming eyes.

So cheers to Ollie, and to Becky too—

And Wales, we thank your hills for all they do.

Ar fryniau hen lle cana tawelwch clir,

Dringasom ni i ben Tryfan yn y gwynt,

A’r Glyderau’n gwylio’n dawel, llawn o dir,

Wrth i’n chwerthin gerdded gyda’r awyr hynt.

Y llynnoedd ddisglair dan y bore’r wawr,

Yn adlewyrchu llawenydd ar bob grudd,

A’n calonau’n llawn, ein hysbryd heb ei fraw,

Pob cam yn rhodd, pob anadl llawn o hud.

Gyda hummus, ffrwythau, bananas mewn torf,

Bwyd fel brenhinoedd dan y nef Eryri,

Cyfeillion hen yn cwrdd mewn llawen gorf,

A rhai newydd, arbennig, gyda chariad pur i’w rannu.

Felly diolch Ollie, a Becky’n wir hefyd—

A diolch i Gymru am ei mynyddoedd cain a hedd.

Mosley January 31, 2025

Adventures

Lake District Trip – Helvellyn and Aira Force: 27-28 January 2025

It was my birthday for me this week, so N and I headed up to the Lake District for adventures and celebrations.

N’s sister had very kindly booked us a stay at The Quiet Site in Ullswater. Initially in a Camping Pod, but the absolutely lovely legends at the site very kindly upgraded us to one of their Gingerbread Houses for free as they were quiet (apparently not many people want to camp in the Lake District in January!)

After driving up and getting settled, I stared at the mountains and tried to convince myself that the weather would be fine for walking the next day…

I’d had my eye on Helvellyn as a birthday walk, and had been checking the amazing Weatherline reports daily from the Helvellyn Fell Top Assessors. Up until a few days out things were looking good, but conditions had been getting worse as the day drew near…

We decided to have a pop at it anyway, adjusting our route to get up the mountain by the shortest and least treacherous route from Swirls as it seemed like the morning would be our best chance of a decent weather window.

At about 450m we hit the snow line, but very manageable.

At about 600m the snow was thicker, but paths still visible and visibility was decent.

But as we got higher, everything started getting nastier…

And nastier…

Until we called it at Browncove Crags, at about 800m, with hail and snow battering our faces in the wind, and the weather looking like it was just about to go full white-out. We turned back having hit our limits, happy with what we’d got to experience. There’s something so beautiful and wild about winter mountain conditions, but with the real edge of knowing that if something went wrong, things would go south very quickly…

As we headed back down the weather worsened.

And we were very glad to get back in the car, warm up, and head to the nearest National Trust tea room!

The Fell Top Assessor’s report filed later that day confirmed that we made the right call!

I’m putting learning full Winter Mountaineering skills on my bucket list. Would love to be able to tackle this in future….

That evening we swapped a cold mountain for the comfy Rampsbeck restaurant and had a beautiful meal, bookended with a country road walk on either side. Always nice to experience some proper darkness getting out of the city.

After a warm sleep, we decided on a slightly tamer walk before the drive back to London, taking in Aira Force waterfall, Glenbarrow Fell, and some cracking views over Ullswater.

Aira Force is the waterfall that inspired William Wordsworth’s The Somnambulist (I’d never heard of it either!) and was in full force given the weather conditions.

After wandering up the higher falls, which were super pretty, we headed up Glenbarrow fell and got pretty nice 360 degree views from the top.

It was the second half of the walk, coming back around alongside and above Ullswater, that was probably most special though. Stunning views in the fading light, with the fell totally to ourselves, and some cute little spots to stop and enjoy.

The perfect way to end the trip before the drive home!

Mosley November 29, 2024

Adventures

South Downs Walk – Hassocks to Cocking: 24-25 November 2024

I picked this walk for a couple of reasons:

1) It slotted neatly against the last South Downs walk I did, and means that I can probably complete the rest of the South Downs Way in another weekend, with a little gap missed between Lewes and Hassocks (my last walk in dark blue below, this one in red)

2) It meant that I could do my overnight camp at Chanctonbury Ring. Which is apparently haunted. Which I’d usually believe was bollocks, except Robert Macfarlane seems like an eminently sensible man. Enough so, that it was enough to make me a bit nervous about wild camping there on one of the longest nights of the year. And being nervous is fun (sometimes).

