Total ascent, 718m (2356ft).
Thursday, 25th July.
The Kangaroo Inn was completely dead last night, and it wasn't long before I was inclined to leave and get an early night in my far more welcoming B&B. I had another dream about white flashing lights and this turned out to be real as well; a really annoying flash every minute or so from a plastic thing on the ceiling.
The landlady was happy to make breakfast for me at 7:30 (earlier than she usually does it) so I could be away by 8:00 in cooler temperatures. They only have one room so at least she was done once I'd eaten. As usual the B&B experience was miles better than staying in a pub; the room, the breakfast, the personal touch (no not that sort of personal touch!).
Speaking of which, however, a peculiar thing happened early on in the walk today, at about 8:30. As I walked along a lane I passed a field gate on my left, behind which a man was standing. In one hand he had his glasses and in the other a hankie. He looked a bit surprised to see me but nevertheless when I said, "Morning" I expected him to reply with a similar greeting. Instead he said, "Blimey, water meters, they're so hard to find most of the time", which immediately aroused my suspicion as to his intentions. I'm trusting that the hankie was to clean his glasses with, and that my suspicion was the only thing aroused.
My Met Office app was forecasting wall to wall sun today, with the exception of 4 hours this afternoon. It was predicting a 50% chance of a thunderstorm in my vicinity at 2pm, 3pm, 4pm and 5pm. My thoughts immediately turned to a probability lesson I'd done with my Year 4 class a few weeks ago. Lots of the children had 'got it' at the ridiculously basic level we are supposed to introduce probability at and things were getting far fetched (eg. "How likely am I to go to the moon before school finishes? Is it certain, likely, unlikely or impossible?" "Well, a moon alien could land on the back yard and knock you out and put you in its spaceship and get you there really quickly, so I think it's likely."), so we moved on to coin tossing. The chance of tossing 4 consecutive heads is 1 in 16 (½ x ½ x ½ x ½, Pascal's Triangle and all that, stay with me), so I translated that to the 50% per hour storm forecast. I had a 1 in 16 chance of avoiding a storm, not great all in all.
The morning was glorious and the trail good for the most part (a couple of fields of crops and a hideously overgrown stretch of path notwithstanding). One of the features of The Heart of Wales Line Trail is that it gives the option to visit all of the stations on the line, via optional 'station links'. This isn't something I intend to do as I want to spend more time on higher ground, but I did detour to Bucknell station after eating lunch on a bench in the lovely churchyard. While I was there two things happened. One, a train pulled in to the station. I'm not sure why I was so pleased, but I wasn't expecting one so I was. Two, I walked around the end of the station building and there was a shop selling ice creams. Oh joy! I don't think I've ever had an ice cream that tasted so good (it was blueberry and clotted cream btw). Context is everything.
A long climb through a wood followed, and at 13:36 I heard the first clap of thunder, a long way to the east. I wanted to get to the top before rain arrived so I increased my pace, the thunder getting ever nearer. It was only when I emerged from the wood that I could see that the once blue sky was now a very dark grey. The irony of wanting to get to the top of a hill to witness a thunderstorm wasn't lost on me, but I pressed on to a copse at the highest point, ducked under some heavily leaved alders, got waterproofed up and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
The storm wasn't going to make it, and I watched gloomily as it headed northwards to my left and became increasingly pathetic. By now there wasn't a flash to be seen or a rumble to be heard. I have no idea why I was so disappointed.
My route now skirted around Knighton to the north and joined Offa's Dyke Path. I was on familiar territory and the descent into Knighton was as enjoyable as ever. Knighton sits right on the border of England and Wales. In fact of its population (as of 2011) 3007 live in Powys and just 140 in Shropshire. I'm not sure that's a balanced fight when the pubs close on a Friday! I can't imagine a fight on a Thursday evening but you never know.
No comments:
Post a Comment