WW III

It’s not what you think. Wild Wales, word wizardry and who's who in the world of the uncool.

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“And the smell of the air! I used to spend a week just breathing.” (Tolkien, LOTR)

“To me, a hike is like a six course meal with walking in-between.”

That’s Joel, halfway up a hill in Wales, around a mouthful of mushroom quiche. It’s getting colder the higher we go but he needs another calorie-fortification stop.

I’m impatient. Still many more miles to go.

Joel says I’m like a dog that needs to be walked. He’s a cat and will purr indoors for hours, in front of his computer. I get antsy and need to be taken out, frequently.

Like a dog, I lack guile. I want to romp outdoors and need only the barest encouragement to crap in a hedge.

If dogs are the dorks of the animal kingdom, that is me.

Speaking of which, I called Joel a dork the other day. He furrowed a brow.

“No one’s ever called me a dork before.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

“It’s true. No one’s called me a dork.”

“Maybe not to your face….”

“I’m not a dork.” He insisted. “I’m a geek, not a dork.”

“Are you kidding me? That’s literally the dorkiest thing I’ve ever heard. ‘Um, I think you’ll find I’m a geek not a dork, so.. ’"

He shrugged. “It’s true. I’m a geek. I’m also a nerd. So are you. You’re a nerd—but you’re not a geek.”

“Yes I am!” A little offended by this. “Wait, what’s the difference?”

“A geek: that’s someone who’s into science and tech. A dork, well, that’s… you. Someone super awkward and dingus-y.”

I see where he’s going with this. “Ok, fine so I’m a dork but not a geek.”

“And a nerd. You’re definitely a nerd. We both are.”

“What’s a nerd?”

“A nerd is someone who knows a lot about something. Like, I’m a nerd about computers and you’re a nerd about books and words.”

A nerd about words. He is not wrong.

When I was a trainee lawyer, one of the (very few) female partners said to me:

“I’m going to let you in on a secret. Law is just reading and writing. If you can do that, you can do law.”

She was right, of course. Law is just reading and writing, of the most anodyne kind. Lawyers are word wizards, conjuring up limited companies and exclusions of liability out of the wordsmoke.

So, he’s right. There’s no denying it. Words are my magical power.

With them, I create worlds. I conjure wordsmoke. I can cast a spell that’ll make you hallucinate: see things that aren’t there and feel things that are. Worldsmoke.

Joel’s not finished his commonality theory of Geekery.

“Yeah, we are definitely both nerds. Think about it. I need glasses because I stare at screens. You need them because you stare at books. That’s such a nerd thing.”

This is true. I ruined my eyes as a kid, sitting up late reading with no light. I sought out dark, secret spaces to read. Places where no one could find me and disturb me. When I was tiny, that meant really strange places around the house: the cross-beam under the dining table, a pile of laundry, under the sink in the downstairs toilet.

Seriously.

I sat in that last one for so long with a flashlight and a pile of books that every member of my family cycled through the toilet, some of them twice, unaware they had an unseen audience.

Another time, I hid under the fold-out couch while guests were asleep on it and gravely listened to them have early-morning sex. No idea what I was listening to and I didn’t do it on purpose (well, not totally). I just wanted to be alone with my books.

When I got too big to fit under the loo sink, my best chance for alone time was outside. Under a bush, in a grove of trees, in tall grass. I still organise plants in my head, not by Linnaeus, but by which offered the best hiding place as a child.

A shady clump of ferns and bleeding hearts: ideal. Spruce trees with low branches that swept the ground, also ideal—as long as you remembered not to scrape the sharp ends of spruce needles.

Hydrangea bushes? Useless. The stems were too dense—unless a few bushes were planted together. These made child-sized gaps where I hid, with a book, for hours.

I still do it, as an adult. About a month ago, I just really wanted to escape and read somewhere quiet for ten minutes. Desperate.

Off to meet Helen for a run, I hid my book at the side of the house. I was thinking maybe I’ll have time for a quiet little sit-down with my book for ten minutes after we ran.

It was such a foggy evening that the pages curled up after a minute or two.

Helen was confused.

“Um, why did you bring a book?”

“I figured you would say no to a drink.”

