CHAPTER 4
I knew Bethesda reasonably well, at least in a strip-map sense. I had ridden through it countless times, often stopped in one or more of the pubs, and replenished my longer-term food stocks from the little supermarket and my shorter-term ones from the chip shop or Chinese takeaway. What I had never done was to move any meaningful distance from the high street, so working through the narrower lanes up to the new chez Hiatt was a bit of a puzzle. I found it, in the end, a typical mining town terrace with a narrow front, some distance up the increasingly steep side of the valley. I gave a tap to the horn, and Penny was first out of the house, wrapping herself round me as I stepped down from the rather appropriately named Luton box-van’s driving seat.

“So good to see you, love!”

I grinned back at her.

“Does your being here to say hello mean what I think it does?”

“Yup! He’s sorting the kettle. Who’re these two new chums?”

I stepped back, one arm still around her waist, and waved at Dad and Lad, but before I could say anything, Kul cracked His One Joke. I gave him a mock glare.

“He does that to everyone, I am told. New colleague Kulwinder, his son Dal. I said I was running this lot up, and Kul offered. I assumed that, you know, you’d have space, what with taking on a bunkhouse”

She laughed out loud, pulling away to lead us into the house.

“How long are you all staying?”

“Oh, Kul and I negotiated Monday off, and Dal’s just finished his O-levels, so we have no rush”

“Well, this is going to sound pushy, then, but if we make a start on stuff tonight…”

I finished the sentence for her.

“We will have two full days for the hills?”

She stopped in her tracks, frowning slightly.

“I’m really sorry, Kul, but we’re being rude. Making assumptions. All three of us are outdoors types, climbers. I’m making plans, but I don’t know if that’s your sort of thing. Exercise and high places”

Dal laughed in an utterly open way.

“Mrs Hiatt, I do 400 metre running, and done loads of Duke of Edinburgh stuff. That was all around home, though. Do you know the Dark Peak?”

It was Penny’s turn to bark out a laugh.

“Er, just a bit. What about your Dad?”

“Dad? Oh, he’s all old and fat, but if you have a pub we can leave him in, he’ll be fine, as long as he doesn’t wander off”

Kul was snorting as well.

“Trained the lad well, I have! Penny, me and the lad did the Pennine Way together two years ago. That an adequate answer? And did you mention tea?”

Another laugh from Pen, and we entered the house, where I found myself hugging my old friend for the first time in what felt like far too long. Introductions made, tea consumed, and in a remarkably short time, five of us had the van emptied and furniture stowed. Dal and Pen swapped repeated references to a certain brand of tea and their chimpanzee-starring adverts, which even had Keith giggling, and then, as we stood panting, Kul asked the obvious question.

“You got a local yet? Hint! And do they do food?”

Pen looked across at Keith, eyebrows raised.

“Don’t want to make any more assumptions, love, but we’ve been okay so far. Kul, we have, and what you need to know is that Mike and us two share a lot of interests. No, Dal. Not that way. You have trained him far too well, my friend”

Kul mock-bowed, and raised his own eyebrows back in turn, so Penny spilled the beans.

“Yes, the pub we now treat as our local does food, and, well, it’s a club night tonight. As in folk music”

Dal turned a lot more serious.

“This like guitars and fiddles and stuff?”

“Yes, and singing. Got a guest on tonight, sings about the Royal Navy. Amazing voice. If that’s not your thing, there’s another couple of pubs”

Pen’s description caught my attention.

“Cyril?”

“The very same”

“What’s he doing all the way up here?”

“Well, we are sort of getting our feet under the table here. Improving our Welsh seems to be making a real difference. Now, anyone feel they need a shower? We’ll set you up in the bunkhouse first, and there’s three cubicles there”

The sun was dropping towards the other side of the valley as we ambled down the steep little hill to the High Street once more, and a pub called the Spotted Cow. There was a mixed clientele, including some obvious tourists, but I was pleased to see that the majority appeared to be locals. Keith nodded to a man sitting at the bar, then to the barman.

“Illtyd, Owen, [something incomprehensible]”

The man at the bar repeated what sounded like the same thing back, emphasising one word, and Keith nodded.

“Ah. Diolch, mate. [Something else incomprehensible] Mike, Kul, a Dal”

The man, Illtyd, held out his hand for a shake.

“You the lads bringing their furniture up, from that place he never wants naming? My round, Keith. You’ll be wanting to order food, ah?”

