I am aware that I represent the villain of the piece this afternoon. But over the last 70 years times have changed and it gives me enormous pleasure to welcome walkers to my estate today. The trespass was a great shaming event on my family and the sentences handed down were appalling. But out of great evil can come great good. The trespass was the first event in the whole movement of access to the countryside – and the creation of our national parks.
Whether or not the national parks would exist today without the Trespass – and whether I’d be able to appreciate the feeling of gradually being ripped from my feet on the top of the Black Mountain in the chilly spring air – we cannot know. But what is clear is that access to the British countryside took a great leap forward that day in 1932, and the degree of freedom we can all now enjoy wasn’t easily won.
However grumpy I was feeling in the summit shelter atop the Black Mountain, I was glad to have made it. Now all I had to do was make it back to the car. Emerging from the shelter, I caught sight of the trig point – a slim concrete pillar found on many British summits, for reasons detailed later – twenty metres or so away. Staggering over and touching the top, I snapped an awful summit photograph and, with no small degree of haste, turned in the direction from which I’d come.
It was now almost totally dark, the descent seemingly destined to be desperate. While my eyes had become accustomed to the gloom, night was biting, and soon I’d barely be able to see where I was placing my feet. I had a head torch somewhere in my bag but I didn’t want to use it unless I had to. Any bright light would destroy my night vision in a flash, and besides, I didn’t want to stop – not even to rummage in my rucksack.
It turned out that walking back towards Bwlch Giedd was a hell of a lot harder than walking from it. The wind was now punching me directly in the face, chilling my skin and making the simple matter of looking up almost impossible. I could barely see where I was going and the wind was doing its best to exploit this. Every time I took an uncertain step I felt the gusts attempting to pick me up, or snare my backpack sideways and try to pull me from my feet. I focused on my pacing and tried not to panic. All I had to do was get down before I became too cold to walk. That was all.
My instinct had been to get as far from the cliff edge as possible, but walking on the grass wasn’t so good; the grip between my boots and the ground wasn’t as positive as on the stone of the path. Trying not to lose balance or composure, I pushed on along the stones, distracting myself by trying to figure out how strong the wind was. A steady 50 mph was my guess, possibly gusting to 70 mph. This might not sound much when you’re sitting at home listening to it rattle the windows, but on a mountain trying to walk, anything over 40 mph and you’re struggling.
I reached Bwlch Giedd with considerable relief, and stepped into the shelter of the path that descended the escarpment down towards the lake. The sudden silence caused by the drop in the wind made me realise my ears were ringing. The path was rocky and trip-prone, but I managed to stay upright all the way down to the shore. Pulling out my compass and wrestling with the flapping, shiny cased map, I struck a straight bearing from the edge of the lake to the point where I’d parked the car. It would be a cold, damp walk out – but at least I was down. Now I had to get back across the rolling grass and several streams, and I’d be out of this wind, and out of this rain.
It took a while, but I managed it. Along the way I discovered the batteries in my head torch were almost flat, so the stream crossings were done in a darkness that was rather too profound for comfort. My compass bearing had been spot on, though, despite it being the headlight streak of a distant car that finally guided me back to my remote parking space. My final steps were beckoned by the little red blinking LED of my car alarm indicator. Even in mountain places – and dark-sky reserves, at that – it seemed electric light had its minor uses. I was intensely glad to be back at the car and, however foolish the decision had been, equally glad I’d pressed on, albeit at the cost of comfort. My trousers were so sodden I drove the 200 miles back home in my boxer shorts. Things had to get easier.
* If you’re interested (and who wouldn’t be!), the lowest quality for what is considered a dark sky – according to the International Dark Sky Association – is that ‘at a minimum the Milky Way should be visible and sky conditions should approximately correspond to limiting magnitude 5.0 (or Bortle Class 6).’ The Bortle Scale was created by John Bortle to aid astronomers, and runs from 1 (where shadows are cast on the ground from the sheer brilliance of the stars overhead) to inner-city skies of 8 and 9 (the sickly glow by which Bortle helpfully notes one can ‘easily read’).
* This is Exmoor, granted International Dark Sky Reserve Status in 2011. As of 2014, the other six reserves are in Namibia, New Zealand, Canada, France, Germany and Ireland. Honourable mention must go here to Galloway in southern Scotland, which in 2009 became a Dark Sky Park and has been decreed as naturally possessing the highest quality of dark sky. The difference between a park and a reserve is that the latter requires the cooperation of neighbouring communities to restore and maintain the quality of the night sky.
* It was reported with some degree of disgust that one of the songs the trespassers sang was the left-wing protest song ‘The Red Flag’, although several renditions of ‘(It’s a long way to) Tipperary’ were also given, as well as a modified version of Harry Lauder’s ‘The Road to the Isles’, with key locations in the song replaced with local landmarks for the occasion.
Somewhere between the Brecon Beacons and the country’s north coast, the mountains of Wales sharpen and slough off their grassy skins. Southern Snowdonia marks the changing point, and here there’s a belt of mountains evidently conflicted about which camp they belong in. The shapes of these ranges waver between the cutting ruggedness of the peaks in the northern part of Snowdonia and the queer emerald forms of their counterparts in South Wales. The names of the big groups of hills here tickle recognition for some, but only just: the Arans, the Tarrens, the Dovey Forest, the Rhinogs. Journey from the south into this region and steep diagonals, or the jag of a peak on the skyline ahead might symbolise your steady transition to the wild, hard north. But conversely, enter from the north and you might describe the landscape around you as softening, easing towards the sprawling south. It’s a fascinating, disjointed menagerie. Then you see Cadair Idris, and suddenly you’re not looking at anything else.
A month after being nearly drowned on the Black Mountain, I found myself in southern Snowdonia during a spring that had finally sprung. Colour had returned to the landscape. New life was exploding. Bluebells bobbed on embankments beside roads sweeping through richly-carpeted passes and tired-looking villages. Sunlight diffused through new leaves, lighting the world through miniature shades of green and giving the afternoon a feeling of intense optimism.
I’d spent an uncertain twenty minutes dividing my attention between the road and the skyline – punctuated occasionally with visits to the rumble strip – trying to establish whether my objective was sliding into view ahead in some distance-skewed fashion. When it finally did appear, it seemed preposterous to think I could miss it.
There’s evidence that the Elizabethans considered Cadair Idris to be the highest peak in the British Isles, and it’s an easy mistake to forgive. Approach it from the north and it smacks you in the face from a distance of ten miles. It’s massive: a wide, wrinkled battlement of brown, crag-hung rock sprawled across the southern horizon with intimidating abruptness. Showell Styles – author of The Mountains of North Wales, of which more later – described the vision