“Yeah, I can’t drink tonight, I have too much to do.”

“I knew you would say that. That’s why I brought a book.”

As we ran, I told her about Joel’s software engineering books. He piles them everywhere, in mounds so enormous they pose a fire hazard.

“Every time I turn around, there are more of them. I don’t understand where they’re coming from.”

“Maybe they reproduce according to the Fibonacci sequence.” Helen is definitely a geek-nerd like Joel.

Another member of our pub committee rounded the corner on a bike, the excellent carpenter who reconstructed our village stocks.

He stopped in the middle of the road when he saw us.

“Why are you running with a book?”

Why indeed.

“Because I’m a dorky nerd.”

See?

Who’s who.

This makes so much sense to me. Awkward, and a dorky nerd: that’s me. A nerdy geek about computers, but not awkward with it? That’s Joel.

True to my nerd colours, when we went to Wales last week for a hiking holiday, I packed not one but four books.

One of them was The Two Towers. I’m re-reading LOTR—you may have noticed a theme in essays I and II—inspired by

John Halbrooks

’s read-along. I’m honing a theory about Wales as Middle Earth. No disrespect to Peter Jackson’s vision, but Wales could have done a passable stand-in, if New Zealand hadn’t been available.

Also—is there a nerdier book than LOTR? It’s got it all: wordplay, songs, linguistics, history, geography, bio-ecology, even maps.

Whether it’s Middle Earth or not, Wales really has it made. I don’t know how they managed to pull this off but they have all the mountains. Seriously, all of them.

Not including Scotland (which is an entirely different kettle of peaks), between Wales and England, there is a clear winner.

In England, you stand in a field and, as the inimitable Bill Bryson once said, it’s Kansas with hedges. Cross the border into Wales and you’re in Middle Earth. Verdant forests, canted crags and rivers threaded with boulders the size of semi-trailers.

In a word: mountains. Many, many ups and downs. There’s so much MORE of Wales than there is of England. It’s packed into a small space, but rucked like a carpet and hiding worlds in every fold.

Kind of like a book, come to think of it.

Technically, almost none of these folds are what might be deemed official “mountains” in any other country. They would be swallowed up in the Alps. Almost none are over that magical 1000m threshold: just Snowdon, one of the Glydyrs and a few of the Carnedds.

You’ve probably heard of Snowdon—Yr Wyddfa—in Welsh (listen to the audio if you want to hear me make a gallant, ungoogled attempt at pronouncing that). But maybe not the Carnedds.

I’ve seen them hundreds of times without knowing what they were.

They’re the forbidding peaks you can see off the Irish ferry in Holyhead, from the train crossing the Menai straits that separates the Welsh mainland from the Isle of Anglesey. This island is famous for being the last hold out of Celtic druids during the Roman conquest. There are still Roman roads up and down the length of Wales where the centurions (the orcs) ran through trying to subdue the hills.

I imagine the hills flattening under their feet and rising again behind them as they passed.

There is a reason hold-outs—and dorks, clutching worn out copies of Tolkien—flee to the hills. The hills will hide you, and they are tough to subdue.

There’s a lot to be anxious about these days, even if it’s not the Romans.

Will Putin ping us a nuke? Why isn’t Trump in prison yet? Is there any chance he could possibly be re-elected, foreshadowing the end of the American republic and the triumphant reign of authoritarianism?

Who can say.

Come the apocalypse or WWIII or another Tory victory in the next general election, look for me in the hills.

Actually, please don’t.

Day 1: Moel Hebog

Back to our trip. Day 1 was an act of vindication. Remember Moel Hebog last year? Where we got lost in, well, a bog and totally failed to climb in the driving rain, with wet ankles and no Garmin?

Well, this year it was sunny and we had not one but two Garmins. My new watch is a Garmin. It is a wearable and I (mostly) love to wear it. It has a solar battery that lasts for 22 days. The sun charges it.

Probably in a few years it will feed innocuously on my lifeforce. Somehow it will suck energy from me, charge itself as I whizz round all day, serving it.

Maybe my use will be measured in my ability to stay fresh and untired, as I charge and serve my wearables.

In that case, best stay fit, with some Welsh mountain climbing.

