The signifiers of Spring are many and varied - for some it is the call of a cheeky bird, for others it is the sight of fresh boulders. For Big G it could be both…

Dear NWB readers,

Is the cuckoo really back again, so soon?
Perched on high rocks, surveying its domain; choosing where next to make a nuisance of itself, willed on by an urge beyond its frame or ken.
Bit like most of us.

So we must migrate to the high places of the Ogwen if the cold will allow us, and what better, less convenient jaunt could we take, but to the mid-flanks of Carnedd Llewellyn, just beyond the defences of Carreg Mianog.
Here the grass grows in mysterious ways so that one’s feet plumb depths between tussocks making progress deliriously slow. Here the humble boulderer may become transfixed by the huge circumstances, the breadth of the valley, the width of the heavens, and so forth. It is like being a midge treading innocently between the carnivorous hairs of a starved sundew.

Following a streamline we shall come - if we chose exploration as a course - to a pair of boulders. (GR 686 622)
A pair. Whatever delivered one delivered the other, giving them both the same characteristics. Perhaps their story involves a good deal of glacial rolling, for they are nothing if not rounded, and by some divine influence they have finished this manoeuvre in such a way as to reward us with majestic mantels that we can only grovel at the foot of. Or... over! What noble conduct; to get a hold of one of these shelves and ‘give it some’; to clench the rough surfaces with ones inner thighs and grapple hand to elbow and grunting; belly-shake oneself crudely upwards, inch by inch, quivering to a holdless victory.

Blessed are those without skin - for it shall grow back real tough.

Love to all

Big G

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