Led Astray

I went in search of the Taff Trail again yesterday - this legendary walking path that everyone tells me I should get on and walk.

Which would be all very well if I could find and stay on the bloody thing!
I followed the map, got onto something that looked a bit...erm...traily, and then came to a crossroads. One road went downhill, and the other, marked with a picture of a walker on it, led up and over a hill.

Yeah, go figure. I followed the upward path. Which shortly dissolved into a mudbath. I picked my way through it warily, and, seeing that this went on as far as the eye could see, got off it as quickly as possible. There was a dead end. That didn't bode well. At the opposite end of the dead end, so to speak, was a business park. I walked around it for a while, thinking that if it had a dead end at one...erm...end of it, there had to be another way out.

There wasn't.

Against all my instincts, I turned round and walked in the third of two directions...and finally found myself on the Taff Trail...going backwards, towards my flat. I posted my lostness to facebook, looped an irritated loop and tried to find the path again. Pretty much found it. Then I got a text from Lee.

You remember Lee...he's the pal of mine with allllmost as little navigational nous as me.
"Which direction you going?" he asked.
"Well, your way..." I replied. "At least theoretically."
"I'll bring the dog and meet you on the way," he offered, rather magnanimously I thought.
True enough, he met me on the way, and we walked a while, with Chip, the dog, running away and back to us with a kind of excitement that pretty much suggested he'd never actually seen the Outdoors before.
"You up for going a bit...off-road?" he asked, as we encountered a kind of gate leading up one side of what I've since learned is called Aberdare Mountain.

It's important to remember I've learned that since I said "Sure, why not?"

Let me tell you why not.
Why not is because a) it's back to mud and stones and a freaking stream, b) because, halfway up the mountain, it'll occur to you that Chip the Dog, with his Outdoors Excitement Syndrome, still has more navigational understanding than the two human beings combined.

"Ahhh, crap," I muttered, slipping on a stone.
"Shoulda read the small print, man," said Lee. "May contain lots of mud and stones..."
"And a stream," I muttered.

"Fuck..." said Lee at one point.
"What?" I asked, looking up, alerted by the tone of his voice.
"I...erm...I think we've gone wrong."
"We did," I said. "Round about the time you asked if I wanted to go off-road, and I said yes."
He rolled his eyes."City boy..." he muttered.
"Soooo - we've gone wrong?"
He looked up and sniffed, as if taking a scent-bearing.
"Yyyyyeah, I think so," he said. "Think we should have taken a fork back there."
I sighed.
"If I start to hear banjos, I'm runnin'" I said.
"Runnin'?" he said, raising an eyebrow.
"Wellllll alright, maybe I'll kick you in the shins and walk really fast..." I conceded.
Towards the end of the walk, we came to another crossroads.
"Bugger," said Lee. "A choice is needed."
"What, combining our legendary decision-making skills?"
"Ah...well..."
"How 'bout this?" I asked. "Put Chip on the lead, and whichever way he decides is right, we'll go..."
"OK," he said.
"Alllrighty, I was actually joking, but whatever works..."

And it did. Fair play to the daft dog, he continued to have more sense than the two of us primates put together, and he got us home in pretty much perfect time.

Today, went out walking with Ma. Back down the Taff Trail for a while, then back up on the road.
"Ohh, look," she said, spotting a gate at the side of the road. The opposite side of the road to Lee's side, but still...the path went up the side of the other mountain that forms our Valley.
"Shall we go a bit off the beaten track?" said Ma.
I sighed.
"Sure, why the Hell not?" I said.
Why the Hell not in this case was simply pain. Sheer, sweet, simple, folded, like Danish pastry dough, pain. The pain of going up, right to left diagonally, followed by more up, left to right diagonally...followed by a little more up, right to left diagonally. Not quite sure where we ended up, but I'm happy to tell you there was no mud, no stream, no banjo-playing yokels that could be tempted out of their fairly smart little houses, stuck improbably on a freakin' mountainside.

Them, for some reason I can't really explain, I came home and biked for about 900 caloriesworth. Still hoping to get the tiniest possible dip into the 14-zone on Tuesday, though I'm really not holding my breath. Tomorrow - UberCommute...woohoo...

Oh, blood was high this morning, by the way - 6.4.