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So Thursday and Friday last week were the "big long trek" (BLT). It's a bad time of year for me, and after the beneficial experience of stamping around Welsh countryside for two days, the BLT will become an annual occasion, I think.
Although there were ups and downs.
Firstly, getting to the Gwyr/Gower peninsula is a cinch from Bristol. Train = 90 mins, bus every half an hour from Swansea, arrived in Reynoldstone in good time to buy some spicey wotsits and stomp up my first hill.
Not even a very high hill, but troublesome enough with a full camping apck and a belting noonday sun. Stopped at the top of the hill for rehydration and necessary suncream, then began what should have been a simple descent to Llanrhidian.
Except the paths started to become more and more obscure as you descended the hill, and the handy gap in the treeline taking you off the hillside and back to civilisation was not obvious. Cue about two extra hours of plunging around in bog and gorse to find my way out.
I was careful to avoid the anklebreaking tufts that would precipitate me into a bog, but that didn't stop me plunging one leg knee deep into fetid bog water after about an hour. And the other leg about 30 seconds later.
After that, I wasn't that careful about standing in bogs. Which made life quite a lot easier - when you're thigh deep in smelly brown squelch, things can't really get much worse, and after a brief detour through a maze of 6-foot gorse bushes, and past the smelly dead sheep from hell, I was back on the tree line, ready to traverse the fields to relative comfort.
Or so I thought.
There was almost an embarrassment of wildlife on the hillside - little golden lizards, water voles, wild ponies, and some sort of bird of prey.
In the fields, there were just cows. I hate cows, and these were a particularly malevolent and statistic-making bunch. The first field I crossed, I actually got chased down by a herd of about 20 huge, frothing cows, pounding their way down the field after me. And I'm not ashamed to say, I was absolutely terrified. And with good reason, as they didn't leave me alone until I turned around, ran towards them, and flailed my ordnance survey map and platypus hose at them simultaneously, while yelling "fuck off".
10 more seconds and I would have died under the feet of a cow anyway, so it seemed worth a gamble. And was probably intensely amusing to anyone who saw it.
As you can imagine, my heart sank when I had to cross yet another, even longer field of cows, especially as they loomed towards the stile before I'd even put a foot on it. So I did a sneaky one, crawling through a gap in the hedge where they couldn't see me, then sprinting across the field, fully laden, as soon as they started moving my way. I got through the gate, and they smacked into it about 5 seconds afterwards.
Remember, kids - training for the Race for Life might just save your life! Or at least a few ribs.
After that, I took a well earned break before heading towards the estuary on the north side of the Gwyr peninsula for the second half of the day's trek.
To be continued...
Although there were ups and downs.
Firstly, getting to the Gwyr/Gower peninsula is a cinch from Bristol. Train = 90 mins, bus every half an hour from Swansea, arrived in Reynoldstone in good time to buy some spicey wotsits and stomp up my first hill.
Not even a very high hill, but troublesome enough with a full camping apck and a belting noonday sun. Stopped at the top of the hill for rehydration and necessary suncream, then began what should have been a simple descent to Llanrhidian.
Except the paths started to become more and more obscure as you descended the hill, and the handy gap in the treeline taking you off the hillside and back to civilisation was not obvious. Cue about two extra hours of plunging around in bog and gorse to find my way out.
I was careful to avoid the anklebreaking tufts that would precipitate me into a bog, but that didn't stop me plunging one leg knee deep into fetid bog water after about an hour. And the other leg about 30 seconds later.
After that, I wasn't that careful about standing in bogs. Which made life quite a lot easier - when you're thigh deep in smelly brown squelch, things can't really get much worse, and after a brief detour through a maze of 6-foot gorse bushes, and past the smelly dead sheep from hell, I was back on the tree line, ready to traverse the fields to relative comfort.
Or so I thought.
There was almost an embarrassment of wildlife on the hillside - little golden lizards, water voles, wild ponies, and some sort of bird of prey.
In the fields, there were just cows. I hate cows, and these were a particularly malevolent and statistic-making bunch. The first field I crossed, I actually got chased down by a herd of about 20 huge, frothing cows, pounding their way down the field after me. And I'm not ashamed to say, I was absolutely terrified. And with good reason, as they didn't leave me alone until I turned around, ran towards them, and flailed my ordnance survey map and platypus hose at them simultaneously, while yelling "fuck off".
10 more seconds and I would have died under the feet of a cow anyway, so it seemed worth a gamble. And was probably intensely amusing to anyone who saw it.
As you can imagine, my heart sank when I had to cross yet another, even longer field of cows, especially as they loomed towards the stile before I'd even put a foot on it. So I did a sneaky one, crawling through a gap in the hedge where they couldn't see me, then sprinting across the field, fully laden, as soon as they started moving my way. I got through the gate, and they smacked into it about 5 seconds afterwards.
Remember, kids - training for the Race for Life might just save your life! Or at least a few ribs.
After that, I took a well earned break before heading towards the estuary on the north side of the Gwyr peninsula for the second half of the day's trek.
To be continued...
