I received my early morning wake up call at just before 6am this morning. It was a wet nose in my face, followed by two paws on my arm. It was accompanied by a huffing and puffing as if to demonstrate disapproval that I hadn’t already got up and made breakfast. ‘The day has started, Dave, get up and be part of it’.
So I got up, let Rufus explore the garden to make sure there were no illegal immigrant cats, and made breakfast. As predicted by the weather forecast, the morning was clearing and so we left for Fan Nedd and the Llia valley.
The clouds lifted as we drove and by the time we parked up at the foot of the hill there was blue sky and the visibility was good. Rufus dismissed the stile with ease and didn’t even wait for his traditional treat. He was off exploring the heather. I headed up the muddy, marshy path. It was a straight forward climb. The wind was blowing from the west and was bitterly cold. In the distance, Fan Gyhirich was wearing a cloud cap and further south I could see dark clouds and the mists of rain. The prevailing weather was coming from the west, so I knew we wouldn’t have long in the sun.
At the top, the wind was strong, gusting fiercely enough to risk me overbalancing if I wasn’t careful. Rufus, closer tot he ground, was finding it much easier. Not long after we started walking along the ridge, a short but sharp shower of very fine hail reached us and we sheltered for a few minutes in a conveniently sited drystone walled enclosure. Then we were off in the sun again to the end of the ridge. By now, the weather was closing in from the south west so after a few snacks for Rufus, we headed back to the car. By the time we got down, the top of Fan Nedd was topped by the same cloud cap as Fan Gyhirich. But down on the road, the wind had died away and it wasn’t too bad, so we headed off to the river and the standing stone, Maen Llia. While Rufus splashed about in the river, I tried out a lens I’d picked up cheaply a while back. It was a manual focus wide angle lens and I wanted to see if it would perform nicely as it was light and compact. It turned out to be fine apart from at maximum aperture, when there was a a lot of vignetting.
I spent too much time taking photos and I got the hurry up whine and bark. Then it was time to get back to the car to beat the drizzle and, later as we drove home, the heavy rain.
franticsmurf 