Due to the short days, I had to catch the 5.48am train from Victoria to get enough daylight to do the mileage. Which was a bit grim, especially since I’d been at a friend’s 40^th birthday party the day before. Oh, and also Storm Bert was a thing.

But whilst the rest of the UK seemed to be battered by floods and snow, the South Downs decided to deliver a beautiful, clear day for me. I considered myself a very lucky bunny and set off with a big smile and a spring in my step…

…Until I started gaining some height. And then wind hit, made my rucksack feel like a parachute, and changed the angle of gravity from vertical to diagonal in my world.

You can see the way it catches the skin on my face in this video:

At least the windmills were happy!

I hadn’t planned any detours/sites of interest for this walk. The plan was to put my foot on the gas to cover the distance before the sun went down at 4pm. But then at Saddlescombe I saw this sign, and couldn’t help myself… Who doesn’t want to know what a donkey wheel is?

Turns out it’s one of these!

A big wheel built over a deep well, that you get your donkey (or children apparently) to walk in to lower a barrel down and then change direction to pull up the water. 55 litres at a time (so pretty damn heavy). This wheel/well would have provided the whole village with all their fresh water daily.

I liked Saddlescombe. They had good advice and cool vehicles as well as the donkey wheel.

Just a little further on, I passed the deep Devil’s Dyke valley. Local folklore says it was dug by the devil as part of a wager between the hermit Cuthman of Steyning after the Kingdom of Sussex converted to Christianity. My guidebook says it’s a glacial valley. But Wikipedia says it was caused by water run-off from the thawing of the last ice-age. Take your pick.

I stopped for lunch sheltering from the wind behind a boat next to a radio mast. Not sure why it was there, but I was very grateful for it. And I was treated to some more stunning views when I set back off again. This section of the South Downs way is all about rolling vistas and big skies, and I’m so here for it. The wind seemed to have put off other walkers too, so I had the trail to myself for most of the way.

Towards the latter part of the day I was hit by a pungent smell coming from upwind. At first I thought a farmer had been spreading slurry, but soon I was corrected. It was the biggest pig farm I’ve ever seen. The combination of the smell, the corrugated iron of rows and rows of pig tunnels repeated for over a kilometre, the mud, and the birds circling ominously overhead, waiting for what the pigs churned up gave the impression of walking through a porcine Mad Max world. An experience I’ve not had before!

I made it to Chanctonbury Ring with time to spare. It looked innocuous enough, and I set up camp round the back, sheltered from the wind and with a great view over the Weald.

As the sun went down, there was definitely a change in vibe. The trees were packed so close together that they rubbed and clanked in the wind. I was excited to see what the night would have in store and tried to keep my ears open for eery screeching.

But after a day of battling the wind I was very soon asleep, and was out like a log until sunrise. Was it haunted? I don’t think I can give a reliable answer. It’s highly possible that the spirits really tried to do a number on me and I slept right through it. I’m a more than 1 alarm at full volume in the morning person, so probably pretty annoying to try to spook once I’ve nodded off.

I woke to a morning that looked like this. The calm after the storm.

With only the occasional reminder of what had happened the previous day

The whole second day was just absolutely stunning. A proper joy to be out in it. And it felt extra special for it being like this at the end of November.

It got even better as the sun went down…

I had to cover 35km so I ended up walking the last section in the dark with a headtorch. This turned out to be magical – it lit up the eyes of all the crepuscular critters that I might have missed otherwise. Including this little fella (and some of his mates), who verified the ‘deer in the headlines’ cliché by staring at me as I slowly crept closer to her/him to get a picture.

I also got to hear and see a Barn Owl, but that was too fast for my camera skills…

And shortly after I arrived in Cocking where a bus took me to Chichester for a cheeky KFC before a train home.

