Wednesday was an extraordinary day, It began with Lance Collyer, colleague and friend from the old days in Brighton getting in touch and immediately sponsoring me. When my brother died he stuck me on a plane to Manchester, and a number of strange encounters all involving fully grown men and women bursting out crying in front of me. I almost signed up to the Seventh Day Adventists, Jehovah's Whatsits, or making a sect of my own. It showed me I suppose that we communicate to each other in more ways than one.
That day the wind blew hard, stirring the trees in the wood, and my feelings as I thought back to those days in Brighton/Manchester. I followed the model of the oaks and bore the ferocity of the winds with equanimity. Great arking rainbows appeared all day to compensate, (the pictures are being processed as we speak. -the battery ran out on my digital, I've resorted to throwaways-)

Paul Banks has donated, Thanks Paul, I'm sure you know I was only recording what I perceived the feelings among the rest of us to be when you were jumping around that dance floor at Toft Cricket club in a white suit! Where are you 'cutting a rug' these days? I'd love to know. (Before Paul & I swapped 'tashes. John Green is now a gaucho in Argentina, Hiya John, pesos welcome,gracias)

http://www.justgiving.com/gesonoffasdyke

Thursday, (after a pleasant walk along the Llangollen canal had taken me into the town itself and an evening of sophisticated repast care of Gales wine bar), was a day best summed up by Burns: "The best laid plans of mice and men oft gan awry" The plan was to walk twenty miles today and leave plenty of time to saunter into Prestatyn.
Leaving the town center and climbing up around the old hill fort of Castell Dinas Bran, I came a junction at the foot of the craggy Egiwyseg. Instead of turning left to creep around its lower scree slopes I turned right and ended up at the Prospect tea rooms. After a refreshing cuppa and my sense of direction re-tuned I marched back towards that junction, passing as I did a 90 degree path which seemed to cut right across the top, so up it I went.
The theory was correct but in practice it took me straight over to the cliff edge. I walked along it to see if there was any way down. Only one. I had to shuffle down the mountain to find no stile in sight and while there are never any passing cars on these lanes, you can be sure of one appearing as you ungainly catch your pants on the barbed wire.

despite losing 3 hours on that wrong turning, the silver lining was meeting an octogenarian on that path who was steadying himself to take a picture of the valley below.
"Bore da" he said to me,
"bore da" I replied.
"Are you Welsh?" he asked. I told him that a lot of me was and when got into lengthy discussions about Welsh names and his life. He was 82, the same age my father would have been. You're never far from the circle I thought. His name was Herbert Jones, He had married an East German girl whilst stationed there in the fifties, a survivor of a pow camp in Korea where they had been marched 400 miles. This put my little jaunt in a different light, 176 miles, a mere bagatelle! We swapped addresses he said "I'll send you a Christmas card" well you could have knocked me down with a feather, hadn't I only referred to Christmas cards in an earlier blog! I skipped along towards the right track trying to compose a pithy maxim that might bring this experience to future generations. "When one dad dies, you're sure to meet another in the mountains", "friend in follows father out", er.. well it needed some work but I had plenty of time.

World's end is the appropriately named place one enters as one turns away from the great limestone outcrops aforementioned at the hairpin bend just before the dreaded ford in the road.
The ford ( see photo on Monday) was like any other, two inches of water crossing ten feet of road like a flattened weir. But underneath that water and before road starts is 3mm of algae that is lying in wait for the unsuspecting, late, overburdened, not to say weary, hiker. Putting my foot on to the ford caused my whole body (and spirit) to stiffen as the absence of traction sent me and my backpack searching the known universe for sufficient equilibrium to prevent a thorough soaking. That 8 inch slide seemed to take forever but now almost enlightened from this fantastic trip I must have subconsciously tapped into forces previously unavailable to me and all was not lost! Not yet anyway.

For World's End read black hole of Calcutta with heather. The road wound on forever through an unrelenting vista of bleak coloured peat plants, sufficiently uncut that it hid the stone shaped way sign from view leading me to over shoot by a good mile ( i.e. a mile and a half) the path of towards Llandegla Forest. I called over to the farmer's wife at the first farm I met coming back UP the hill, having sensed a missed turn.
"I'm looking for the dyke" I mumbled through a crafty mouthful of chocolate.
"You've missed Brighton by 300 miles" Oh why couldn't that have been her droll rejoinder!
Instead she eyed me quizzically, beady brown Welsh eyes stood out on clear skin under a shock of graying straw ends "You're well passed that, it's at the rock in the passing place." With all the precision of an accountant she had helped me not a jot. The narrow road awash with passing places and the landscape generally rock strewn. So I softened her up by retelling the history of Welsh names according to Herbert Jones. Fascinated she quickly elaborated upon her earlier directions.

The right path took me through Llandegla Forest, atmospheric in the rain, and the Crown Inn where the cross-eyed landlady looked after me. more anon