CHAPTER 72
We were approaching Capel Curig when I felt Blake tense slightly, then slowly relax.

“What’s up, love?”

“Tell you later, aye?”

I settled back down against him as the bus carried on through the village without stopping, clouds low on the hills. We went through a series of bends before a long straight, Hywel stopping halfway along it at the foot of a hulking great mountain that disappeared up into the clinging grey mess. There was a farm I half-remembered camping at a little way before our stop, and another right where we were. The Woodruffs gathered their various bags and panniers, hauled their bikes off the bus amid a chorus of goodbyes, and were gone. We continued down the road, past a lake I remembered a lot more clearly, and then into the car park by the Youth Hostel, which I didn’t remember.

I mean that I remembered it completely differently. The little L-shaped structure with the tiny snack kiosk had been replaced by something much bigger, and some major earthmoving had enlarged the parking area. I almost felt betrayed, but all Hywel did was use the space to turn the bus full circle so we could set off back to Capel Curig. Along the straight again, a blast of the horn to the Woodruffs, and down the hill into the village, where Hywel turned onto what I thought of as the Snowdon Road. He reverse-parked onto a little lane just after the two outdoors shops, and then Sammy stood up at the front of our bus.

“Right, then! This is where we get off, and I will admit to a little presumption here. The big white building off to our left is the National Mountain Sports Centre, where most of you will be staying. Basic rooms, but I am told clean and comfy. This is the presumption, just down this lane. We have a couple of cottages, each of which has two double rooms. One of them is mine, because I have exercised the privilege of rank. I will assume the other three rooms will be sorted by, er, mutual agreement, unless our married couples are having domestics. And yes, Jonny Boy, I can still hear what you are thinking!”

He waited for the laughter to subside, then indicated the door.

“Grab your kit, mates. I gave the keyholder a shout while were dropping the Happy Campers off, so they should either be there or on their way. Bus will be parking out the front of the Centre. They have a light meal for us, just a few sandwiches and that, and I have booked tables in the first pub down the road for eight. Meet in the Centre bar for seven for a livener!”

It was bloody obvious who he meant, so it was Jon, Rhys, Rob and Ellen who accompanied us to the cottages. Sammy, Ellen and Rob went into their little grey building, while Rhys made a beeline for the kitchen in ours. Over the sound of the kettle filling, I heard him shout to his partner to sort the luggage out. Jon’s reply was predictably rude.

Ten minutes later, we were all sat round a small table in the front room, tea in hand and peace in my soul. Jon was fussing over his phone, looking slightly worried. Blake caught where my gaze was.

“What’s up, Jonny Boy?”

“Just looking on the map app thingy. Says it’s four bloody miles to the pub! Surely we’re not starting trekking shit as soon as we arrive?”

I stifled a smirk, as I worked out what he had looked up.

“Jon?”

“Yup?”

“What’s the pub called?”

“Um, Pen y Gwryd?”

I dug my own phone out.

“Try putting in… hang on… Bryn Tyrch”

“Er, yeah… Oh! The OTHER way down the road! Half a mile! You must all think I am an utter idiot!”

Blake laughed out loud.

“Well, you are spending a week in the rain with us lot, so I think that particular argument is already settled”

“You are a right load of bastards!”

Rhys was chuckling away happily, more relaxed than I had seen him in months, and it was clear how utterly right Sammy’s sneaky plan had been. I took the cups back into the kitchen to wash up before our night out, and Blake followed me, spooning me from behind as I wiped and rinsed.

“I said I would tell you later, love. This is later enough, I think. Remember I told you about the trial, up in Caernarvon? Siân’s parents?”

“Yeah?”

“I think we drove past their house as we came to the village. To Capel Curig. A place called Pont Cyfyng; I heard the name at the trial, and then there it is, a signpost pointing over a bridge. Just where those little waterfall bits were. Threw me a little bit. Suppose I knew it was round here, back of my mind sort of thing, but didn’t want to let it spoil things”
I settled back against him, reaching back to stroke his cheek.

“You think it will? I don’t. And you need to get our coats; you’ve pulled, as they say. Dinner later, snack and a drink now, OK?”

I left the cups to drain and let him help me into my winter jacket before heading along the road to the Brenin, where our clan slowly assembled. A glass of wine, some crisps and a simple sandwich, then off along the footpath in the darkness and drizzle. Like so much of the place, I half-remembered the pub, but the menu was a bit more upbeat and, perhaps, upmarket than I expected. Camping trips with Dad had always involved a little two-burner cooker with a chunky bottle for the gas, and meals that seemed to consist of some sort of savoury rice or instant noodle base with anything from tinned meatballs through tinned Irish stew to basic stewed mince (tinned, of course) dumped on top.