That’s probably me done for multi-day hikes until the days get a bit longer again. But looking forward to covering the last section of the South Downs Way when they do…

Mosley November 1, 2024

Adventures

South Downs Walk – Lewes to Eastbourne: 26-27 October 2024

This weekend’s adventure started in Lewes. I’ve done chunks of the South Downs before, so the plan was to do a day of new stuff, and finish with a day walking the Seven Sisters.

Setting off!

A short walk from Lewes station are the remains of Cluniac St Pancras Priory. Built in 1081, this was the first Cluniac priory in the UK!

Don’t know what a Cluniac priory is? Me neither. This is what I found out:

In 910, William I, Duke of Aquitaine, and the Count of Auvergne got together and founded the Benedictine Abbey of Cluny as the Cluniac ‘motherhouse’. Importantly, they made a ruling that the monastery would be free from any local authority, lay or ecclesiastical interference, and answered only to the Pope. Although they tempered this Papal influence by stating that he wasn’t able to seize, divide or give the property to anyone else, and he also couldn’t appoint an abbot without the consent of the monks. How to make sure this never happened, with a curse of course. I looked it up and it sounds pretty bad:

“First of all he incurs the wrath of Almighty God, and God takes away his portion of the living from the earth and blots out his name from the book of life, and let him become a portion with those who said to the Lord God, depart from us, and with Dathan and Abiron, whom the earth swallowed up with its open mouth and swallowed up the living in the hells. Being restrained by sharp lashes, he escaped scarcely half alive: the other, however, struck by a nod from above, perished most miserably with rotting limbs and spreading worms”

With that taken care of, it was time to become the wealthiest and most opulent monastic houses in the Western world. They hired labourers to do all the hard work that was taken care of by monks in other houses, commissioned candelabras of solid silver, designed golden chalices with precious gems for their masses, and renounced the usual monkly diet of broth and porridge for roasted chicken, cheese and wine.

Not a huge surprise that the order spread like wildfire then!

This first instance of a Cluniac monastery in England came about when Pope Gregory the Great sent Augustine to England with relics of St. Pancras. St Pancras is patrion saint of children, jobs and health. But he also gets invoked for cramps, headaches, false witnesses and perjury, which feels a bit like Saintly mission creep to me, but I guess the supply is somewhat restricted!

It took Henry VIII to brave the curse, dissolve the monastery and dismantle it to what’s left here. This is a helpful diagram to show how sprawling the priory was back in the day.

The extent of the priory in its heyday

Perhaps unsurprisingly, a large part of what remains are the toilet blocks. (I’d swerve these if I was dismantling a monastery for pieces too). There were only 100 monks living on the site, but they had 56 toilets, which struck me as a bit excessive until I realised that the monks only got short breaks between church services. There must have been a stampede!

After all that excitement it was a bit of a dull yomp to Rodmell: mud, boring fields, roads and a sewage works. I’m putting this stretch on the ‘do not walk again’ list.

Beautiful

I was excited to visit Monk’s House in Rodmell. Virginia and Leonard Wolf bought this house in 1919 for £700 and it was an important place for them and the wider Bloomsbury group. Virginia wrote her biggies here, including Mrs Dalloway, The Lighthouse, Orlando and The Waves (my favourite). Alas, it was shut when I arrived.

As I later crossed the River Ouse, I was conscious that this was the river that Virginia Woolf drowned herself in in 1941. She felt another instance of mental illness begin to grip her (it’s referred to simply as depression in everything I’ve read, but her suicide letter talks about ‘going mad again’ and beginning ‘to hear voices’) and made a decision that suicide was the ‘best thing to do’. It’s not a big river. In fact it’s the kind of river which you’d really have to be determined to drown yourself in; Virginia filled her pockets with rocks in order to complete her task.

