Mountain Misery
Page 2
weather-related delays and the ever-present possibility of the car breaking down. This left no room for food stops or bathroom breaks.
Providing everyone with a snack solved the problem of nourishment, and for this trip the snack was a cold cheese sandwich and a bottle of tap water. Pete immediately went to work, consuming his and most of mine before we left the village. He then began to unceasingly blow in the bottle to cause a low-pitched rhythmic whistling sound. Dad was focused on the coming adventure, and in good spirits, so Pete was unable to annoy him with this continuous noise, which compelled him to resort to tapping the neck of the bottle on the metal of the car door. Dad eventually succumbed, and when he stopped the car on a lonely road to give Pete the full force of his wrath, Pete slipped out to answer the call of nature behind the cover of a roadside bush. I could tell Dad wanted to drive off and leave him, but his aspirations were redefined with a stern look from my mother.
We drove on into the darkness, and by late evening I found myself hypnotized to sleep by the rush of oncoming car headlights. I didn't sleep well and woke up several times because of the contorted position I had to assume from not only having a tent pole jammed into my ribs, but also nowhere to comfortably put my legs. At some point Dad would presumably get a few minutes sleep in the comfort of the driver’s seat, hopefully after pulling off the road and stopping.
The next sensation I had was being shaken awake by my father to witness what he said was a glorious sunrise. We rubbed the sleep from our eyes, and then my brother, his face still wrinkled from using a cooking stove as a pillow, immediately began to pinch me.
The flat grasslands of home had now been replaced by rolling green hills, and Dad explained in an elated mood that we were now seven minutes ahead of schedule. We pressed on as the hills got higher and steeper and began to exhibit rocky outcroppings. The winding road climbed steep hills and then immediately dropping into valleys. The serpentine highway made so many twisting turns that my mother started to feel sick. Pete said that he did too, but we all knew he was making this claim for his own devious purpose. This was confirmed when he suggested that some chocolate might help his condition.
By mid-morning Dad announced we were within about twenty-five miles of our destination, and even if we became stuck behind a farmer moving a flock of sheep, we would still be there within the hour.
Postcards of North Wales depict the area with sunshine glinting off a mountain waterfall as it cascades between rugged granite, while stately snow-capped mountain peaks pierce white fluffy clouds. Other cards show scantily dressed beach-goers sprawled on golden sand, working on their tans, or even T-shirt-clad hikers enjoying clear skies and endless views of majestic mountain ranges. Awesome, flawless pictures, one and all.
If, however, you take a moment to examine the reverse side of these deceptive products, you will discover the photographs were all taken on July 17th 1941. This is because there has not been a day since that has proved suitable for photography. Cameras do not react well to excessive moisture or extreme cold. Today, in addition to icy roads challenging Dad's driving ability,we were blessed with fog, which in no way helped my mother’s navigation attempts.
The maps had been quite useful to get us as far as the nearest small town, but now they became nothing more than an artifact for my mother and father to argue about. Although our destination was not marked on the map, Dad felt he could find it with no trouble at all. After following a roughly surfaced, obviously seldom-used road for about twenty minutes, only to discover it terminated in a dead-end, we had seriously fallen behind schedule. Dad was irritated and blamed Mum for her inability to read a map. Mum, in turn, said she could use a little help reading the Welsh signposts, although I doubted my father was the solution to this problem. We turned around to retrace our route, but something must have gone horribly wrong, because none of us recognized anything familiar.
Dad had some written directions, but they were useless without the appropriate starting point, so we drove aimlessly until we miraculously found our way back to a main road. We all voted on which direction to take and, other than Pete, agreed to turn left. The fog, combined with Dad’s haste to make up the lost time, caused us to drive by several signposts before we had a chance to read them, and we took another wrong turn down a road that was too narrow to turn around. After fifteen minutes we got stuck behind a farmer moving a flock of sheep.