We all but ran up Moel Hebog, wearables blinking, ankles fresh and dry. We met a couple halfway up. He was from Iowa so I joked this must be the biggest mountain he’s ever seen.

He blinked benignly.

“Not really, I used to live in Colorado.”

Fair enough.

“Now we live just over there by the Carneddau. We walked up from there today.”

That’s a long walk.

We talked about our adventures last year on Tryfan. She told us sometimes they watch the local mountain rescue channel. Tryfan accounts for about 90% of all rescues in Eryri.

She said there was one guy recently who had a boulder the size of a Hilux land on him. All you could see were his legs. His buddy pulled his legs and out he came, because there must have been a gap under the boulder.

Lucky, I thought.

He was pretty messed up and his buddy—a big black guy, covered in his friend’s blood—ran down to flag someone on the road. No one would stop for him. Eventually, he got phone service himself and was able to call mountain rescue.

On their recommendation, we decided to make the walk circular. They showed us where you could follow a steep loop to where the trail peeled off along a drystone wall and then down into a dense forest.

Don’t believe me Wales is Middle Earth? I swear it.

One moment you’re among crags at the entrance to the (slate) mines of Moria, expecting goblin-men to issue from a broken maw of the mountain. The next, you’re descending to an elven dell, stepping lightly along a babbling brook into the woods of Lothlórien.

Joel and I played at being wood elves, jumping from rock to rock and running as smoothly and lightly as we could.

“I feel like an elf.”

“Why do you think we can do this? I reckon it has a lot to do with where you grow up, what your brain trains on when you’re a child.” He’s such a software engineer. He thinks everything is about how our electrical, wired brains are programmed.

In this case, I agree. “It’s like what I said before about the difference between people who grew up in the country and people who grew up in the city. You can tell a lot about someone by how they walk downhill.”

“Yeah. If you grow up in the country, your brain trains each night on this data: walks, stepping stones, rocks under feet, how logs roll.” He is such a geek, he really does talk like this, I swear.

“That’s true.”

“You don’t even have to think about it. You pick your steps on autopilot, not even aware of the variables. Your brain just does it, each step perfectly calibrated. I bet your brain even has a back up for each step too, like what your counter-balance will be, if that step fails.”

For every step, a fall-back step in reserve.

A final descent through—I swear—Mirkwood (look at the picture if you don’t believe me) and we were back at the car.

The turn down to the village where we were staying was ambitious: it was basically a fold back upon itself at 270 degrees.

“I like this village,” I said to Joel.

I did. Little stone houses on the edge of cliffs, at a crossroads. It had a friendly feel to it.

“There’s a pub.”

The sign said: “Quality Food Pub”

The nerd in me objected.

“I think they missed a few words.”

“No way, that’s everything you need to know. All questions answered. Is there a pub? Yes. Do you think it has food? Sure, but is the food any good?”

It’s the sign of the Prancing Pony. Maybe Butterbur is in there, with a forgotten message from Gandalf.

Joel was hungry again and declined to join in my speculation. We were on a perilous journey across Middle Earth and his supplies of lembas bread were dwindling.

Day 2: Carneddau

Big day. I woke up the next morning really excited, like a fucking puppy. Time for the Carneddau.

We packed a lot of extra food—sandwich each, a large mushroom quiche, pockets full of Snickers—and parked in the very last spot at the campground.

The trail starts on a fairly undemanding but consistent incline for about two miles up to a lake. Then, a set of near-vertical chossy switchbacks ascend to attain the plateau. We scarfed the mushroom quiche for power and started up.

You can do the Carnedd loop either way—as is custom with loops—and we met a whole stack of people picking their way down the switchbacks towards us. One woman walked a dog on a leash. Adventure dog.

Everyone asked if we were heading to Llewelyn.

“Yes. How was it?”

“Freezing and really windy on the summit.”

Thanks, good to know.

When we got to the ridge, there was a big jumble of rocks between us and Carnedd Llewelyn, the first summit. At the bottom of the pile, a teenage girl sat looking morose with her dad and brother.

Unsolicited: “it’s really windy over there.” I sensed an argument had been in full swing before we pitched up.