The River Ouse

There is an incredibly moving piece of music by Max Richter in his Woolf Works from The Waves section, titled: Tuesday, which opens with Gillian Anderson reading Virginia’s suicide note. The letter is short, but what shines through is her love and absolution of Leonard, and the impossibility (for her) of living without being able to concentrate, in a world where she loses her alacrity with words. I listened to this as I crossed the Ouse, and I’m not afraid to say that I had a little moment…

Also in Rodmell is St. Peter’s church. It’s Norman, from the 12^th century, quite pretty and has some nice stained glass windows. I’m sure this would excite people more into churches than me, but I took a couple of photos and left pretty sharpish.

However, a short hop down the South Downs way from Rodmell is the small village of Southease that did have a church that I enjoyed. This church is Anglo-Saxon (just) originally built in either the late 10^th or early 11^thcentury. It’s now (also) called St Peter’s Church, but was only dedicated to him after the medieval period. It’s small and cosy, was empty when I arrived, and had a really calming feel to it, like walking into a ship’s hull and being cut off from the world.

It’s also got some original 12^th century frescos that were whitewashed in the 1600s, but have been uncovered again since. In the peace of the church they seem to emerge from the walls like comforting ghostly shadows.

After Southease it was a welcome escape from civilisation to climb up onto the Downs at last for a 10km stretch to Alfriston. It was pretty misty up there, which ruined the views, but created an enjoyable atmosphere of seclusion.

This stretch of the Downs is pock-marked with tumuli, many of which are the burial sites of Bronze-age Beaker folk (from about 4,400 years ago). These guys pretty much replaced the Neolithic population in Britain, and are so called because they were often found buried with ‘beakers’ like these (presumably so they didn’t go thirsty in the afterlife).

A whole civilisation named after these…

The burial mounds are pretty hard to spot now, after thousands of years of erosion and grave-robbing, unless someone helpfully puts a sign up next to them.

This stretch ended with a descent into the pretty bougie village of Alfriston. There’s a famous bookshop here called Much Ado Books, and despite the fact that I still had quite a way to go before sunset, I can’t resist a good bookshop. These guys have absolutely nailed how to run a bookshop in the Amazon era, turning the place into a book explorer’s paradise, keeping a packed schedule of events, running a social enterprise, and creating a space that you just want to languish in.

Sylvia Plath was taller than Jack Kerouac. Who knew!

I loved the creative genre shelf labels…

Too much to explore, too little time…

Sunset was due at 5.45pm and I’d spent way too long loitering, so coming out of Alfriston I had to put my foot on the gas and bomb it down the Cuckmere river to get through Exceat in order to find somewhere tucked away I could camp before it got dark.

But I couldn’t not take these photos en route though!

Magnet fishing. For when you fancy a shopping trolley for dinner.

“What should we put in our window darling?” “How about a massive Scooby Doo?” “Done”

I made it, just as the sun was setting, and was rewarded with some beautiful views followed by a night of stars so clear I could see the silken mist of the Milky Way.

35km total on Day 1. And a decent (by tent standards) night’s sleep.

I woke up, breakfasted and packed up to a sunrise that promised an absolute beaut of a day ahead…

The Seven Sisters are a series of (seven!) chalk cliff peaks along the coastline from Cuckmere Haven to Beachy head. It’s a pretty special walk that I’ve done a few times before, but never in such unexpectedly good weather. I didn’t have too far to go today, so I took it slow and indulged the urge to take photos from pretty much every viewpoint.

As I approached the Birling Gap I saw a line of runners streaming up the hill. Turned out I’d hit the Beachy Head Marathon weekend and they were running the half-marathon on the Sunday. It looked utterly brutal – the hills here are steep! I looked it up and the half-marathon comes with 488m of elevation gain. However, the previous day they’d run the ultra, which is 31.5 miles and 1,382m of elevation gain. I can’t even imagine the pain…

Running Up That Hill

Also, look where they put the finish line! At the bottom of this ridiculously steep hill. It’s like they’re trolling the health and safety team…

Watching the runners exhausted me, so I stopped for an ice cream.

