so the stream crossings were done in a darkness that was rather too profound for comfort. My compass bearing had been spot on, though, despite it being the headlight streak of a distant car that finally guided me back to my remote parking space. My final steps were beckoned by the little red blinking LED of my car alarm indicator. Even in mountain places – and dark-sky reserves, at that – it seemed electric light had its minor uses. I was intensely glad to be back at the car and, however foolish the decision had been, equally glad I’d pressed on, albeit at the cost of comfort. My trousers were so sodden I drove the 200 miles back home in my boxer shorts. Things had to get easier.
* If you’re interested (and who wouldn’t be!), the lowest quality for what is considered a dark sky – according to the International Dark Sky Association – is that ‘at a minimum the Milky Way should be visible and sky conditions should approximately correspond to limiting magnitude 5.0 (or Bortle Class 6).’ The Bortle Scale was created by John Bortle to aid astronomers, and runs from 1 (where shadows are cast on the ground from the sheer brilliance of the stars overhead) to inner-city skies of 8 and 9 (the sickly glow by which Bortle helpfully notes one can ‘easily read’).
* This is Exmoor, granted International Dark Sky Reserve Status in 2011. As of 2014, the other six reserves are in Namibia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Germany and Ireland. Honourable mention must go here to Galloway in southern Scotland, which in 2009 became a Dark Sky Park and has been decreed as naturally possessing the highest quality of dark sky. The difference between a park and a reserve is that the latter requires the cooperation of neighbouring communities to restore and maintain the quality of the night sky.
* It was reported with some degree of disgust that one of the songs the trespassers sang was the left-wing protest song ‘The Red Flag’, although several renditions of ‘(It’s a long way to) Tipperary’ were also given, as well as a modified version of Harry Lauder’s ‘The Road to the Isles’, with key locations in the song replaced with local landmarks for the occasion.
Somewhere between the Brecon Beacons and the country’s north coast, the mountains of Wales sharpen and slough off their grassy skins. Southern Snowdonia marks the changing point, and here there’s a belt of mountains evidently conflicted about which camp they belong in. The shapes of these ranges waver between the cutting ruggedness of the peaks in the northern part of Snowdonia and the queer emerald forms of their counterparts in South Wales. The names of the big groups of hills here tickle recognition for some, but only just: the Arans, the Tarrens, the Dovey Forest, the Rhinogs. Journey from the south into this region and steep diagonals, or the jag of a peak on the skyline ahead might symbolise your steady transition to the wild, hard north. But conversely, enter from the north and you might describe the landscape around you as softening, easing towards the sprawling south. It’s a fascinating, disjointed menagerie. Then you see Cadair Idris, and suddenly you’re not looking at anything else.
A month after being nearly drowned on the Black Mountain, I found myself in southern Snowdonia during a spring that had finally sprung. Colour had returned to the landscape. New life was exploding. Bluebells bobbed on embankments beside roads sweeping through richly-carpeted passes and tired-looking villages. Sunlight diffused through new leaves, lighting the world through miniature shades of green and giving the afternoon a feeling of intense optimism.
I’d spent an uncertain twenty minutes dividing my attention between the road and the skyline – punctuated occasionally with visits to the rumble strip – trying to establish whether my objective was sliding into view ahead in some distance-skewed fashion. When it finally did appear, it seemed preposterous to think I could miss it.
There’s evidence that the Elizabethans considered Cadair Idris to be the highest peak in the British Isles, and it’s an easy mistake to forgive. Approach it from the north and it smacks you in the face from a distance of ten miles. It’s massive: a wide, wrinkled battlement of brown, crag-hung rock sprawled across the southern horizon with intimidating abruptness. Showell Styles – author of The Mountains of North Wales, of which more later – described the vision of Cadair from the north as a ‘hunched eagle with a tremendous wingspan’, and it’s wonderfully apt. Cadair isn’t the highest peak in this part of Snowdonia – not quite – but its visual presence is enough to make it seem as if it is. Perhaps this apparent brawniness is because the mountain’s base is at sea level, thereby earning every millimetre of its 893-metre height over a relatively short distance. The town of Dolgellau, just to the north, sits on the zero contour and so completes the contrast on a human scale. But the reflex assessment upon sighting Dolgellau isn’t that it nestles up against Cadair Idris; it’s more like the town cowers beneath it.
I chose the climb from Talyllyn, a way known as the Minffordd Path. Some say the path from the north – the Fox’s Path, which climbs the cliffier aspect of the mountain directly – is the best. From the north Cadair appears as a massif of three summits, split into upturned prows in several places by aggressive staircases of ridge. It appears impossibly impregnable, and impressively immense. The Fox’s Path offers superb views of the Irish Sea, Dolgellau below, and the bristly Cyfrwy Arête, probably the most blisteringly dramatic ridge climb south of Scotland. But this route doesn’t take you into the mountain’s inner keep; it climbs this northern wall and, once atop, walks the ramparts to the highest point, missing one of the main arenas of the mountain. Plus, instead of one hard ascent, the climb from Minffordd is a languid, gentle rise, followed by one mercifully swift but screeching pull. To me, it seemed to be the best choice to appreciate the many levels on which Cadair engages the senses. Plus, with memories still raw from the Black Mountain, it clearly seemed the preferable option – especially since, having not learned my lesson in the Brecon Beacons, I had a summit sleepover planned.
Rounding the corner at the Gwesty Minffordd Hotel, I swung immediately right into the smooth, wooded car park. I was late. Dinner in the seductive surroundings of a fast-food restaurant – and many stops along the road to admire the views amidst the day’s deepening shadows – meant that my plan for getting to the summit by sunset was now on a perilously tight schedule. In my pocket was a mobile phone newly loaded with GPS mapping software, which I’d decided to bring as a backup to my map following the collapse of my planning on the Black Mountain. It was not only prudent, but genuinely useful; although keen to find my way by my nose as much as possible, with traditional navigation as a failsafe, I had no qualms about using reliable gadgetry to ease my way. If anything, it would help me keep my eyes on the landscape rather than buried in a map. Pulling my overnight rucksack from the boot, I hastily chucked in a few provisions already bagged up in waterproof bags – some of which I’d labelled with helpful words like ‘food’, some of which I hadn’t – doubled-back to check the car was locked and set off into the mild evening air in something of a fluster, giving a quick look around the car park as I went. It was deserted but for one other car. With a plunging feeling I realised its owner might have similar designs on inhabiting the summit for a night, but just as I approached the gate onto the path I saw two walkers emerging into the car park, looking pink and happy. One, a greying man with a map case around his neck, smiled as he held the gate for me. ‘All yours,’ he said. And with that, I had one of Britain’s most atmospheric and intricately legendary mountains all to myself.
The mythology associated with mountains is prolific, and pervades cultures regardless of time or place. The reason for this isn’t really a mystery: they are the land’s most obvious, most dramatic physical feature. But those early peoples who settled beside mountains didn’t see them as objectives,