One thing I did know was the beer, so it was a simple choice, Dal’s age apparently being ignored by the barman as he was served a pint of cooking lager, and with a nod from Illtyd, we joined the other two. The menu was pretty standard pub grub, and, when the club got going, it was pretty much everything I expected. The main act was as good as ever, and I noticed no sign of resentment from the locals as they willingly sang away in the choruses of songs written by a man from Gosport. The only thing that irked me slightly was one of the floor spots. He was a fiddler, incredibly talented at what he did, but absolutely pissed as a newt, and lacking the slightest hint of a smile, or even conversation beyond ordering his net pint, in Welsh. He was gone before the club finished, the place seeming rather better lit after he went, almost as of he carried his own personal dark cloud with him.

Yes, we did get chips to eat on the way back up the hill to the new place, Penny deep in refreshed conversation with Kul’s boy, who was, to my astonishment, actually considering the Navy as a career.

“Yeah, Mrs Hiatt, those songs, he must really be singing from life”

“Penny, son. And how many pints have you had?”

Kul called over, “Four. I moved him to shandy after that. What did you think of the music, son?”

“Live stuff, Dad. Different to recordings, aye? Were a mixed lot, though. Couple of the singers, well, I should have had some more beer for them, but that fiddler, he was amazing”

Keith called over in his turn.

“Steve Jones, apparently. Climber. Cycles over from Betws or up from Bangor, camps, climbs, always gets wrecked. Word is he’s only ever here on a club night; goes over to Capel Curig other nights”

I held up a hand.

“Speaking of climbing, what’s the plan?”

Dal was softly singing ‘Sally, free and easy’ as Keith considered, then chuckled.

“See what this lad’s head is like tomorrow, then I think we can look at Y Garn north ridge and Idwal loop. Go up the ridge, come down the Kitchen. Cuppa off Dennis, and maybe the bright lights, big city not of Bangor for the evening. Fancy a go at some climbing, Kul? We’ve got a really easy beginner’s crag up the road. Take a picnic, relax in the sun if you prefer”

Kul watched his boy stumble slightly.

“Yup. Save the climbing stuff till laddo here is back on dry land. It’s ‘call away the daighsoe’, not ‘mice oh’, son!”

We had sleeping bags and blankets, there was a big padded sleeping platform at the bunkhouse, along with a well-stocked kitchen area for the breakfast we shared as a party of five, and the sun was still with us even on the tops, fair-weather cumulus scudding across the sky, and both my newer friends delighted when Pen announced that yes, it was indeed downhill all the way from the summit of Y Garn. I realised we had hooked both lads when we got the standard request to spend just a little bit more time on the peak, coupled with serial binocular-hogging and incessant clicking of camera shutters.

Wind was curling up and over the cliff edge that ended the broad sweep of the rear of that mountain, bringing with it the pure joy that comes from a lovely day at height, and Pen was chatting away to the younger man about all the other peaks that could be seen around us, until we arrived at the Dog Lake to pick up the path over to the Kitchen. It’s a descent that can appear frightening at first, as you appear to be walking directly towards a vertical cliff, which you are, until the broad shelf slanting down to the left becomes visible. We took the east side of Llyn Idwal for symmetry, and paused below the slabs so that Pen and Keith could call off and name climbing routes. The place was busy, as was only to be expected on such a gorgeous day, and while Keith was talking through the full list of UK climbing grades, and how they worked, Kul was scanning the rock with the binoculars.

“How high is this place, Mike?”

“Ah… see that ledge up there, where there are loads of people? That’s the top of the proper climbing, and then there’s easy scrambling up to the start of the descent path. About four hundred feet to that ledge, another three hundred to the path down”

“Right… so everything up to that ledge is proper climbing, including that sticky-out bit over there?”

“Where?”

“Over there on the edge. With what looks like a big rock sitting on top”

“That’s the top of Tennis Shoe, the hard bit. Round that edge is Suicide Wall”

“Right. Well, there’s somebody climbing it, and I can’t see any rope or that”

“Rope might be out of sight”

“Aye, but there’s no belt, harness thing to tie it to”

“Could I have a look?”

“Here”

I took the bins from him, and looked up at Tennis Shoe’s horribly polished and exposed ‘perched boulder’ finish, and swore under my breath as I recognised the clearly solo climber.

“That pisshead from last night, isn’t it?”

Kul nodded.

“Aye, I believe so. Steve something? Booze he put away last night, he wouldn’t be safe to drive, never mind this shit. I think we should wait here a while, till we see him safe on the path you mentioned. Then we’re off”

He sat down on a boulder, and gave me a weak smile.

“Wouldn’t feel right going off without knowing he’s down safe. On the other hand, don’t want to see him going back up, and having to worry all over again”

I let the Hiatts know, and we sat together until Keith spotted a pony-tailed figure partway down the descent path, and we packed up and left, doing our best to convince ourselves he wasn’t simply going to go back up again, still solo.