Three interesting things I saw in the course of the day:

A red slug. Which Google reverse image search informed me was a Spanish Slug. It has the dubious honour of being the only land gastropod in DAISIE European Invasive Alien Species Gateway’s 100 worst alien species in Europe list and is also known as the ‘killer slug’ as it eats weakened and dead individuals from it’s own species. I think it looks pretty cute though…

2) A lying down horse. Now this might just be a massive miss on my part, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a horse lying down like this before and was labouring under the belief that horses slept standing up. I got back on Google again, as I was a bit concerned the horse was sick, or worse. And it turns out that, whilst horses can and do sleep standing up, they can only achieve REM sleep lying down and need about 30-60 minutes of this a day. They tend to take turns with other horses to do this, for safety and survival, so I guess the other horse here is on watch.

3) I saw (and felt) loads of this stringy cotton stuff caught in the wind and flying around through the day. It feels like spider web when it hits you and seems like it must be some kind of natural seed transportation mechanism. Google reverse image search doesn’t really hit the nail on the head with this one, so if anyone reading this knows what it is please tell me!

Then it was a pretty ugly walk along the coast into Eastbourne, where I stopped at the pier to finish the rest of my lunch before jumping on the train back to London.

Just 16km covered on day 2. The Seven Sisters were stunning, but a little crowded with other walkers for my liking. I think I want to go somewhere a bit more remote for my next jaunt…

Mosley October 21, 2024

Adventures

Battersea Half Marathon for Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice

OK, this isn’t quite an adventure per se, but wanted to record it for posterity.

On Sunday I ran the Battersea Park half marathon for Noah’s Ark Children’s Hospice. I usually run half marathons for fun and feel cheeky asking for sponsorship, but Noah’s Ark had a matched fundraising campaign; ‘From That Moment‘ that coincided. So I broke my rule and fundraised for this one.

I’ve been volunteering with Noah’s Ark for the last 6 months, and have been blown away by the wraparound support that they give to unwell kids and their families from the moment of diagnosis. From clinical care, to providing specialist knowledge, equipment and therapy to help all kids play and have joy in their lives, to the emotional and practical support given to parents and siblings to help them feel supported and get access to life experiences that might otherwise be curtailed. They really do showcase the best of humanity.

Proud of this one!

Mosley October 15, 2024

Adventures

Ridgeway Walk: 12-13 October 2024

I’d wanted to walk the Ridgeway ever since reading about it in Robert Macfarlane’s Old Ways. It’s a massive miss from my walking repertoire: not only is it the oldest road in Britain, (a venerable 5,000 years), but it’s also packed with history including a good chunk related to the Anglo-Saxon period which I got pretty into at uni.

So, time to redress this and bite a chunk of it. I’d settled on the stretch from Foxhill to Goring with the weekend I’d set aside and set off from Paddington bright breezy on Saturday morning. This meant I arrived early in Swindon with just over an hour to kill before the first bus to Foxhill. I was so grateful for this time though, Swindon is stunning! (Ha)

How will the Ridgeway top this?

I got the hell out of Swindon on the 48 bus to Foxhill before jumping out at the Burj, my starting point. Alas it was shut, but from appearances I think the Burj is kind of like the United Nations, but in restaurant form.

The United Nations of Restaurants

Time to begin! Briefly stopping to admire my first Ridgeway ‘Plaswood’ sign: an environmentally friendly and maintenance free material. Actually quite smart given the number of battered wooden signs I’ve seen over the years.

I bucked off the trail early and went to see some strip lynchets and ancient medieval field systems. Apparently these formed when they ploughed on slopes for so long the gravity made the loose earth fall down and form ‘steps’. After seeing a range I can believe that for the little lynchets. But I saw some huge ones too that looked like intentionally earthworked steps. Must have been pretty backbreaking to form if so…

Big lynchets

Little lynchets

Oh, and I had to be naughty and find gaps in fences to see them all.

Crawling through fences

But I also saw some deer being super cute!

From there it was back to the Ridgeway before my next detour to Alfred’s Castle. Quick summary before you get too excited:

-Not actually a castle (and has never been),

-In reality it actually has nothing to do with King Alfred (the Victorians made up that King Alfred used the site to rally his troops against the Danes in the Battle of Ashdown so that they could sell trinkets to tourists)

-It’s really an Iron Age hill fort dating back to 6th century BCE that was later (1st century) the site of a Romano-British farmhouse.