We had no choice but to find the campsite quickly, or go home. We all knew it would be just as difficult to find our way back as it was to go forward, and so refusing to surrender, we continued our mysterious explorations – a decision which occupied us for another two or three hours. Much later in the afternoon, while proceeding cautiously down an old dirt-track, we discovered, quite by accident, a small white farmhouse.
We almost missed it because it blended so well with the fog. It was Pete who saw it first, and when Dad read the name on the front gate he proudly announced that, as predicted, we had found the place without too much problem. Mum and Pete and I stayed in the car while Dad disappeared inside the cottage to arrange the details for the campsite.
About an hour later he emerged carrying a small hand-drawn map. The telltale biscuit crumbs on the front of his sweater hinted as to why it had taken so long. Dad was in good spirits now as we drove through an open gate and diagonally across a field. When we ended up in the corner, unable to proceed any further, Dad paused to re-examine the crudely drawn map. Scrutinizing it for a few seconds, he turned it the right way up and reversed out of the corner. He then held the map against the steering wheel so he could see it as he drove, and we proceeded slowly around the circumference of the field, parallel to a low stone wall bordering it. After a while the stone wall gave way to a hedge, and we found the gap in it that had been so well-described on the makeshift map. The grass was about a foot high, in the next field we had to cross. Halfway to the other side there was a loud bang as the car hit a cleverly disguised tractor rut, and we were unable to continue until, with Mum at the helm and the rest of us pushing, we freed ourselves.
It seemed the car had suffered no permanent damage, and we eventually reached our chosen spot next to a swiftly moving stream, and near a clump of trees. The car was then turned off and the unpacking and tent-pitching operation began.
Dad had now fallen into using the Welsh language fairly consistently, and insisted on directing the entire tent-construction process in that language. It was indeed lucky for us that Dad’s methodical personality had resulted in him color-coding all the poles and pegs with little splashes of red, purple or brown paint. This made the assembly self-evident. The entire process was carried out with military-like efficiency and we all had our assigned jobs – all those endless practice sessions during the previous months in the back garden were certainly worthwhile, and the whole thing was completed without incident.
The only obstacle preventing an otherwise perfect performance was the missing tent pegs, which came in two verities. There were long steel spikes for securing the guy ropes, responsible for keeping the structure upright and maintaining its shape; and shorter wooden pegs with a long pointed blade resembling a pirate dagger. Whenever Benito and I engaged in a game of pirates with our friends, we would borrow these pegs to use as weaponry, which added a token of realism to our swashbuckling adventure. Once the tent was erected, these “pirate” pegs were used to secure the base of the walls to the ground, thereby preventing anything larger than a snake or small rodent from gaining access to our cloth dwelling.
Dad realized there were five pegs missing, which didn't make him at all happy. Pete was immediately reprimanded for losing them, and forcibly recruited to assist in manufacturing some replacements. Dad, armed with a hatchet and a large knife, took Pete and went in search of wood with which to fashion substitute pegs. Dad was, to say the least, angry at Pete’s careless handling of the tenting accessories, and as they walked off into the fog together, Dad carrying the small ax, I wondered if I would ever see my dear brother again.
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br /> By the time new pegs had been created and the so-called kitchen was set up, it was dark, so there was little more to do but go to bed. We all climbed inside and laid down in sardine formation. The tent was made of canvas that had once been white. It was small, about the same size and shape as a large dog kennel, and the front “doors” had tapes every nine inches or so which, when tied together secured the closure. A canvas sheet was laid on the ground to serve unsuccessfully as protection from the damp, and each of us hoped our assigned sleeping spot would be stone-free, and flat.
Light and heat were provided by something Dad called a “tilley” lamp. It was a peculiar-looking device resembling a glass jar atop a small fuel tank connected to a miniature bicycle pump. Into the fuel tank Dad poured a foul-smelling substance vaguely reminiscent of Granny’s breath, and the pump was then used to build up pressure in the tank. A small cloth ball inside the jar was then lit, and the lamp would glow brightly and generate some welcome heat. This contrivance was then hung on a hook over the ridgepole inside the tent, but after a few minutes the lamp would begin to dim and the pump would