“Thanks, good to know.”

Back to this pinnacle of rocks, I was perplexed.

“My watch says the path goes straight over the top,” I said to Joel. “That can’t be right.”

But it was. A short section—maybe fifty feet—of Grade 2 scramble.

Now, it’s fine. Joel and I are both climbers but I generally prefer to have climbing shoes and a rope for these kind of moves, in this kind of wind, above this kind of airy exposure. I took a deep breath, summoned Frodo and Sam navigating the gullies on Emyn Muil, and locked on. Left hand on the arête, high right boot and we were up and over, just a long rocky plateau up to Llewelyn’s trig point.

The cold was startling. A few hundred feet below the summit, we put on all our layers. A briskly moving older chap coming from the other direction approached and told us, again, pretty windy up there. I warned him about the scramble he would soon have to descend (even hairier than going up) and he scoffed.

“Wait ‘til you see the gullies on the other side, now that’s spicy.”

He asked where we’d come from and I, a bit inarticulate with cold, indicated down towards the lake and the road.

Doesn’t even know the names, I could hear him thinking. “That lake-y thing?” he mocked.

I took it with uncharacteristic good grace. I was too cold to tell him to fuck off.

Then we were up in the clouds at the summit, in wind that could tear a jumper from your hands and carry it 100 feet away in a blink. Behind the windbreak, eating mackerel and tomato sandwiches, I felt very hardy and very, very British.

The cool thing about the Carnedds is that the toughest bit is just getting out to them: they’re pretty remote and not really visible from the road. But once you get up on the plateau it’s just a little stroll across to bag three of the Welsh 3000s peaks—Llewelyn, Daffyd and Pen yr Ole Wen—before you descend off the plateau, down the fall line of water and scree to a river, then fields, then the road.

As you circle the ridge you also get Tryfan showing off from every angle, away across the road. Tryfan over the shoulder, Tryfan straight on, Tryfan sideways. God, she’s a looker. Never was there a more appealing ridge of climb-me stone. Tryfan is the spine of a stegosaurus. It’s the dorsal crest of a long submerged sea creature.

Dodging snow patches as we climbed up the gentle ridge to Dafydd, our next peak, I looked back.

Through a break in the clouds, we were on the edge of an enormous snowy cliff.

This is the angle on the Carnedds I’ve only ever seen from the train. It’s called Ysgolion Duon in Welsh, a vast expanse of vertical rock visible only from the Anglesey side.

The name means “the black ladders”. We were up above it.

Notice any linguistic similarities? Ysgolion and Osgiliath, the old city of Gondor? Remember the Argonath, the statues of ancient princes marking the entrance of Gondor? Up above the black ladder cliffs of Ysgolion Duon stand the peaks of David’s cairn (Carnedd Dafydd) and Llewelyn’s cairn (Carnedd Llewellyn), named for two ancient Welsh princes.

I told you Wales is Middle Earth.

We didn’t linger on Dafydd. As we started across to Pen yr Ole Wen, our third and final peak, two very young lads (late teens) came up the other way. They were wearing normal trainers and sweatpants.

“Careful!” One of them said without preamble. “Deep snow down there.” He was wet to the knees.

I was concerned but Joel was not.

“We’ll be fine.”

I warned them about the exposed scramble and asked if they were planning on doing the full loop. It was getting late.

“Yep, we have a torch.”

We wished them well and parted. I worried about them to Joel.

“Did you see what they were wearing? They were not prepared. At what point do you take responsibility for people when they are not prepared and ill-equipped for unknown dangers?”

“They’ll be fine. They’re young and the clouds on Llewelyn are lifting.”

But still I worried.

I checked the local news later and the next day just to make sure there were no reports of two young lads lost up on the Carnedd plateau. Nothing. They were fine and, next time, they’ll probably wear waterproof boots.

Incidentally, this is how we learn and change. Nobody is ever changed because they decided to change or because someone told them to change. They change because they live through something and it changes them. That’s it.

“I love doing stuff like this with you.” That’s Joel, on the last leg of the walk down to the car. “I don’t know many people I could do this with.”

“Yeah, people who would want to do it, you mean.”