Not exactly cordon bleu cuisine, but I think Dad took some sort of perverse pride in ‘roughing it, and, to be honest, it all added to the atmosphere. It did mean that when we had a treat and ate out at some local café or chippy, the sausage or pie and chips tasted far better than they would otherwise have done.

This pub, though. Beef goulash and polenta? Scallops and black pudding? What happened to steak and ale pie or a mixed grill? Sod it: I went for the scallops, and they were great. Beer and wine, good food, happily raucous company that included a lycra-clad pair of Woodruffs as the screws of our team’s tension came off. I slept bloody well that night

I woke to the miracle of sunlight blasting through our bedroom curtains, and as we trooped out of our self-catering cottages to where Sammy had somehow negotiated a six-day breakfast deal for all of us, I delighted in the view down the Mymbyr to the open sweep of Cwm Dyli and a snow-covered quartet of peaks. I was smiling all through breakfast, right up until Sammy told us the order of the day, which was a choice of gentle hillwalking, harder hillwalking, beginners’ rock climbing, brain-dead lunatics’ rock climbing, canoeing in the lake, or a trip to Caernarvon with Hywel. What was missing, as Candice pointed out, was the sitting-by-a-pool with cocktails option.

In the end, I opted for the gentler climbing option, as the sun was unlikely to stay out for us and hillwalking in the rain has its own perverse pleasures. Rhys and Rob, to nobody’s surprise, took the ‘nutter’ option, Jon and Lexie came with us (Blake knows his place, which is beside me) and the others chose their own idea of fun. Sammy was for the bus ride, and Candice, to my astonishment, opted for boating after a repeat of her nail care comments.

The centre ran the course, and after a short classroom session, our instructor seemed satisfied with our communal lack of qualifications as radical crag grippers, or whatever the term is, and took us to a room full of dangling pieces of nylon webbing and racks of helmets. A bit of a lecture, then into a minibus, and rather oddly back along the road to where we had dropped the Woodruffs off the evening before. All became clear when our instructor led us straight through the farm, over a stile and some heathy ground to the foot of something I actually remembered really clearly.

A sweep of clean rock, only the occasional patch of heather on some of the ledges, and Steph’n’Geoff grinning happily at its foot.

Geoff was chirpy, even for him.

“Wotcher, you lot! We thought some of you might end up here! Lovely day for being silly, isn’t it?”

Steph laid a long arm over his shoulder.

“First place I ever took him climbing, this is. Lots of memories round here. Gives us a chance to agree what we’re up to Saturday night, as well”

Jon was feeling his oats.

“Some of us are doing things with boats. Why not ambush them?”

She laughed.

“Bloody stupid game, that! You can drown in that stuff! Air I can live with”

It was Geoff’s turn to guffaw.

“Yeah, even when it’s all she has under her bloody feet. We’re not stopping here long, anyway. Off round the Slabs for some longer stuff”

Jon had to ask, the silly boy.

“Slabs?”

“Geoff may have intended his smile to look innocent, but it didn’t fool me.

“Oh, a little way down the road. Nice walk. Like this place, just a little longer, and a much easier way down off the top. You’d like it!”

On instinct, I looked over at our instructors, and one of them had turned away, but I could see his shoulders shaking with silent laughter. It seemed the Woodruffs were very well suited indeed.

While our guides led us to the foot of the left-hand end of the slabs and began the process of fitting us all with climbing harnesses, Steph attached a rope, said a few words to her husband, and nonchalantly ambled up what looked like utterly smooth rock. I say ambled, because that was what it looked like. She wasn’t peering around for bits to grab, she didn’t even appear to be standing on anything visible. She just went up, on all fours, while chatting to Geoff.

I looked up above us, and while it was still Up, at least our rock looked broken into bits I could actually see without a microscope. One of our boys, a Birmingham lad in his twenties, took his time going up to a ledge towing a rope, while the girl working with him, who sounded local, explained what he was doing, covering aspects like posture, use of his feet, and where he had his arms.

“Don’t reach up to high, ah? Your arms will get all weak, what we call ‘pumped’. Keep them down at shoulder height. Trust your feet. Ignore that one with the red hair, she’s a teasing cow!”

A voice floated down.

