Bog sellers, November 2000
El Geoffro had returned from his foreign adventure with fairly fresh motivation to get us all wet again (see previous trip), so we set off, fairly dry, for Dovey forest (Dyfi Fforest), near Corris. After a coffee break in a small Welsh roadside restaurant, which was completely redecorated in authentic sixties style, we parked at the Aberllefenni slate quaries.
As soon as we stepped out of the cars, a man appeared out of a cleverly hidden shed, asking us firmly where we thought we were thinking of going and why. Not an unreasonable question to ask on such a horrible rainy day. Obviously he was concerned that we would get wet. Not exactly as we found out. He did not want us to take shelter in any of his old slate mines. Since he owned at least 5 holes in the ground and we none, I thought he was very unreasonable, but El-Geoffrey and I did not argue, knowing the revolution is near.
So we set off North following the left side of the valley through the remains of a chopped down forest. Last winter must have been cold in Wales. When we lost our way, we followed some old Welsh buffalo track up the hill and came back to the road. The rain caught up with us halfway and we were treated to an impressive view of layer after layer of dense rain driven by the wind. When it stopped for a bit, we had a quick lunch, using the shelter of a strategically placed rock.
Here it was time for young Neil to impress us with a boomerang of which he obviously did not read the user instructions. In the first two attempts the thing flew about 5 yards into the strong wind before crashing into the wet ground. The third attempt took it 30 yards against the wind, then it lifted 200 yards up and landed at least mile uphill out of sight. Well, that determined the direction of our walk after lunch. Amazingly we found it back. Here we turned right to the top of Mynydd y Waun.
Halfway we found lost of black "garden centre type" of plastic bags with bits of bog inside all over the place and tracks of a huge snowmobile who supposedly would collect them. What a lovely unexpected source of income that must be for the locals. Leave alone the brilliance of the marketing engineer.
At the top we had a beautiful view towards Cader Idris, which even had some snow on it.
The way down was through a dense slippery forest which was one of the very few places where the buffalos could be hiding out. When we got to the bottom of the valley an old cave was explored by some members of our team. It ran underneat the road and carried exess of water from one side of the road to the other side. The cave walls had beautiful corrugated iron pattern. It is this sort of thing where we stick head and shoulders above the average tourists, who would not spot such a rare feature even if he or she was standing on top of it.
From here it was only a small walk to get back to the cars. We had another coffee break in the same restaurant just to check if it had changed at all. Nop. Good old realiable world.