Traverse of the Rhingos: Day Two

We awoke, fresh from the night's sleep, and the lumpy ground was actually pretty spongy to sleep on. It made for a fairly comfortable night. While Dave made his fancy coffee, Sarah refilled her water at the lake. We had breakfast and got ready to start the day, while making the most of the scenes before us.

We had decided to choose the less mountainous route due to our "lack of fitness" and chose to go around the first 600m peak. 

This was to be our biggest mistake and downfall. 

Soggy, Wet, Despair

All fueled and ready to go, we headed off on our adventure. From this point, we would be far from civilisation, so no easy bailouts. 

High spirits and excitement slowly became panic, discomfort and soggy wet feet. We made it to our "walk around the mountain" only to find it was mossy, boggy, and wet ground. We spent the next two hours walking through this mossy quicksand. Every step was squelchy, and you were unsure how deep your foot would go. 

It was sketchy in every sense, and absolutely miserable walking. However, we carried on until we realised this path required you to scale a wall, which then went steeply downhill. 

Panic set in. 

We all looked at the path in front of us and realised, this was absolutely not going to be safe, secure or what we signed up for. A lesson learnt, don’t trust the routes you find, do some research. 

We decided this was not going to work and we desperately needed to switch course, preferably not walking back the way we came... 

Hope, Still Soggy, but fed

So that mountain we skipped, well, it seemed we had to then scale one of them anyway. However, not via a trodden path, no, that would've been the smart option. Unfortunately for us, we were many kilometres away from that path. We had to make our own way up. Looking around, the mountain was rocky & covered in heather, so we decided it was safe enough to walk up via the rocks.

We noted two locations, first get up to clip and then over to Craig Ddrwg. This would allow us to rejoin the Cambrian way, where we could then have lunch.

Trodding carefully, as heather is a great thing for disguising deep holes (totally not foreshadowing), we started to progress up to our Clip. We were all quite quiet and sad at this point, really hoping nothing more would go wrong. I did indeed fall into a hole and hurt my ankle a little bit, but I was fine.

Eventually, we made it up and over to the other side. No more mossy bog in sight, no more random rocks to clamber up and no more sneaky heather. Just a well-trodden path. A peak gained, Craig Ddwrg of 596 meters.

Food, Glorious Food

We made it to our decided spot, all now feeling more hopeful but also annoyed about the events of the morning. We stopped to make some lunch and take a breather from the stressful events that had just occurred. Making light of the situation and reigniting everyone’s motivation to carry on.

While enjoying our dinner, a walker came by and chatted with us. Now we love a chat, but what we didn’t realise was that this chat would become a long chat. An over half an hour chat.

Clock watching with miles ahead of us, I was starting to panic. Again. 

Steep Grass & Roman Steps

Back on our two feet, conversations finished and refreshed from the food. We followed the Cambrian Way, which I will say is rather phantom. One minute it’s there, the next it’s not. It made for a good challenge, and the views we had were amazing. We were all feeling really good.

We were very far behind on our day and still had Rhingo Fawr & Fach yet to climb. As the plan was to camp at Llyn Hywel.

Walking on with pace, we all saw the steep grassy bank before us and said to each other, none of us is making it down that without slipping. How little faith we had in our ability, we all made it down soundly and headed onto the Roman Steps, the path that would lead us up Rhingo Fawr. 

This path was beautiful, the weather was also lovely, and the rain had currently held off. Although hot and bothered, we were all really enjoying the sights in front of us, the path under our feet as we headed up to Rhingo Fawr. There were some really boggy, muddy patches, but we all managed to stay dry and had no more soggy feet.

Rhingo Fawr

Slowly but surely were making it up to Rhingo Fawr, the weather had come in. It was getting foggy as we were inside the clouds, and the wind was picking up. We all knew winds were likely to be high, so we had planned accordingly. We got to the top, and the winds hit, blowing my sliders off my bag. Dave thankfully caught them and secured them to my bag. We all decided we were not hanging around, we touched the trig and started the descent down. 

The light was slowly fading, my ankle was hurting, and we were an entire mountain behind schedule. All that we saw around us was rocky ground and the fading light.

Game faces came back on… where were we going to sleep?

Is there anywhere to camp? 

Down the gruelling descent, with the darkening sky, we all knew there was not a chance we could do the next mountain and make it to a camp spot before dark. The race was now on to find somewhere suitable. It looked like it was going to be impossible. All of us were scouting, panicking and thinking of backup plans while the wind was treacherous. 50mph gusts making everything even more difficult. We kept going, trying not to lose hope. 

And there, like some miracle, a random spot of grass in the middle of a bed of rocks. 

This would surely have to do, protected slightly from the wind due to the small wall, we made camp and grimaced in preparation for the poor night's sleep we were all about to have. 

We all reviewed the weather for the following morning and made the decision that for the next day, we would be getting up and out straight away to ensure we made it across the final stretch of mountains before the bad weather came in. 

We ate our dinner, battling the strong winds and attempted to get some shut-eye, grateful we found somewhere to camp and anxious about what was to come.