Terry Taylor, Regional Rep for North Wales, has sent us this report of running his first Regional Ramble in Snowdonia on 31st July:
“I Do Not Believe It”. After almost a month of sun and tropical temperatures, I have somehow managed to choose the wettest day, with the worst forecast! Don’t you just hate it when that happens?
However, to the surprise of Tony Thomas, our link man with First Hydro, everybody was keen to ‘Go for it’, in true DR tradition; everybody being 3 persons on scooters +one wife/walker, my friend Clive as our Rescue Man, and me. So away we went, as early as possible to maximise the dry start at least, up the tarmac road towards Marchlyn Dam. Since Ron had a small scooter, I’d asked Clive to bring a couple of planks for the cattle grids, which turned out to be extremely useful, as there are 5 of them (x2) and this made it easier for Ron.
We arrived at the dam in due course for good views of Anglesey and Puffin Island, plus Ynys Llanddwyn, where we’ll be going in September. The sky became more threatening here with the feeling of rain in the air. We’d had a quick sandwich before the rain arrived with a vengeance on our descent to start Part ll of our ramble, the climb to the Surge Pond.
We battled on, against the driving rain and rising wind, with battery problems for Tony and Ron on his shopping trolley. The rain came down harder and harder, as Ron went slower and slower. Tony turned round and went back with Clive, while I attempted to push Ron with my scooter from behind. It was fairly successful, but ultimately in vain, as I had no chance of doing that on the final steep and winding hill, a bit like Mont Ventoux.
But we did get a view, through a gap in the clouds, of Llyn Padarn ‘thousands of feet below us’ before we had to admit defeat, and turned to the descent, where Ron’s amazing little scooter had a new lease of life and left us standing. “Speedy Ronzales”!!
We didn’t achieve our objective, but it felt like a great victory. Nobody moaned about the weather at all. Ron’s wife, Lynda, never stopped smiling once – she was a ‘rock’ for Ron (and the rest of us) and Clive was fantastically helpful, anticipating their needs before they were needs.
They all said, sat in our Campervan at the bottom, “when can we have another go? That seems to me, very much like the “Sound of Success” They were all ‘buzzing’ for sure. After a fairly sleepless night on Tuesday, I was mightily relieved at quite how well (I felt) it went. They were all brilliant! Tony did say on leaving, “If you want to go again, just contact me”.
Taking part in this DR Regional Ramble were: Tony H, Andrew C, Ron & Lynda C, Clive H as our essential Rescue & Retrieval Man, and Terry Taylor -Regional Rep for North Wales.
Not forgetting Celia Taylor as Basecamp Organiser/ tea-maker-in-chief, and Tony Thomas, (of First Hydro) whose amazing helpfulness made the whole thing possible.
