Right of the Land: The Walk

July 1st

Trefor to Morfa Nefyn

‘I know why it’s raining, it’s raining because we’re buying all the chapels and turning them to posh houses. That’s why it’s raining’. The lady, wizened and Welsh and wry in rainhood and mac, told me as she sat beside me, hand on my arm. Maybe she was right. It was July and I’d been walking a fortnight under a near constant leaden sky. Today I was heading to start at Trefor, in a clapped out old tin bus that barely managed to keep out the drizzle as we bumped around country corners. Me and half the aged population of the Llyn Peninsula it seemed, their frail hands gripping the backs of the chairs in front of them and our warm breath steaming windows to obscure the grey skies outside.

The bus dumped me alone and lumpen with coat and bag and flask in Trefor, beside a phonebox and skip empty save for a puddle. I made my way damply to the harbour wall where my walk was to start. The sea rolled thickly on the shoreline, as heavy as the clouds above and oily shags picked through the pebbles disconsolately. I looked out to a sea which melted into sky just yards ahead, and, my eyelashes and hair already decorated with teardrops of rain, I began.

Past a crescent of cliffs and deserted farmhouse, I began the ascent of Yr Eifl, a range that had stood glowering and forbidding before me for the past few days. I climbed and climbed while the clouds lowered and lowered and the sound of my footsteps was matched by a steady drum of rain. Gradually, signs of recent occupation receded and as I gained height, I left sheep, my only company, below. I kept climbing. The mountain, saturated as it was, could hardly contain the deluge I was now in the midst of. I dragged myself up barely a path, snagging through long, heavy grass and gripping the half standing stone wall beside me to steady. Fresh runoff gushed past my feet, dragging me back. I tried to plant my feet firmly, make certain each footstep before the next, and just keep on going. Upwards. I remember my breathing audible, breath crying and cursing at the effort, as the rain rain rain kept on, relentless. Walk twenty steps, stop, gasp, steady myself, twenty more. And as I walked, the fog deepened, until I could see just my feet below me, the wall to my right and a metre in front. I trusted that the path, and my map soaked and gripped in my hand, was true.

Finally, I felt the ascent soften, the wall ended in a sharp right away from me, and instead, as the rasp of my breathing controlled itself, I became aware of the quiet fog furring my senses. Suddenly, I missed the certainty of the climb, and it’s struggle, and became tentative. I looked left and right, blindly into cloud, and walked on, picking my way along the summit of the hill, entirely alone. I could have cried when the crunch of gravel revealed that my feet had found a road, which must lead somewhere. Soaked and cold and tired, I followed it down, with fleeting ghosts of nervous sheep skidding over a ridge to my right, and gradually the fog receded and my senses were restored. Finally, soaked and wobbly legged with either exertion or relief, I reached the village of Nefyn, which, past lunch was shuttering up against the elements. Dark shop doorways read ‘Closed’. The few people I saw ran, heads down, from house or shop to car, to speed off, skidding from the kerb to retire at home, behind thick curtained windows, and warm.

I made my way through the village, and bought a chocolate bar in the only shop that seemed open, to eat with my flask of tea on a damp bench overlooking the sea. The beach was muddy and storm debris laced the high tide line, but again, the tide rolled calm. Submerged rocks glowed like reluctant emeralds and longed to be explored. I remember sighing, and restored by the mix of sugar and warmth, looking on to the bay before me, salt and seaweed in my nose. Towards Porthdinllaen and a sky that looked slightly lighter. I stood up, glad to keep walking.