Sunday morning dawns: I’ve been awake with pain for some time and I do NOT want to go walking!
However, porridge having been made and eaten, coffee drunk, rucksacks sorted with 2 litres of water and a little tube of sun lotion we head off, both of us wondering why we get so grumpy with each other before we head off for a walk. A couple of hours over Welsh twisty roads and eventually we reach our destination laughing at the sign that says “SatNav does NOT work”….it does if your programme in the Longitude and Latitude! Joanna (Lumley’s!!) dulcet tones tell us that we have “reached your destination, darling”. Thanks, Jo!
I am reluctantly drawn to the panorama stretching out before us. It looks like a rocky, bleak wilderness, but having recently developed a bit of a taste for rocky playgrounds (Glyder Fach!) I sense a stirring within me that whispers “Yes, I want to go and investigate!! That looks interesting and so does that!!” This is probably helped by the glorious sunshine and heavenly blue skies. Who WOULDN’T have fun on a day like this?

We set off walking over a bit of marsh to get to the path by some farm buildings and then head right into the woods by a sign that handily points to the “Roman Steps” (apparently actually a medieval pony route!) I can be a chilly bunny and am usually dressed much warmer than my companions but even I soon take my fleece off. The woods are lovely, reminding me of walks in Glenvarragil on the Isle of Skye when I was a child.

The river is perling softly beside us and although the woodland is quite open where we are, there is enough shade provided from time to time to make walking a very pleasant, gentle experience. Eventually we come to a gate where the woodlands stop and the land opens out much more and whoops! There it is. Rhinog Fawr.

I’m still excited by the landscape, a little closer Rhinog Fawr looks like a much bigger beast but having challenged ourselves and our walking abilities more and more recently, we are looking forward to this. I've been diagnosed recently with Rosacea (a skin condition made worse by wind, sun, high temperatures and physical exertion, so WHY am I walking a mountain?) and have already applied copious amounts of factor 50 to my face, neck and ears. As we are now into more open ground, and the sun feels stronger my arms get it too! We start a more serious section of ascent & I make a discovery! Long legs are GOOD for stepping up steepish sections of rocky path and more to the point, my legs are stronger as I am leaping (yes, almost gazelle like!) up sections which even a few weeks ago I would have needed a hand to give some oomph!
We reach Llyn Du, a beautiful little lake that is a natural resting place as we have a bite to eat and view the remaining walk to the summit (about 1km Nina informs me and a couple of hundred metres ascent).

We optimistically reckon it’ll take about an hour and a half to get to the top. (I have to stop here as my sides are splitting me )
After a little rest we head off round to the left of the Llyn. The path disappears as you are climbing over slabs of rock and I would not like to guess as to what this would be like in rain. It might be ok, but if the rock turned slippy I would imagine it would make progress hazardous at best. Turning a corner we see figures high above us on the skyline above a scree slope that I in my cowardice veto. (As a child I had a tiny slip down some scree on the Quirang and it has left me extremely wary of the stuff ). We continue to skirt round the Llyn and come to a wall running across the landscape and up the hill. This wrong foots us for a minute, but Nina checks map and headings etc and figures we’re ok just on a different path to the one we were aiming for! At that moment a Snowdonia Mountain Ranger appears and informs us that Rhinog Fawr is lousy with paths, you can’t go wrong and this is one of the main ascents up. Umm, ok then! We follow the wall up and it turns out that yeah! The place is lousy with paths that aren’t on the map……Nina and I ‘decide’ to follow several of them (to be equitable you understand) . It is by now getting REALLY hot and to be honest we are both struggling with the heat and exertion. Do we stop? How close are we to that seemingly ever elusive summit? Is it sensible to keep going in this heat? We stop for a mini-meltdown and hear voices above us as a group of walkers descend just a little way on. We go to investigate. How far is the top? What’s the terrain like? I am disturbed to here rocks falling and voices saying “Look out, below”. That sounds like scree and yup, the friendly group leader says once you are over the scree (hahahahahaha!!!!!) It is ‘just’ a climb up a boulder gully and then there’s the summit and oh by the way views are amazing. Hmm.
We look up at the slope and I am not at all convinced but off we set. Nina goes first and is doing really well. I make it a couple of steps, it might even have been one and I am frozen ridged and terrified to the spot. We have just seen kids come down this and older adults some of whom looked experienced, others not at all, so please don’t be thinking it is some kind of grade 3/4 winter scramble! I am hyperventilating, crying and totally unable to move. Nina is so good, calling encouragement etc and telling me I can do it. Somehow and I DON’T KNOW how, I move one foot and I am gripping the rocks above me for dear life. The dizziness from the fear and hyperventilation passes and the tears dry as I realise that I have to do it. Nina is above me, she has made it that far it MUST be possible. I shuffle forward on my knees, grasping at rocks, edging forward inch by painful inch. I gasp in fright as rocks that I think are secure fall away and leave me scrabbling for another. In all honesty it probably wasn’t anywhere NEAR as bad as this, but believe me, this is how I felt. I have never used my upper arms like this before. Fear, nae terror are giving them a strength I never knew I had. We enter the ‘boulder gully’ and I begin to feel a little more secure. The drop is not quite as steep and we are moving ever so slightly further away from it. I am heading back into my ‘long-legged’ comfort zone and then suddenly, movingly, magically the trig point appears! WHAT fear? THERE it is……talk about your holy grail (I believe Nina made some crack about it being Easter and my having certainly paid my penance!! Missing the point, but thank you love

As I see the view over the other side towards Rhinog Fach I KNOW I have to turn to see the expression on Nina’s face as she sees it for the first time. That for me is some of the TRUE magic of our walking together. Her face breaks into wonderful, happy laughter and so does not disappoint me. I knew she would love it and so do I. There have been breathtaking glimpses of the coast all the way up and now the panorama is spectacular of Cardigan Bay with Harlech to our right and Barmouth to our left.

The views over to Aran Fawddy and Cadair Idris do not disappoint either. We meet lots of friendly people at the top. Some of whom came our route, some of whom appear from very directions proving the rangers point really!
It was a wonderful day out on the hills and needless to say we took a very different route down!