-Now it’s just some earthworks with loads of nettles inside.

Here’s a wonderfully 1950s primer on the site. (I couldn’t find any traces of the building or any sarsen stones.)

The 5km round trip from the Ridgeway was beautiful though, and the sun was shining!

Standing in ‘Alfred’s’ Castle

Enjoying the October sunshine!

Then it was on to Waylands Smithy, which is a properly cool place. It dates from 3600 BC when a timber chambered oval barrow was built to bury 14 people. 150 years later it got an upgrade in the form of a stone hammered long barrow.

When the Saxons found it (4,000 or so years later) they decided that the magical/God Smith Weyland from Norse folk tales lived there. In the stories Weyland was captured by a cruel king who cut his hamstrings, stole the ring his wife gave him and took his magical sword, all the while forcing Weyland to make him cool smith stuff.

Weyland got a bit narked about this. He killed the king’s sons, turned their skulls into goblets and their eyes into jewels, which he presented to the king, before fashioning a magical flying cloak and escaping. Pretty wild.

The Saxons used to leave unshod animals or broken tools outside the barrow overnight, along with coins, so Weyland would fix them.

Despite all this, it’s actually a beautifully serene place! And it’s pretty powerful to be able to interact with something this steeped in history.

The entrance to Weyland’s Smithy/long barrow

Fun fact: Weyland gets a name check in Beowulf, when Beowulf is fighting the dragon in the third part of the story he says:

“Onsend Higeláce, gif mec hild nime,

beaduscrúda betst, Þæt míne bréost wereð,

hrægla sélest, Þæt is Hraédlan láf,

Wélandes geweorc. Gaéð á wyrd swá hío scel.”

Roughly translated as:

Send to Hygelac, if me battle takes,
battle-shirt best, that my breast protects,
garment finest, that is Hrethel’s legacy,
Wayland’s work. Fate goes ever as it must.

The dragon then kills him (and vice versa) and the story ends with the enemy hordes assembling on the hills to attack his tribe now that Beowulf is gone. Turns out fates a bit of a bitch sometimes.

Here’s a great article on Weyland if you want to know more.

Then it was on to Uffington, with more earthworks, another dragon slaying, and a massive horse.

Here’s Uffington Castle. As you can see it’s another exciting circle-mound. This one’s from the 8th or 7th century BCE and continued to be occupied throughout the Iron Age. It used to have ramparts, sarsen stone walls, and relics of occupation. It’s lost all these fun bits now though.

The earth banking at Uffington Castle

But dragons are fun, and Dragon Hill just behind it is where George slayed his dragon. And if you’re sceptical about whether that actually happened then you can tell it definitely did because on the top of the hill (which was artificially flattened at some point) there’s an empty white chalk patch where nothing grows because this is where the dragon blood spilt.

Dragon Hill: the flattened mound on the right (spot the white patch!)

One final sight here. A huge, 360 feet long and 130 feet wide, white chalk horse carved into the side of the hill. However, what I found even more surprising than it’s weirdness is how difficult it is to find despite its size. It’s been carved in a minimalist, abstract style best viewed from drone/helicopter (or if you’re a God, which I think was the intention vs anticipating drone cams). I spent ages trying to find it, imagining that it would be super prominent. Instead it looks like this- almost impossible to take a photograph of.

My best photo – the horse’s head (the mouth is my favourite bit)

And here’s what it looks like if you’re a God (or Google)

This was the first ever English white horse carving. No-one’s quite sure why this was made at some point between 1380 and 550 bc. Maybe something to do with the Celtic goddess Epona? Maybe it’s actually a dragon? Maybe a tribal symbol? (Similar figures appeared on coins too). It initially seemed odd to me that something this significant could be constructed without a record of why. But then I learned about the behaviour of locals between the 17th and 19th centuries. They held “scouring festivals” every seven years, which included not only clearing vegetation and renewing the faded top layer of chalk, but also climbing greasy poles, rolling wheels of cheese down a hill, pipe-smoking marathons, sledding down the hill on horse jawbones and other batshit crazy English activities. Sometimes I guess humans are just beautifully odd.

