[M4A] Story Time: Mountain Hike

Transcript

Today, I'm going to tell you about a wonderful place called Wales. It's my favorite place to be. Whenever I need to be in touch with nature, I will book a trip and I will walk the mountains, whichever mountain that may be, wherever in Wales.

They're all so beautiful, and they're all kind of the same. They're, comparatively to the UK, they're fairly big. They always have a lot of majestic mountain ranges surrounding them, lakes, the shore, whatever, valleys, farms, small towns, lots of sheep, sometimes cattle, sometimes horses even.

There's a lot of farmland where the mountains are. I'm going to tell you about one trip that I made. It's in a place called the Brecon Beacons.

It's one of the national parks in the UK, and it is very remote. You're in the middle of nowhere once you get there. There aren't that many big cities.

The closest one, I think, is Swansea, down at the south shore. Almost every time that I've walked in the mountains of Wales, the weather's been much the same, and I count myself lucky every time that I don't get a storm or thunder or a blizzard. What I usually get is grey weather, overcast or drizzling.

Quite often it's foggy, low visibility, so you have to trust the track, and maybe you don't need to be an expert navigator for every mountain, but you certainly need to pay attention to the path that you're walking. This particular mountain range that I chose to walk was around two lakes. They're both equally beautiful, but unfortunately I didn't have the luxury of viewing much of the first one as I walked around it, because as I walked around it, it was too foggy.

I couldn't see it. I could only see maybe about 10, 20 meters ahead of me, which is somewhere around 30 to 60 feet. I didn't mind.

The path was fairly clear, it was muddy, it was drizzling, and the wind was picking up. But I dressed for the occasion. I had a thin layer of very good, high-quality, we call it super underwear in Norwegian.

I don't know what it's called. It's supposed to just stick to your skin and keep close, and it's wool. Then I had a layer over top of that again, and then a jacket.

And that jacket is windproof, unfortunately not rainproof, so it did get soaked with the drizzle, and the wind didn't help much when it blew all the rain on me sideways, even so far as to come from almost down below. Well, maybe that wasn't the rain so much as it was just the wet fog. I kept walking on the mountain range that almost envelops the lake, at least half of it.

It kind of nestles it into its palm, that's almost what it looks like. And on the rim, you could theoretically see all the way down to the lake if it weren't for the fog, but I didn't mind. I think it's so beautiful when the fog just makes everything quiet.

And the wind tries to break it, but the fog dampens the sounds. So you have this little local area around you, this little bubble of acoustics, where you can hear the harsh winds, but you can't hear anything else from the outside. Makes you feel all alone, and in a good way.

Makes you feel humble, to be at the mercy of the wind, of the fog, of the rain, of getting lost in the mountains, having no internet connection, nothing to save you. It's nice. I kept walking, and as I passed on the rim of the mountain range that nestled the first lake, the mountains kept going even past that lake, and I dipped down for a bit in between another mountain range that did exactly the same.

It was like they were mirror opposites of each other. And I kept walking, and when I started, it was 6.30 in the morning, just after sunrise. And the morning fog caught me on the first mountain range, but on the second one, it started to clear up, and I could see down all the way to the second lake.

I felt very emotional when I did that, because I couldn't even see to the first lake, except for one single glimpse when the fog randomly cleared for about 10 seconds. It was cold. The wind was blowing so hard that I could barely hold my phone to check my time, to take pictures, to see if I had any internet connection to connect to my GPS.

As I walked downwards, they had made steps. They had made steps out of stone. Somebody had painstakingly placed those there, hundreds of them, and they led me down what would otherwise be a very muddy trail, down a very stony, steppy trail.

It was made out of redstone. The soil is red in that area, and I can only imagine how much work that must have been to make a staircase up in the mountains. I appreciated that as I walked down, and I sidled along the mountainside.

It was a very thin path. It was made like almost a ladder, zigzagging down a few times, before safely coming down to the shore of the second lake. I call it a shore, even though it was a lake, because the wind was blowing, and even though I know it was limited, and it was a finite lake, it ended.

Even though I knew that, when I stood there by the sand, the waves kept crashing like I was back at the ocean. I just couldn't smell the salt, but everything else seemed to be there. It was tranquil to hear the waves lulling me, welcoming me down from the mountain and telling me that now the worst part is over, and it was.

At this point, you can imagine a bean-shaped circuit. I had been walking on the far side of the bean, and now I was going into the concave side, the one that dips inwards, and then go back to where I started. So I was halfway there, but not really.

It went much faster, because it was relatively flat. It wasn't mountainous anymore, so I kept walking. It was swampy, or boggy, grassy, and as I passed by those mountains that I had walked just a few hours prior, I could see sheep dotting the edges of the mountain.

Sheep who were climbing, or grazing, or going about their sheep business. They were just tiny dots. I couldn't make out what they were at first, until I came closer and realized that they weren't rocks, they were sheep.

They moved, and once in a while I could hear a very distant little baa. It was comforting to see that the sheep were living there, grazing. It didn't seem so impossible anymore, even though I was very tired.

My knees were screaming from all the downwards walking. It's always easier to walk upwards than downwards, I think. But none of that anymore, now it was mostly flat.

I just walked around the sides of the mountains that I had walked, and I could appreciate the scale of them. From the top, that's one thing, but looking up at the foot of the mountain, that's a whole different perspective. Especially knowing in your body just how long it took to walk up and to walk down.

I walked along the sides and I saw more people coming in. They started their hikes later than I did. I took a moment to appreciate the fact that I went early, and so that I could appreciate being alone in the green, grey, brown, and red colors of Wales.

Those are my favorite colors now, and Wales is my favorite place. I don't need the good weather, I don't need the sun, I don't need the wind to be quiet. In fact, I don't want it to.

I want the harsh winds, and I want the rain and the drizzle. And when I come home, there's nothing like eating just anything. Drinking water, well, I did throughout, but resting, having a bath, laying down in bed, letting your knees settle, and maybe even have a nap.

It's always so nice to let your body slowly figure out that, hey, I did this, I made this trip. The whole trip took six hours, and every time I look up a route to see how long it would take normally, it's always underestimated. I think maybe I'm not in as good a shape as the people making those trails.

It doesn't matter. Now, another thing that I like about these trips is that I don't have a car, so I rely on public transport. I always go alone, not always, but mostly, and I tend to not spend too much time planning these trips.

They're usually either spontaneous, or I just start planning them late, and it's always fine, as long as I can get a lodging, as long as I know that I can get there, and as long as I know I've got enough food to survive.