Duffers present: Peter Bell, Lottie Kelley, Becky James, Toby Speight, Tim Haskins, Niall Mackay and Andy Gibson.
I thought that, given the large number of bad, unusual and unlucky experiences I've had at the hands of Britain's railways, it was about time I shared some of them with you. So, I thought I'd digress from the trip report to give you the first part of the serialisation of:
I don't want to bore you with too many details, as this was just one of those (all too familiar) plain-bad rail experiences: late trains, over-crowding, trains terminating at stations before their supposed destinations, and the like. But, despite being turfed off a Virgin train at Birmingham New Street (instead of at Crewe) and being 40mins behind schedule at this point, I somehow managed to make my connection from Crewe to Chester and so quite unexpectedly arrived on time. I'm still a little perplexed by this but "Ours isn't to reason why...".
However, as I left the station, I remember seeing something about a train strike on one of the monitors...
Niall and Tim arrived shortly afterwards and we set off for Snowdonia. Some quite heavy rain greeted us at the Welsh border, which looked like it might embarrass my forecast of clear skies overnight and a pretty good day on Saturday. However, the moon and stars reappeared once we'd crossed the Clwydian Hills and remained out all the way to the Gwern Gof Isaf campsite.
Typical Duffers' planning meant that all three of us had brought tents and so, inevitably, all three of them were pitched. The clear skies made for a cold night - only the third time I've been kept awake by the cold. One of the other occasions was in the same campsite!
Opening the front porch in the morning revealed that the village of tents had grown to a marginally more economical six tents for the seven of us. No sign of life from the others at this point, so after taking in the rather spectacular view of the early morning sun on the East Face of Tryfan, I went back to sleep. Following a quick brew and breakfast sometime later, we set off for Tryfan and Glyder Fach.
The walk commenced as a brief shower passed along the Ogwen Valley. This resulted in a minor faff as waterproof trousers made an appearance. Soon we arrived at the well known climbing ground of Tryfan Bach. Tim took the opportunity to follow the scramblers' line to the top, passing some pretty miffed-looking climbers en route. Something surely must have been amiss though, as Toby resisted all temptation and kept to the path!
Pete and I had the almost obligatory "small-world moment" in such circumstances - it turns out that one of the mathematicians he knows is the son of one of the big cheeses in the section of the Met Office that I work in (said big cheese also happens to be the boss of one of my housemates).
As we made our way across to Tryfan's North Ridge, the sun made a more assertive attempt to get to grips with the patches of cloud around. Once on the North Ridge, the route was the usual "pick your own." Despite Lottie's "I don't do scrambling" stance, everybody made it to the top without much difficulty, the odd extra handhold being supplied by Toby or myself at the crux.
The summit was the expected hive of lunch activity, which we joined in. Toby had obviously recovered from the earlier bout of sanity and went to prove that it is possible to stand on both "Adam" and "Eve" at the same time. And he succeeded! Which is all very well, if you're over six foot tall. Well into his stride now, Toby's no-hands approach to the descent meant we probably did at least take the easiest route to Bwlch Tryfan. Here the party split: Niall, Pete, Lottie and Toby took the path, whilst Tim, Becky and I carried on up Bristly Ridge.
We met up again at the top of the ridge and made our way to the summit to be greeted by some pretty extensive views to the likes of Cadair Idris, the Berwyns and possibly even the Isle of Man. A light dusting of snow capped the Carneddau. In fact, if it wasn't for Snowdon taking on its traditional "head in the clouds" pose, the whole panorama would have been visible. A brief(?) faff ensued whilst I photographed the views and changed the film in my camera.
Feeling under-exercised, Lottie and Pete headed for Glyder Fawr and the Devil's Kitchen. The rest of us stood near the Cantilever Stone trying estimate how many people would need to sit on the over-hanging end to make it topple (well, what do you expect from a group of scientists?) - I believe 30 was our best guess, if we could get them all to sit right on the end.
We made our way down in the pleasant evening brightness, first east along the ridge towards Capel and then north to the campsite, whilst Becky extolled the finer points of putting stickers on cartons and on which shifts to choose to earn those extra pennies to get to New Zealand. Not that I'm jealous, or anything, but I ended up with a five-year stretch in Manchester after my temporary job - something must have gone wrong somewhere along the line! It certainly seems that New Zealand is the Old Duffers' overseas destination of choice, what with Tim's concurrent trip, the Blakes, plus Mike and Lizzie's extended stay - not to mention those members who've come to Cambridge from New Zealand, and anyone else I've forgotten who's been there.
When we returned to the campsite, Toby and Becky decided to combine ingredients for dinner. So, Becky set about preparing a traditional vegetable slop, whilst Toby went to pick up Pete and Lottie from Ogwen Cottage. On his return, Toby unveiled his main contribution to the meal: some six-months-out-of-date Dolmio (with mushrooms). Despite Becky's protestations that the resulting meal smelt odd, I don't think there were any bad side effects - they were both still alive at the end of Sunday's walk.
Feeling a bit peckish by now, the rest of us headed straight for the Tyn-y-Coed for dinner. Here, Lottie told of her wish to follow in James Herriot's footsteps (Cows, long rubber gloves, etc.) though with a specialisation in pigs, as a twist. I didn't ask whether this would also involve long rubber gloves, mainly because I didn't think I could stomach the answer!
Unsurprisingly, some of the evening's other conversations centred around the Club, past and present. It was possible to see that some things have stood the test of time, for example:
Well, at least by over-indulging in an excellent quarter-shoulder of Lamb, I avoided over-imbibing this time round.
We arrived back at the campsite to be greeted by clear skies and a halo around the moon. Toby thought that there was an old wives' tale relating to this, which said that it would rain tomorrow. Maybe he'd just seen the forecast. At least it was warmer than the previous night.
