An Up and Down Day

A strange start to the day. I was just chilling, reading the paper....well an electronic version of it anyway, when Rosemary appeared in tears. She had had an accident with a massive power drill when it had 'kicked back' on her. Her elbow and shoulder was very painful. After I knew she was going to live, I was furious that she had been so daft but she knew that anyway.

I had got into my head that I fancied running up Snowdon but R wasn't keen at the thought of me being away all day. Although it wasn't a huge run, getting to the foot of the mountain was still over half an hour's run and a conservative effort would mean it would take over 3 hours from start to finish.

Rather, I headed down Fachwen, past some friendly hill walking pensioners and towards Llyn Padarn. Although I was in the mood to work hard, I saw a cormorant on a rock and decided to watch it for a wee bit. Then I headed through Llanberis, past Llyn Peris and up the steep unpaved slate quarry road. It's a 3km steep run to the top but I was determined to make it all the way without stopping. It twists and turns up the mountain, so one minute I had a tailwind and the next I was being blasted with a cold headwind. Practising a counting technique that I've used during meditation practice helped, especially on the very steep ramping bits. I had just gone over the highest point, where the quarrymen had cut an impressive section out the mountain, when a women ran past me at pace. She looked like a proper mountain runner, lithe, weather beaten, long hair and an unfussy running style. I hadn't heard her coming but I suspect she had tried to chase me down before the top. There was no way I could follow her though, as my quads were screaming on the steep downhill section and she was obviously much faster than me anyway.

I got back to the farm after 90 mins running, having worked pretty hard. After lunch, I wasn't quite ready for a walk with R and her dad, but dragged myself out anyway. We headed up out of Dinorwig towards Eildyr, me being thankful that John wasn't walking fast. Up on the hill, there was a ruined cottage with what appeared to be a small weather station attached so R and I went to explore. Indeed, that's what it was, with rather expensive looking equipment in a huge Tupperware box. My mood started to go lower, the higher we went up the hill. I was feeling a bit dizzy, an artefact from my earlier tough run. I just wanted to be on the sofa. Saying that, the slate quarry was fun, especially when R and I went through a big tunnel to another part of the mountain. We found ourselves on a wide ledge which housed only a gun powder store, minus the gunpowder of course. I couldn't believe that the huge gully, I'd guess several hundred metres across used to be filled with mountain. The slate had simply been quarried out over several hundred years.

It was then a long walk down the mountain, with Rosemary stopping to pick a punnet of the final brambles of the year. Well worth it as we had fig, and apple compote for pudding. It was just enough to keep me slightly cheery as I suspect the last few day's worth of exercise had affected my cortisol levels and I was a bit on edge.