Collected Musings of a Hill Wanderer

Being an avid hillwalking type, I have had a penchant for adding to my bookshelf over the years: they help when it comes to planning outings. Here are a few of the ones that I have pertaining to Scotland:

SMC Hillwalkers’ Guide: The Munros

SMC Hillwalkers’ Guide: The Corbetts and Other Scottish Hills

These are volumes that I consult when I encounter a "what hill is that in the photo" moment. The reason for that is that they comprehensive and very well illustrated with photos of the featured mountains. I recently had a read in the Lochaber when reorganising that section of the photo gallery and loads of ideas cam into mind for a weekend in Kinlochleven. They’re not cheap but well worth having. Neither are they light so they tend to stay at home to be used for planning.

Pocket Mountains

For £5.99 each, you are getting a lot here and it is far too easy to acquire a whole set. Illustrated with maps and photos, the short punchy route descriptions do what is required of them. My collection includes The Central Highlands, The Cairngorms, The Islands, The Southern Highlands and The Southern Uplands.

Walking on the Isle of Arran

The Isle of Skye: A Walker’s Guide

Walks from the West Highland Railway

These are Cicerone Guides, a publisher for which there is a lot of respect. Comprehensive route descriptions and mapping are very much part of the package.

Isle of Skye

Ben Nevis & Glen Coe

Both of these Collins Rambler’s Guides are written by TGO’s Chris Townsend. That hallmark of quality is supplmented by Harvey mapping.

Walking in Scotland

Scottish Highlands: The Hillwalking Guide

Both of these are useful for getting a taste of what Scotland has to offer walkers. The first is a Lonely Planet offering while ever present Trailblazer publishes the second.

Scottish Hill Tracks

Due to a quirk in Scottish law, public rights of way usually are not marked on Ordinance Survey maps. That means that this offering from the Scottish Rights of Way Society is invaluable. Many of the tracks were old livestock droving routes and you need to have good navigation skills because the line of a track may not always be obvious on the ground.

For now, these do all that I ask of them but I cannot rule out the possibility of needing more if I want to move on to explore other parts of Scotland. Nevertheless, I will continue to make the best of what I have.

After a hot and sunny July, we seem to be getting a wetter August with temperatures more normal than the record-breaking ones experienced last month. With the rain comes thoughts of waterproof jackets and my hill-walking Berghaus is showing more than its share of wear and tear. The Gore-Tex coating is not what it should be and wear from rucksacks has contributed as well. Given that it was my first outdoor jacket with a DWR finish, the Gore-Tex deterioration may not come as too much of a surprise when you consider that maintenance of such items means encountering a learning curve anyway. Cleaning out the detergent from my washing machine and use of Nikwax is my usual course of action. I also have a Sprayway Commanche jacket (bought at Nevisport in Fort William in July 2004) for everyday wear and that seems to be functioning well but I don’t want to be using the same jacket for both hillwalking and non-hillwalking purposes. The search therefore began for a new jacket.

This time out, I starting looking for something more technical. Being out in the rain around Whernside in the Yorkshire Dales last spring convinced me of that need. The Rab Latok caught my attention since it got good reviews in TGO and Trail. That said, there were some mixed experiences with the jacket reported on the OUTDOORSmagic website. A positive review in the same place of the Montane Super-Fly XT caused me to look at that option. However, I am a little ashamed to say that the mention of a drop tail put me off. Another option was the Mountain Equipment Kongur but that seemed to be out of stock in many places. The ecstatic review of the jacket in Trail magazine probably helped towards that outcome: it came first in the test with the Rab Latok in second. In the end, I decided to plump for the Rab (got it for £199 on the website of The Outdoor Shop; the Montane was £170 at the same place) and give it a go. I’ll let you know how I get on with it.

When I first started this post about getting from Macclesfield to Dolgellau using public transport, it quickly grew in length. The issue is that there is no direct service between the two places and when you start combining rail and bus services, the number of possibilities is not a small one.

Once upon a time, Dolgellau was a stop on a now largely mothballed train line between Ruabon and Morfa Mawddach, where it joined the Cambrian Coast line. These days, only sections of this remain in preservation: Llangollen to Corwen, Bala Lake railway. I can understand why a single track railway line might be adjudged uneconomic in the 1950’s but I do regard its demise as a tragedy given that it would be a scenic railway journey. Nevertheless, the X94 TrawsCambria bus service performs much the same role these days.

Speaking of buses, Dolgellau is not without regular services connecting it with the outside world. The aforementioned X94 calls while plying its way from Barmouth to and from Wrexham. Another representative of the TrawsCambria network, the X32, calls on its journeys between Bangor, Machynlleth and Aberystwyth. Other services from Dolgellau connect it with the coast between it and Machynlleth and destinations to Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Getting the above to connect with the remaining rail network requires a certain amount of concentration: Barmouth, Aberystwyth, Machynlleth, Bangor, Wrexham and Blaenau Ffestiniog are some of the options: Machynlleth and Barmouth are the nearest. All of these can get you east in the end but the itineraries, journey times and service frequencies differ: a perusal of train timetables is more than a useful exercise. Four railway lines are implicated in these: the Cambrian, connecting the Welsh coast with the English Midlands (Shrewsbury and Birmingham, for instance); North Wales, Holyhead to Chester and beyond; Vale of Conwy, connects Blaenau Ffestiniog and other places with the North Wales line; Chester-Birmingham, on which Wrexham is a stop.

