The Long March – Bodfari to Llandegla

I got up at 8.15 after a decent night’s sleep, although getting up for a pee in a tent that you can’t sit up in during the night is a bit of a challenge. I don’t actually pee in the tent. I get up in it and from it to pee. OK, OK, OK. This genre of joke is exhausted. I won’t bore you with it again. Funny though innit! Frickin pure gold, as the Hoffmans from Portland, Oregon might say on Gold Rush. Then bash their safety helmets together. Praise the Lord but that is just badass summat. New series on tonight at 9.00pm. Better get my iPad recharged. Frickin awesome. 

I had my cheese and tomato sandwich bought from Tesco and it was frickin awesome. OK, OK, OK. the Gold Rush genre of phraseology is hereby frickin dispensed with. 

Frick!

Frick, Frick, Frick, Frickin Frick. 

Quest, Channel 37, 9pm. Be there or be square.

I’ve titled a blog ‘the Long March’ before, but this one was relatively short for a trekker. However it was killingly up and down on steep mountainsides in full sun and heat, climbing 4,000 feet with 16 kgs of rucksack and water on my back. And the march was 18 miles. My legs are stronger than my lungs,  but my legs were aching towards inaction. 

This is Bodfari looking back with a line of caravans to the bottom left of the church tower on the valley floor. That’s my campsite that is.

The first big summit was Penycloddiau which had a 4,000 year old burial chamber on the top as well as being one of a number of Clwydian hills that were perfect for defensive works and became hilltop villages in the Iron Age 2,500 years ago. Surrounding the hilltop are huge earthworks which have since eroded to small, but still impressive, fortifications. Dug by hand, antler and stone. If our ancestors reproduced on average at age 20, and we took the male of each generation since then (including ourselves), there would be 125 people. Take all 125 Smiths to Magaluf, give them 10 pints of Estrella each and there would be carnage. I’d probably be the least mental, strange as it sounds. 

 This is the defensive ditch.

Offa’s Dyke is a similar defensive works, dug out 1,250 years ago with a ditch 60 feet wide and a wall of earth over 8 feet high defending Mercia (middle England) from the Welsh. It is 150 miles long. No power tools, no bulldozers, no Hoffman’s, just English muscle. Thank you stock photo.

                            
Incredible. It would only be 60 Smiths going to Magaluf to reach back to Offa’s Dyke building. Still make a mess though. 

I had fully hydrated before I left the campsite and took one and a half litres of water with me. I was pouring out sweat and was so focused on grinding up the steep hills without dying that I didn’t take many photos. Sorry. But it took me 11 hours to get to Llandegla. 

I managed around 30 steps up the steepest parts before resting, although further into the journey that was reducing to 20. The pain in my legs was harsh but you’ve got to keep going and ignore it if you can. I got a last few views towards the coast before I got too far inland.

The hilltops got higher and I got more tired and I’d run out of water. Luckily I found a couple of springs about five miles apart and stocked up, rehydrated and reinvigorated at each one of them. The next photo is Moel Arthur, another hillfort with the defensive wall clear as day.

The next drop and climb were very steep and difficult up to a Jubilee fort at the top of Moel Famau. The views from there were stunning, over to the east towards the Dee estuary which I had left two days ago. 

Eight miles to go, broken up by a tea wagon in a car park in the valley below the Jubilee Tower. A cup of tea and a seat in the wagon out of the sun. Great. I’d been playing with ideas of wild camping or finding a campsite down in the valley before Llandegla. But now I was going to push it to get to Llandegla. Looking forward the hills were smaller and less steep. 

And eventually I made it to Llandegla just before 8pm and 11 hours after I set off from Bodfari. 

The local pub wasn’t serving food. The shop was shut. But the campsite owner saw the state I was in, not having eaten since breakfast, and made me two ham sandwiches and a cooked sausage. Heavenly. I’ll sleep well.
Night night.