A year since I’d last ran up anything approaching a mountain, I finally got back into the hills a couple of days ago. Technically (I’ve checked), Moelfre isn’t quite high enough to qualify as a mountain, but it ticked all the other boxes, not least that I got back feeling like I’d had a mountain day. I think I can allow myself to go with that.
I hadn’t really expected to do a mountain run on our latest trip away. We’d booked a week in a cottage up on the hillside above Harlech with plans to explore the Rhinogydd, but that was as far ahead as I’d thought. Most of those plans fell apart before we left south Wales as the appalling wildfire ripped through the mountains around Cwm Bychan. We watched the coverage while still at home, hearts breaking to see the devastation. A few changed plans was nothing to lose, but the destruction of such a vast area is overwhelmingly awful. By the time we arrived the fire was mostly out, although the mountains and affected valleys look likely to be closed off for some time to come. I cannot begin to comprehend how long the recovery will take, the hillsides right now are black, and leave a correspondingly black feeling of grief and hopelessness deep inside me.
Steering well clear of the affected areas, we found ourselves planning new walks, climbs and runs. A short walk after we arrived had shown us how overgrown some of the paths were locally, and my first run of the trip was nearly a complete disaster. Within minutes of leaving the house I was stuck in a field that had multiple rights of way, all of which were buried under thick, high bracken. After 20 minutes of failed attempts to find a way through I retreated back to the road and tried again, this time on a bridleway. Success this time! I managed to get down below the level of the non-existent paths so thought I’d try again to cut across to my original route. This time, I found myself on an old track that looked like it was going to lead past a derelict house, the thick vegetation on the track suggesting no one had driven that way for years. The trees drew in close as it wound up the hillside, until a sudden clearing with long-established bushes of fuchsias and hydrangeas hiding the walls showed that I had reached where the house must have been. I thought I was going to find easy access here to the path I’d originally wanted to be on; what I found instead was a shiny blue jeep, suggesting the house that I could barely see was very much not abandoned.
I usually manage to keep my catastrophising in check when I’m out on a run, but it was a real struggle this time. I had visions of Welsh noir crime dramas and disturbed killers, and beat a very quiet but hasty retreat back to the bridleway. Heart still racing, I looked yet again at the map and decided to call it a day by running to the end of the path at Pentre Gwynfryn, where Chris could pick me up on his way back from scouting some climbs. That was quite enough adventure for one day.
When it came to planning my long run of the trip, I found myself unusually stumped. Trying to balance out my lack of distance running recently with the challenging path situation meant that my usual aim of exploring from the house was going to be difficult, so I settled on the closest thing and took Chris up on his offer to drop me off near the Nantcol waterfalls for a run up Moelfre and back to the house. Being the farthest west of the Rhinogydd, and standing slightly apart from the rest of the range, the mountain was well away from the scene of the fires so safe and open when I set off on Thursday morning.
My route began with a slow road climb up to the start of Cwm Nantcol. The rain had stopped before I started, and as the sun finally came back out I started to regret wearing leggings as tick-protection (although I would be very glad of them later). The miles ticked by nicely until, at just over two miles, my path led me off the road and up onto Moelfre itself. I was following a route that encircles the mountain, with a view to turning off once I hit the shoulder on the eastern side in order to head for the summit. The ascent was slow, in part because I kept stopping to take photos and look around me. But I was also busily relearning how to pace myself on this terrain. I’d started the steep section at a fast march, before realising that if I had to keep stopping for a breather than I was getting it wrong; I needed to slow down, find a steady rhythm, and suddenly the ascent was both easier and faster.
I could hear buzzards crying overhead from very early on, stonechats clacking away among the rocks and heather higher up, and, as I approached the summit, more meadow pipits than I had ever seen in one place. I saw hundreds of butterflies, the largest bee I have ever seen, and not a single human being. Sitting at the summit I had a moment of being able to just be, absorbing everything around me with no conscious thought, and feeling the weight of the last twelve months dissolve a little. Being alone in the mountains brings a different perspective on life, the scale of the landscape a reminder of how small we are, which I have always found strangely comforting.
But a day in the hills is never over until you are safely back down, and soon enough it was time to start my descent down the western flank of the mountain. I realised fairly early on that I had made the mistake of following a sheep trod instead of a footpath (I’ve convinced myself it’s easily done when the paths are so infrequently trodden), and found myself zigzagging across the hillside trying to head down to a wall where I could pick up the path. I had thought that this would be a fun, runnable section of the route. Sadly not. Steep enough to be a little unsure of what was below me, and covered with tussocks of grass and bilberries, this was a clamber and occasional trot down to the wall and a vaguely visible path. Stiles are a good indication that there is a right of way at least, and the ground between them had eased off to a gentle slope, but the tussocks of grass were joined by clumps of heather and gorse with hidden rocks or hollows between them. It was hard terrain to get across, with more than one semi-controlled fall, before I crossed a final wall and hit a gentle grassy slope that led to the viewpoint on the road.
My aim on planning the return leg had been to stay off the road for as long as possible, so this was simply a road crossing before heading across some fields and farmland. I felt a little sad that the mountain section of the run was behind me, but this route still had more to give, including that day’s heart-stopping moment. I’d crossed a stile into a farmyard where the right of way followed the track from the barn to the road, with a field to the side of it that wasn’t fenced off. I’m still a little nervous of cattle, but fairly used to them by now, so I was readying myself to walk calmly past the group of cows sitting on a grassy mound right next to the path when I realised that one of them was not a cow but a bull. A huge, white bull with an enormous neck, looking for all the world like a living version of the toy bull in the farm set we’d had as children. Luckily it had its back to me, so I took the longest possible route around the far side of the field, trying not to look at it until I had come out onto the road past the cattle grid.
I was almost grateful for a road section after that, easy running while my heart rate came back down. And then onto the final off road bit of the day, a lovely section across country to Pont Pen-y-Bont. I was flagging a bit by now, keeping myself going with haribos and water, and starting to run a little low on both. But with less than two miles on road to get me back to the house (albeit steadily uphill all the way), the tiredness was more than balanced out by joy, and a fantastic sense of achievement.
I’d like to think that I won’t have to wait another 12 months to get into the mountains again, although I know I won’t get there anytime soon. But that’s ok. I can live off this one for quite some time to come, both as a reminder of everything I love about mountain running, and also as reassurance that I still have it in me to complete a route like that. I still have no running plans at the moment, which I’m finding remarkably freeing. No explicit goals, no commitments, just making the most of the opportunities that come along. Moelfre was a particularly brilliant opportunity, one which I am very grateful I was able to fully embrace.
I Run Free 