Sunday started off dull and damp. My claim that I wasn't going to be the last ready (for once) looked in trouble as a not very happy Toby rapidly packed his stuff into the Speight-Mobile, but I just about managed to be ready first. Given that the weather was due to get wetter and windier, I was on for a shortish walk followed by a tea-shop (as possibly were one or two others). Moel Siabod wasn't quite what I had in mind but the conditions weren't too bad at the time, so I was willing to go along with the majority.
Thus, we headed into downtown Capel to park the cars and set off via Plas y Brenin where some canoeing lessons were taking place. This lead to Becky describing some of her experiences with the Canoeing Club, including canoeing over waterfalls, for example Low Force in Teesdale. I've seen people canoe over Low Force and all I can say is that Toby's title as the trip's "person most likely to commit random acts of madness" was under serious threat!
As we headed along the river bank towards Betws-y-Coed, Niall and I talked about the traditional model of low pressure systems (I think it might be called the Norwegian Model) - warm front, warm sector, cold front, etc., and how it applies pretty well to the weather at sea. Well, it's comforting to know that there's one Old Duffer who knows something about the weather - I think I'll go and have another look at the notes I've been given. But to be fair, the Norwegians (metaphorically speaking) don't always get it right, which is why I still have a job.
At the lower end of Capel we turned right and headed towards our objective. Pete and Lottie were soon some distance behind, chatting in a world of their own but they caught us up at one of the lakes by the path. We continued along the path, crossing the bog by the final lake. This took us to the bottom of the Daear Ddu, the scrambly ridge to the top of Moel Siabod. The scrambling was trickier than I had my mind set on, given it was a damp Sunday, but it was easier than Saturday's ascents.
We arrived on the summit to be greeted by winter conditions. The wind had got up but wasn't as bad as I feared it might be. Whatever was coming out of the sky was white, cold and solid (unfortunately, I can't remember if it was snow or hail), and laying in significant quantities. It wasn't conducive for hanging around, so we didn't. Tim then navigated us along the North-East ridge, which I'm sure would have been quite pleasant in better conditions.
We made our way quickly down to the forest. One of the last memories I have before we arrived back at Plas y Brenin and Capel, is of Toby starting to describe why there are so many vowels in Scots Gaelic words when written down. It seems that there is a certain logic to it - something for another time maybe.
And that's where the weekend's adventure should have ended (except for those travelling home in the Speight-Mobile, of course). A quick glance at my watch showed it to be about 5.15pm. My intended train from Chester was at 5.51pm - ok, so I'd miss that but I had checked and there should have been at least a couple more trains after that, though I had neglected to note the times. Phoning found that the next train was at 6.21pm, er, and that was the last one! That seemed a bit early to me, so I was inclined not to believe it at that stage. Anyway, we set off immediately and made good time to Chester, arriving about ten minutes after the 18.21 departure.
...I walked into the station and looked up at the monitors. One of them hadn't changed much since Friday. So today was the day of the train strikes - that explained a lot! The only departure advertised was heading for Liverpool Central - not entirely ideal for getting back to the South-East. Time to put together plan 'B', which only got off the ground due to some unlikely foresight on my behalf - I had asked Niall and Tim to wait outside the station for a few minutes. So, at least I was able to get out of Chester the same evening.
This leads me on to the second installment of the serialisation of my exploits on Britain's railways:
Not an obvious choice of route but one that, in normal circumstances, can be made by changing only in Stockport and London. Given my predicament, the first leg had to be made by car (thanks again Niall!), which wasn't too far off route for Niall and Tim, who were heading back to Yorkshire. Another phone call to national rail enquiries told me that I was going to miss another train (at 7.10pm) by about ten minutes. This left me with the option of the last train from Stockport to London at 8.10pm and a probable £30 taxi fare from Reading (ouch!) but at least I'd get home in one go.
The lady in the ticket office was most accommodating and so it only cost me the price of a ticket from Stockport to Crewe to make my ticket valid via London. The Virgin Trains 8.10pm service turned up 5mins late, not an auspicious start to my rail journey, especially as it usually takes a mere 10mins to travel from Manchester (the start of the train's journey) to Stockport. Visions of expensive taxi journeys became nightmares of being stuck in the midlands overnight. However, for once I'm doing Virgin Trains a disservice, as the villain of the piece on Friday became the hero of the hour. The train more than made up the time on the way to London and actually arrived a few minutes early!
This allowed me to put a plan 'C' into action. Despite not taking down the times of trains home I had been organised enough to bring a timetable of trains from Waterloo to Bracknell. This told me that I had a shade over twenty minutes to make my way to Waterloo to catch the last train home and hence avoid using a taxi. It wasn't long but it might just have been possible. I hit the platform at Euston station at a canter and didn't stop running until I got to the tube platform. A tube train turned up about a minute later - maybe the gods were smiling on me? The tube driver seemed to be in a hurry to get home - maybe the gods were really smiling on me this evening but the big test was still to come.
I've never really worked out where any of the maze of tunnels under Waterloo station actually go, so I generally arrive on the surface at a different place each time. Not knowing any better, I just ran up whichever escalator I happened to come across and came out next to the departure boards near platform 17. There were two minutes left until my train departed but it would appear that I had been given an entire year's worth of good luck in one evening, as the train was leaving from platform 17. It was such a feeling of relief getting on the train that the replacement bus service for half the journey (due to engineering works) seemed like a pretty minor inconvenience.
And so I arrived back at my front door at 1am on Monday only slightly out of pocket for all my troubles. Now there was just the small matter of getting into work later the same morning.
Quotes from Saturday night:
Last modified: Wednesday, 25 April 2007, at 19:58 (BST)