Now that I have confused you with options for getting from Dolgellau to England, I’ll share the way that I have tended to go: X94 to Wrexham for regular bus and train connections to Chester. I know that I am going backwards here but there is another reason from this apart from the cornucopia of Welsh journey options: there is no direct bus or train service between Macclesfield and Chester.

Yes, they are in the same county but their 43 mile separation takes some bridging without recourse to a car. Quite possibly the quickest way to Chester from Macclesfield is by train with a change in Manchester (formerly part of Lancashire!). A slower option is change in Stockport instead of Manchester. None of these has stopped me catching a bus (Arriva, route 38) to Crewe for an onward train to Chester. There are other alternatives but they are more complex than these. For sake of completeness, I’ll quickly list them here:

Macclesfield-Stoke(-on-Trent)-Crewe-Chester: involves three changes and the Stoke-Crewe connection is the weak point in this rail option.

Macclesfield-Alderley Edge-Crewe-Chester/ Macclesfield-Wilmslow-Crewe-Chester: the first part of this is the Arriva 130 headed for Manchester and the rest is by train; the Crewe-Manchester line is plague by teething problems with a new signalling system.

Macclesfield-Stockport-Crewe-Chester: an all-rail option with the similar caveats to the above; a missed connection in Stockport last Saturday night left me enduring an annoying 70 minute wait for a connection to Macclesfield.

Macclesfield-Knutsford-Chester: looks good on paper but the first part involves a daytime bus service with almost no Sunday service.

Before I end up writing a book on this, I better leave you in on what I consider to be the best way to go from Macclesfield to Dolgellau (yes, in the forward direction): Macclesfield-Manchester-Chester-Wrexham-Dolgellau. It is all rail to Wrexham and then the X94 the rest of the way. It will take you at least four hours but it is the speediest of the lot. I’ll sign off with a few public transport links that’ll give you more information:

Gwynedd Public Transport

Arriva Buses

Arriva Trains Wales

Traveline Wales

National Rail

TravelService

Yesterday, I journeyed to Dolgellau to try to walk to the top of Cadair Idris, an objective that I finally achieved after quite a few attempts. My first trip to these parts was on a showery day in March of last year but that was without the intention to climb the mountain (I think). Nevertheless, I did get to within sight of the mountain and it still held onto its crop of winter snow. Just take a look below.

Further visits to the area followed; the next one was on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend. Unfortunately, no one had told me about the annual Cadair Idris hill race and I came into a Dolgellau with all of its accommodation taken up. That meant a relocation of base to Machynlleth and a complete change to whatever plans that I had. While I did do some walking around Dolgellau, my main walking was done in the hills immediately east of the seaside resort of Barmouth (Abermawe in Welsh) not far from the Rhinogs (see below) and with views of the Cadair.

When I returned to Dolgellau in July, I did find a place to stay, albeit run by an eccentric lady with a gold filling in one of her teeth, and the scene was set for an ascent of the Cadair. Being July, the day was hot and sunny; I sweated loads on the Foxes Path but I only got to Llyn y Gadair before a change in plan became necessary. I knew Foxes Path was steep on the final ascent and that it wasn’t a descent route but I had no idea that it scaled a scree slope: that put paid to that scheme. I followed another path that took me along the lower slopes to join another one taking me down to the road again. On my return to Dolgellau, I encountered the start of the Pony Path and so another plan was hatched, one for the future. Next day, I remained on low level by following the Mawddach Trail, formerly part of the railway line from Ruabon to Morfa Mawdach where it joined the Cambrian Coast line, to Barmouth before returning home.

In January of this year, I carried out reconnaissance on the Pony Path in sunny conditions with the ground frozen underfoot (the slopes are north-facing) and a scattering of snow in places. Due to length of the day and the presence of snow underfoot, the final ascent was postponed but the stage was set for yesterday. Yesterday’s successful effort involved an early start to arrive in Dolgellau at 11:00 (more on the transport logistics is in another post). By 14:40, I was on the summit on Cadair Idris being buffeted by a strong wind. By 17:10, I was back in Dolgellau awaiting the 17:20 service to Wrexham. The day was mostly cloudy with the odd spout of sunshine but that didn’t matter and the cooler temperatures were more amenable to walking anyway.

Over the last while, I have changing the look and feel of the website in any evolutionary manner. I suppose that it is a sort of rolling redesign. It has not been limited to appearances since there have been some back end changes too. These include making XHTML and CSS standards compliant: I need to keep it up now. The other change is to make increasing use of XML behind the scenes and automate web page creation and delivery (makes things easier to manage). One product of this back-end work is the addition of a search box to the bottom of every page. This is a home-built effort, replacing the Google one that I used to use. Somehow, Google doesn’t seem to be making much headway in indexing my site though I have made life easier for Googlebot by removing some of the obstacles over the last few months. Maybe, there’s still a way to go yet… Anyway, I decided to create my own index and this is what you can search. And as you might have guessed, index creation is automated as well.