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North Wales – Mini-METHS July 3 – 7

Cwm Cywarch

Participants (with a pronounced Malawi accent including one present resident): Martin and Miriam Horrocks, Peter (Up the Down) and Antonia (Twinkletoes) Tolhurst (leaders), David (Shooting Stick) Leishman and his sister Penny (Orr), Esther (Malawi resident: surgeon and medical supervisor).

Base: Self-catering farmhouse, “Ceunant” at the head of Cwm Cywarch in Southern Snowdonia. (The same H/Q as last year but with a different group of Meths members and friends.)

Weather: The weather was poor but this did not stop the self-inflicted masochistic tendencies of the party who went out each day in the rain and mist and low cloud: on our return we dried out and as a suitable ‘escape’, watched Wimbledon tennis on the cottage TV set. The initial hard ‘C’ of ‘Ceunant’ was singularly appropriate as the low lintels of the cottage and the heads of us lanky visitors clashed frequently, a hard reminder that most of us were too tall for doorways designed for small Welsh hill farmers. The latter still keep sheep up this cwm and I was told by Mrs. Edwards our landlady that the continual rain had made things very hard for sheep farmers: it was shearing time and the fleeces got too wet and brought great problems with drying out the wool. It was easier for us human ‘sheep’ as we had only to change our ‘fleeces’. One evening even though it was July we made a coal/wood fire in the fireplace and enjoyed its glow very much.

Peaks: We completed 2 of the 3 climbs on the programme – up Glascwm and Cader Idris but the third peak was a washout (after 4 hours of walking in rain and low cloud with very limited visibility we called it a day and descended (that was our attempt at Aran Fawddy).

The best day was up Cader Idris; a circuit route that took us 6 hours plus: no wrong turns but the leader at one stage had to insist that the fence line going very steeply downhill was the one to follow: luckily he was right – in the end! Views from the summit of the sea which we the four early arrivers had visited a previous afternoon – a walk around Barmouth, not the most exciting of destinations but with some faded seaside charm none the less.

The Cader Idris day was our only dry one and each ascent on the other days was up a path that had become a stream: this meant soggy boots, to the degree that when we came down Glascwm and found across our path a full flowing stream, 12 feet across, we simply walked through it – there seemed little point in not washing clean our already sodden footwear.

P.S. This will probably be the last Cwm Cywarch meet: next year we plan the Berwyn massif (North Wales) and staying at Llangollen, hopefully with a self-catering option.

Up the Down