“Seriously, it’s like you, me..” He named his sister and her husband. “And that’s it. Oh, and like, army people.”

Did I mention Joel was in the army? I don’t think I did. When he was 17, he thought he might want to be in the Parachute Regiment and spent a year training, running backpacks full of weights around Dorset trails.

Then he shipped off north for basic training but they kicked him out after a few months because he has Reynards. It’s a circulation issue: his hands become useless when cold. I think it may have something to do with his ever-present need to snack but I’m not a doctor. Good with words, bad with blood, me.

After the Carneddau, we were both starving. Not, like, a bit peckish. Like, gnaw-your-own-knuckles-red hungry.

There’s a whisper of Indian away down in the south on the way back to our lovely Air BnB. Will it be closed on Easter? Will they—as is custom in Wales—refuse to serve us food after 7pm?

No, it’s open and the food is hot and smells so delicious we order a curry each plus a plate of tandoori prawns and three veg curries on the side.

The waitress looks at me over her glasses and cheekbones.

“Just for the two of you?”

“Yep.”

“It’s too much, I think.”

“It’s not. I promise. We will eat it all.”

Well, we ate it all. It was so good, we scraped the bowls out.

The owner came out halfway through to praise my order.

“I said to myself, now, this is someone who knows how to order in an Indian restaurant. This is what I would order myself. I mean, tarka dal….!” He practically chef’s-kissed my order.

I sat back, full of curry and disproportionately pleased with myself for being able to order curries better than people in rural Wales. He doesn’t need to know I lived in Asia for five years.

When the waitress came over to clear the table, I gestured at the empty bowls: read it and weep.

She asked if we were staying in the village.

“No, we’re staying in Aberllefenni.”

“What?”

“Aberllefenni.”

Her puzzlement built.

“Aber…llefenni?” I tried a different pronunciation.

Another stern look over the cheekbones.

“I don’t know it.” Her tone said if she doesn’t know it, it’s not a thing. “Whay-yer?” (She means where but is Welsh).

“About ten miles that way.” I gestured.

“Oh….! Aberllefenni.” An entirely different arrangement of vowels and diphthongs. “I know it. I used to live in the village just before it. You know the one at the crossroads. Back in the 60s, 1966. I lived in one of those houses halfway down, on the left.”

Well, it turns out she used to live in that friendly village, the one I like, at the cross-roads, right next to the Quality Food Pub.

She told me back then it was all Welsh. Now, she said, it’s mostly English. She said there are still some Welsh but they’re all old like her. All the children, the young people, have left. No jobs.

I think that’s a real fucking shame, I said, with characteristic candour.

But, of course, I am part of the problem. I didn’t tell her we were staying in an Air BnB run by an English couple.

Day 3: Cadair Idris

A rest day, of sorts. We decided to do a small one, just up to the lake under Cadair Idris for a dip and then back.

Incidentally: can we take a minute with how Cadair Idris is basically Caradhras, said in a hurry? Or do I need to cool it with the LOTR parallels? I do? Well, fuck you. This is my essay.

Anyway, unlike its LOTR counterpart, it’s always sunny on Cadair Idris. I swear, it’s a little microclimate sun trap.

We walked up Cadair Idris stairs. It flattens out eventually and arcs towards a gorgeous lake in the arms of the corrie. By the time we heaved up the trail to the lake—a very steep never-ending set of stone steps beside a series of waterfalls—we were baking hot and gagging for a swim.

One problem: just before the lake appeared over the ridge, we came upon two young guys, about a hundred feet in front of us.

Now, I’m not shy but I’d rather not buckle down for some nude swimming in broad daylight right in front of strangers. A little distance, please.

We waited to see which way they would go.

They paused to consult a map and stopped. Then they veered back to the path and then off it again, looking puzzled.

Just trying to be friendly, I called:

“Are you looking for the lake? It’s just up there.”

He looked annoyed. I could see it in an instant.

He was annoyed I had noticed his uncertainty. He was annoyed not to appear well-informed at all times. He was annoyed—most of all—to be advised in the out-of-doors by a girl.

He answered in a scoffing tone, as if I was a moron.

“Yeah, one of them.”