“I heard that, Enfys!”

“You were meant to! Oh, you been speaking to Roger? About Saturday? The Cow, ah?”

Steph had turned round to look down, one hand playing with stuff dangling from her belt.

“Hang on. I’ll just put something in, otherwise he’ll fret… There. Runner on, love!”

Geoff shouted back “OK!” and Steph continued her chat, seemingly unconcerned at her position about forty feet up a wall.

“Yeah, love. He’s doing a couple of minibuses for us. Be room if you want to come along”

“Ah, Roger’s ahead of you! Done a deal with Vernon at the Brenin. Got a load of tourists want to go off to Gloddfa Ganol and Portmeirion, be back late. He’s got a couple of drivers spare, but needs the buses, ah? Vern’s saying to use ours, so someone has to go along to make sure nobody breaks anything”

Geoff started laughing at that remark.

“Let me guess, girl: you volunteered? How’s it go: it’s a crap job, but you’ll take one for the team?”

Much happy laughter, more of the same sort of banter, ravens and buzzards overhead and the sun still out for us. We each tied on to the rope in turn, as Geoff disappeared upwards only slightly less slowly than his wife, and one by one we tackled that little bit of rock. It was nowhere near as hard as it looked, and our guides moved us along the slab route by route, flasks of tea being sampled cup by cup, smile by smile. The Woodruffs did their thing before moving on for their harder stuff, and as the day moved on through our packed lunch, the shadow of Tryfan falling more and more over us as the sun fell behind it, our climbing finally reached the top of the cliff in ever-more complicated games with the ropes.

I found my focus closing down, my sight picking out ever-smaller ripples and folds in the rock and my mind accepting that they could actually be used. The concentration became intense, and I suddenly realised my odd eye for detail was a real asset for such an activity. I got so warm I doffed my jacket and hat, the gentle breeze moving my hair around in a caress rather than an attack, Blake was there, Jon was laughing as he kept confusing his right and left (“No, Jon! The OTHER right foot!”) and Lexie was most definitely happier than I had seen her for a long time. Once again, I blessed Sammy’s wisdom.

We found ourselves in one group again, as Enfys brought up the last bits of gear to the top of the great lump, and she led the way up a couple of rock steps before starting the walk around and down the end of the slab. There was a little corner we had to scramble up; nothing difficult, but its smooth contours and a little trickle of water in the centre suggested a different experience in the rain. Lexie had her hat off, what hair she had managed to grow back moving around in a rather brisker wind than we had felt at the bottom of the climb, and as it moved, the scar on the side of her head showed clearly. I heard Enfys gasp.

“Lexie, sorry if I am being personal, ah? But what on Earth happened?”

A soft, sad smile from my friend.

“I got stupid, love. You know what we all do for work?”

“Um, aye. Coppers”

“Yes. We have had a bit of a year, and this is all a bit of… This is letting some stem off, this week, finding ourselves, destressing. I got shot, simple as that”

“Cachu!”

“Yes, it was. Should have kept my head down, really, but it means I won’t be in the frame for a remake of Breakfast at Tiffany’s any time soon!”

“You OK now, though?”

Lexie smiled again, and it was much warmer and happier.

“It’s like the climbing, Enfys. Had my team around me, all interlocked, inter-reliant, if there’s such a word. Lots of important stuff you can never do alone, isn’t it?”

It was a second before I picked up on the dynamics, and on the walk down I quietly asked Lexie about her friend Lisa, which brought a chuckle.

“Bit of flirting never hurts, Di!”

She let that sit for a second as we worked round an awkward patch of mud, then looked back at me and smiled happily.

“And yes, I think I have found someone I like. Bit of a surprise, that one. That question you asked in the pub that night? Does it still make sense, you said”

“Ah. Does it?”

“Well, it makes enough sense that she’s taken a double room in that pub with the stagecoach out the front. She’ll be here Friday night”

“Coming up by train? How’s she getting from Betws? Need Hywel to pick her up?”

There was a whoosh as a raven tumbled overhead, then a thump as its wings bit the air again, and Lexie was standing still, her gaze sweeping the horizon.

“It is absolutely bloody gorgeous here, Di!”

“It is that, girl. Used to come up here with Dad when I was only little. Camped in the next farm up, Big Willy’s. Which sort of brings us back to Lisa, doesn’t it? You are indeed a devious cow”

Another really genuine laugh burst from her.

“Not the only one, am I? She won’t need a lift--- Barry’s driving her!”