Oh, and to cap it all off, Channel 4 used it to advertise the 4th season of big brother. Which really pissed the locals off!

Remember this?

As a final bit of inspiring weirdness, check out David Bedford’s Song of the White Horse (1978), set for ensemble and children’s choir and commissioned for the BBC. The choir had to inhale helium balloons to sing the “stratospherically high notes” of the climax, accompanied by aerial footage of the horse animated to show it rearing up from the ground.

Back to the Ridgeway before the next deviation, to have a go on the Blowing Stone, a sarsen stone that Alfred ‘apparently’ (I’m growing sceptical of all these Alfred stories) used to summon his troops to fight the Danes). More excitingly for me, it’s featured in William Horwood’s Duncton Chronicles novels, which I bloody loved as a kid!

I didn’t really nail getting a sound out of it. But in my defence I think it’s been quite eroded, and it was full of water and snails.

Summon the armies!

Then on to the final stretch to my campsite, stopping briefly to check out Segsbury Castle, before quickly realising it was basically just another big circular mound with nothing to see inside it. I was a bit earthworked out by this point.

A beautiful moment with the low sun framed by the trail behind me spaghettifying my shadow, with the moon already out.

Then, finally, arriving at Court Hill Centre just in time to pitch my tent before dark, and make some Michelin starred food before settling in.

Home, sweet home

Yum!

37.8km on day 1, which was a bit more than I was expecting. Got a bit carried away with exploring, and quite a chunk of that was tramping around looking for a big white horse!

Jackson Pollocked boots

I need to buy some new walking socks

I had a terrible night’s sleep. It was freezing, I should have brought my warmer sleeping bag, and my inflatable sleeping bag sprung several leaks due to age. So I woke up full of joy and with my body and feet raring to go for day two…

Kidding, I got up seriously considering heading to the nearest station and getting home to a warm, soft bed! But after porridge, a change of socks, and some ridiculously strong coffee I was good to go.

Day 2 was far sparser on historic interest, so I told myself that this was all about ‘Type 2 fun’. A term I stole from my old rugby coach meaning not the kind of fun that’s fun at the time (Type 1) but the kind of fun that isn’t fun at the time but becomes rewarding/fun after it’s done. That bit of mental gymnastics got me moving.

There were a couple of interesting things to see, including the Wantage monument that Lady Wantage build to commemorate her husband, Baron Wantage, who seems to have invented the hipster beard.

The Wantage Memorial

Baron Wantage had style!

The quote from Psalm 121 ‘I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help’ was quite moving given her context of mourning her husband, and the placement of the monument.

Hard to read – should have made it out of Plaswood

I stopped for lunch at Scutchamer Knob, the site where King Edwin killed King Cwichelm in 593 (Edwin said he’d convert to Christianity, but only if he beat Cwichelm, which seems a fair enough deal). Don’t feel too sorry for Cwichelm, he’d tried to send an assassin to kill Edwin earlier, so wasn’t exactly squeaky clean. (All the Anglo-Saxon rulers were pretty brutal to be honest.) There’s a burial mound here (more earthworks) and for quite a while people thought Cwichelm was buried here, but excavations have turned up nothing.

Scutchamer Knob

Peanut butter sandwiches taste better here

From here on in it was a case of enjoying the rolling scenery and making peace with the pain in my feet through to the end. Other notable things that happened:

-I tried to make friends with a horse and got electrified by a fence in the process.

-I got asked by a woman if I was ok when I was having a rest stop (I clearly looked a bit broken)

-I saw loads of these rocks with black shiny sections covered by white silty rock. Google Lens hasn’t definitively answered what they are, so if anyone knows please tell me!

Any geologists reading this?

And then, as darkness fell, I made it to Goring station for the journey home. A comfy seat in a warm train carriage has never felt so good!

27km for day 2. Less than day, but it felt like more!