Intrepid, adventurous, brave. All words used to describe the Davies gang on holiday. Today we walked up Peel Hill and carried on along the coastal path to Glen Maye.
An element of subterfuge was involved here. We stopped frequently on the way to the top of the hill. Mainly for me to catch my breath but also ostensibly for the kids. Stops involved the frequent distribution of energy giving sugary sweets, a flashback to my own childhood where my father would find packets of fruit pastilles left by the fairies behind rocks to keep me going on my way up Cader Idris, the mountain that towered over our home in Dolgellau.
The weather deteriorated on the way up Peel Hill, having lulled us into a false sense of security at lunchtime. We all had decent waterproofs so the rain, only persistent and not lashing, did not really trouble us and having reached the initial objective of Corrin’s folly, we stopped to assess the situation.
There was an moment where the defeatist faction, naming no names, wanted to return to Peel but the rest galvanized Hannah who led the “let’s keep going” movement and we continued south, assisted by the fact that it was all downhill.
The walk was a lot longer than anyone had bargained for. We traversed treacherous cliff-tops which, had the wind been stronger, would not have made sense, skirted a field with a bull in it, had our bare legs attacked by nettles, gorse and brambles, climbed stiles and were constantly on the lookout for basking sharks in the sea below.
In the wilderness beyond Peel we met nobody. The coastal path itself seemed hardly a regular route. Not a beaten path. On one occasion I heard a cacophony of seagulls. Looking up I saw a flock trying to scare off a kestrel which ignored them and dropped in on an unseen prey.
The weather turned out to be near perfect. Typically, I had forgotten the map so our destination, Glen Maye, was always around the next bend. Finally we arrived at Glen Maye beach. Luxuriously empty.
We skimmed flat stones across the waves, leapt from slippery stepping stone to slippery stepping stone and spread ourselves out to dry in the sun. After an appropriate pause we set off for the pub at the top of the glen where we met Tadcu who had come to take our weary limbs home.