Don’t Let The Weather Beat You.
After my run in disgusting weather yesterday morning, I didn’t stop there. I did lots of work and then headed across to the beach in the afternoon for a nice windsurf session. It was a little gusty to start with but perfect in the gusts with some big waves out the back as well. It was a little worrying in the lulls though as I didn’t fancy getting caught out in amongst the big waves without enough power to outrun them.
A few of the student windsurfers turned up later in the day as well. Tom, Sam and Rupert and they all joined me on the water for a bit. By now the wind had filled in properly again and I was a little overpowered with my big 5.6m sail and Naish Hybrid Freewave board. I didn’t stay out much longer and left the students to it, although as I was de-rigging they were all on the beach sorting out what looked like some broken kit for Rupert.
After that, it was back to work and then off towards Angler’s Retreat for a night ride on my mountain bike. The drive to where we meet is always an interesting one, usually with amazing views as we drive up the mountain road towards Nant y Moch and ‘Windy Gap’. Windy Gap as we call it must be one of the bleakest place in Ceredigion. It is almost always windy there, usually raining, several degrees colder than anywhere else, and if it isn’t raining then it’s likely to be sleet or snow.
Last night was no exception. Thick fog on the drive up meant that there were no views to see. In fact at times there was nothing at all to see, not even the tarmac in front of the car. I was driving along with my nose on the windscreen just so that I could see the edge of the road and even then had to stop completely a couple of times as I just couldn’t see anything at all. If you know the road then you’ll understand my caution as there is a pretty big, unguarded drop to one side.
Once at Windy Gap, visibility was still zero, it was blowing a gale so was difficult to get out of the car and it was absolutely pouring with rain. Perfect conditions for a bike ride in the dark! John turned up, mentioned the fact that he had a few incidents on the way up due to the fog and we set off into the mist and murk on our bikes.
We didn’t do a long ride, just headed off towards Angler’s Retreat, down Al’s Descent into Artists Valley and then followed the fire-roads back to the top. There were loads of frogs out enjoying the wet weather and many of the trails had turned into raging torrents. Because of the amount of water about we decided against the full Figure of Eight loop as there was no way we would have got through the fords. Instead we dropped down the top of the MX Trails to the mines and then had a slog back up the hill to the cars – Finding them in the mist wasn’t easy though and as we approached we noticed that we had parked right next to a huge articulated lorry that we hadn’t seen before through the murk!
It was then back into the cars for the tentative journey back down the mountain. Although, John headed off along a fire-road in the wrong direction. I’m not sure what he was doing. Either he was avoiding the treacherous mountain road and taking a long route back via Artists Valley or he is still out there hopelessly lost in the hills!