One of the lakes? Now, forgive me, but I’ve been here before. There are not many lakes. There is one lake and it was not five minutes ahead. In fact, this particular area is defined by the singleness of its lake. There is literally one path and one lake. Everything else is vertiginous rock.

But his fragility was so intense, the poor kid.

I shrugged and said “ok”. I was really keen for my swim before I cooled down and, also, fuck this ridiculousness.

We found a spot in the sun behind some rocks, where the slope peeled away suddenly and the water was instantly, unfathomably deep.

This lake is very deep and very cold. I know how cold it is because Joel and I get in it naked every time we climb Cadair Idris.

It is as cold as snowmelt off Caradhras. It is cold enough to freeze your bits after ten seconds contact.

It is cold enough to scare a piss back into you. I speak from experience.

Day 4: The Rhinogs.

I’ve already written about how much I love the Rhinogs, so won’t go into that again.

Last year, we did Rhinog Fawr (Big Rhinog) so this year I had my eye on Rhinog Fach (little Rhinog), throwing in Y Llethr (The Hill) for good measure.

The Welsh have a lot of mountains to name so I don’t begrudge them an occasional lack of imagination.

It wasn’t to be: crappy weather blew in just as we crested The Hill so we bailed off the intimidating scrambles up and over little Rhinog. Next time.

Anyway, walking down off The Hill, we followed a line of boulders atop a hidden river. I never saw the water but could hear it, close enough to touch.

I was looking up across the valley at a vertiginous slope. There was a gray line running down it at about 80 degrees and I couldn’t quite work out what it was.

It didn’t follow the fall line so it couldn’t be water or scree. It couldn’t be a trail because it went straight up the cliff.

I enlisted Joel.

“What’s that, do you think?”

He looked. “A wall.”

“No fucking way.”

“Yes, it must be.”

“Not a fucking chance. It’s vertical. Who builds a wall up a cliff? No fucking way that’s a wall.”

We argued about it for twenty minutes. He got out his OS map but couldn’t convince me. It started to rain again.

A farmer and his young son and sheepdog came by on a quad bike. He smiled at us, so I called out.

“Please can you settle an argument?”

He wrapped an arm around the dog to stop him jumping off and gave me a cheeky smile.

“Long as I don’t start another one…”

I blushed. Charmer. “What’s that?” I pointed.

“The hill?”

“No, that line there. He says it’s a wall,” I gestured at Joel, “but I reckon there’s no way.”

“Way-ull.” Said with about sixteen syllables and a grin. “Looks like you’re going to be the one doing the washing up then.”

“It’s a wall?”

“It’s a wall.”

“No way!”

“Oh yeah. Those old farmers, they’d build walls anyway-err. That’s your bit of the mountain, that’s my bit. They’d divide it all up.”

He shaded his eyes from the rain and peered across the valley.

“See that scree slope there?” He pointed off to a remote scree slope on a lofty peak. “See the line up the middle? That’s a wall too.”

Black-laddered cliffs, rivers you can’t see and walls to nowhere. Wales is magic, even if it isn’t Middle Earth.

—

Back in the car, a cover of that old song by the Goo Goo Dolls came on. You know the one.

“And I don’t want the world to see me…”

I sang along and said to Joel:

“I bet you don’t even know this song.”

“I know this song.”

“Not the original though, that came out before you were born.”

“No it didn’t. I was like one.”

“Fine, it came out before you knew you had toes.”

“I knew I had toes. Babies know they have toes. If you pinch a baby’s toe, it cries.”

“Yeah but it doesn’t know that’s its toe. It doesn’t go: ‘hey asshole that’s my toe.’”

—

Two drives. Four hikes. That concludes this six-course meal.

Being outside is food. It’s an Ent-draught, drinking the air and tasting green water. Joel, on the other hand, still needs food. He needs his six-course meal, interspersed with some walking.

I know we’re different. He’s a geek, I’m a dork. He’s a cat, I’m a dog. We see things differently.

Ultimately? Just a couple of nerds, walking in the hills.

—

Back in London, I passed an old couple on the street. They were both tiny, white hair, barely higher than my shoulders.

He was nuzzling her face.

“I’m so lucky,” is all I heard him say as we passed.