Friday night, pouring with rain. That’s okay, because we were having a lads night in. Me and Rufus!
Neither of us drink and we’re both single, so the reality of our lads night in was really quite boring. In fact, after food and some TV channel hopping, we were both asleep around 10.30 because the following morning we were due to be out early for a stroll around Fairwood Common.
Fairwood Common was soaking wet, as you would expect after the rain we’ve had over the last few weeks. When they built the airfield during World War 2, thousands of tons of slag from the local steelworks, and other hardcore was dumped in the marsh to stabilise the ground. It meant that there were limits to the size of aircraft that could land there. But it was successful. You can get an excellent idea of what the ground was like before the hardcore was dumped by walking the perimeter of the airport, which is what Rufus and I did. I was interested in the tree trunks and took some photos for processing into black and white. Rufus was interested in getting wet, which he did with great efficiency.
I was out with friends for the rest of the day but Rufus stayed with me again on Saturday night and we did more lads stuff, like watching Top Gear and fighting. Someone rummaged through my rubbish bin as well, shredding the contents and spreading them out over the floor. But it’s not for me to grass a mate up.
This morning, we were out early for a walk up to Llyn y Fan Fawr. The weather was grim, misty and dark. Not long after we left the car, it began to rain and the showers kept coming all morning. At the lake, the mist was thick enough to hide the mountains and at some points, the opposite bank of the lake. It was dark, too and it felt quite claustrophobic. After some stone throwing at the lake, we decided to go around it’s edge and we headed off into the mist.
The mist rose and fell as we went and a chill wind blew across the water. At the far end, I sat for a while and sheltered behind a large rock and a shower blew in. Rufus wasn’t impressed and made a point of running around and posing of rocks while I cowered behind mine.
Then it was off around the other side of the lake, beneath the towering Fan Brecheiniog. I would have liked to have climbed it today as it’s been a while since we’ve been up there. But the weather wasn’t good and however cold it was at the lake, it would be worse on top. Instead, we meandered around it’s base and across the mud slides and land slides that dropped from its slopes. We were soon back at the starting point and after a snack break, we headed back down to the car.
It rained pretty much all the time we were making our way back and the little streams were turned into fast flowing rivers Lower down, the rivers were torrents and the waterfalls thundered with the amount of water crashing over them. By the time we got to the car we were both dripping wet. And the sun chose that moment to come out. As I stripped off the wet waterproofs, the sun warmed us up and a bright rainbow shone in the north. Typical!
franticsmurf 