Llyn Y Fan Fach

Sometimes I will hear how lucky I was to be in the right place at the right time. Depending upon my mood I might try to explain just how much effort was required to get my sorry backside in the right place at the right time, but generally I say nothing. Perhaps I just kid myself that what I do makes any difference and ultimately all any of us can do is just play the cards we are dealt at the time. Well, on this occasion luck very much played its part.

At the time I planned this little trip, the weather forecast looked quite promising. While driving there it was looking quite awful; on more than one occasion I considered going back home. Well, my camera didn’t see the light of day that day and come to think of it neither did I. Up in the mountains the cloud was everywhere and the wind very gusty in places. At 6pm I was still considering going home but now I was just off the summit of Picws Du at least 3 hours walk from my car and a 3 hour drive from my home. I decided to take shelter from the wind and camp for the night in my tent. Feeling I had made a mistake and wasted my time, it was a rather long night.

Not feeling optimistic about the morning I committed to setting my alarm for 5am, I would break camp, head straight for the car and then home for a nice hot bath. When morning finally came around, my earlier plan had no need to change as, if anything, things looked a little worse, with visibility down to about 20 yards in places as the cloud was even thicker than yesterday.

After a couple of hours walking in a windy pea-souper I stopped just before my final decent to have a rest and a bite to eat. Suddenly the landscape burst into light, I looked behind me to see breaks in the clouds and blue sky above. My camera was pessimistically packed right at the bottom of the rucksack and it seemed to take an age to get everything together. For 30 minutes those breaks kept coming, blown by the strong winds and sending light dancing over the land. Thoughts of yesterday were fading fast as I ran up and down the ridge before finding the right composition. 10 minutes ago I had no energy, now I had plenty.

Things don’t always work out the way we hope but it only takes one image to help forget the bad times and make everything good once again. Before you know it you’re planning the next trip and the circle begins again.

To ‘scapers everywhere, long may our memories continue to fail us.