It’s all gloomy December days right now – grey, blustery, drizzly, cold – which is annoying, as it’s August. The forecast last week when I booked this cycle-camping trip (my first to this part of Wales) was pretty good, but once I’d paid for my train fares, it went as pear-shaped as a pear. A windfall pear. Last night we indeed had the threatened 60mph gusts and heavy rain thanks to another of these spiteful first-name storms we have these days.
(It was so much easier when storms were anonymous. Can’t they see that nominative meteorological phenomena is causing climate change? It must be that, not the petrol.)
However, last night, I dodged the bullet. With the limited resistance of my Vango Banshee 300 tent to high winds in mind, I’d decided to book in to a bunkhouse tonight in Llangian, a pretty village on the west of the scenic, lumpy peninsula. Heading there from Porthmadog had been a long, long slog into a headwind along a busy A road, but eventually I’d got off onto the quiet back lanes – many of them agreeably flat – which characterise the area.
With a sociable bunkhouse kitchen, a dorm to myself, and a half-decent forecast for today, I was feeling pretty pleased with things. Until I looked at the forecast again in the morning and found it was now even worse than last night. And all indoor accommodation for tonight was full: I’d have to camp. In 70mph winds.
Oh.
I ploughed through the wind and up a long very steep climb to Rhiw, where a further climb along a track to a hilltop communications tower gave me a fantastic panorama over the peninsula.
Apart from a bloke on an e-MTB ‘walking’ his dog, there was no-one else there. It was all downhill from there to Aberdaron, a quaint harbour village full of tourists and a few cyclists.
I stopped off at a 14th-century cafe, Y Gegin Fawr (‘The Great Kitchen’) that used to be a stopping-off point for pilgrims heading for Bardsey Island. They used to be able to claim a free meal, apparently. I was happy to pay for my coffee, and to do it all in Welsh, to the approval of the pleasant young woman behind the counter.
I stopped off briefly at Porthor Beach, full of families and people armed with wetsuits, which I wasn’t, so there was no sea-dip for me today.
Back lanes – still mostly flat – led to Trefgraig, a campsite where I rendezvoused with my friends Si and Sue in their campervan. We sat pleasantly with food and drink in their awning all evening long, chatting and laughing, as the rain battered down.
I turned in at half ten; it was very breezy but I was sheltered by the thick hedgerow. I’d dodged Storm Lilian. So far…