A Tale of Two Climates

Last weekend I went on my fourth excursion to the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales with work colleagues (I can’t believe I’ve had this blog for under a year, as only one of the previous trips has been mentioned on here). It was, as ever, good fun. I always feel slightly out of place with this bunch of people, as I don’t actually work with any of them any more, and I was once again the only girl this time, but I still go because it is great fun, and this time I did feel I was fitting in more. Probably because there were three completely new people this time and that made me feel like an oldbie who knew people – it didn’t matter who I ended up working with or sat next to at meals, a conversation could be had. Which is always good.

Now, west Wales in late October is a thrilling idea all round. Luckily I did put in the extra bit of effort to find all my waterproofs before leaving. Here are some photos from the Saturday…you know how normally you can’t really see rain in photos? Well, that should give you some idea how heavy this was.

Seriously torrential, all day, and nobody escaped – even with full waterproofs my (steel-toecapped) boots were squelching within the first hour, and my jacket hood gave up the ghost before it was time to give up and head back to the hostel for hot showers. Cold, cold and wet and miserable, but yet still good fun. The actual task for the weekend was to install two new gates for walkers into the fence on either side of the track in this location, but on Saturday we made almost no progress. Partly because the other group (there were two teams working on the two gates and obviously a little competition developed there) spent the whole day trying to get a concrete breaker to do anything at all on the foundations of the old stile

and on our side we spent the entirety of the day digging drainage channels to try to keep the water pouring down the hillside from filling up any holes we tried to dig for posts.

Oh – we had a post-holer. That gave me an immense amount of quiet satisfaction and I tried to say it whenever I could. Nobody tried to burn me alive though…which is probably a good thing. As I’m not psychic and do not have a spaceship full of crewmates to turn up and rescue me.

The best memories from that day of rain come from the amusement of being absolutely soaked through and knowing you can get no wetter – Rob (who had only overalls, no waterproofs) jumping in huge puddles because it simply wasn’t going to make any difference, and Rob and Stu and I taking every opportunity to chuck slightly muddy water-impregnated-in-our-gloves into each other’s faces. Oh, and the tea. The two trains that came by on their way up to Blaenau Ffestiniog (full of tourists who looked pityingly and/or astoundedly at us all stood there in the rain) brought a box of teas and coffees. I had tea (moderate amounts – never a full cup. PG Tips, for those who care. And I took the teabag out in time). Okay, I added milk and sugar, but with the tiredness and the cold and the everything else I think I should be allowed to get away with that.

It was good work digging those drainage channels though. Satisfying when little torrents started careering down them.

The evenings were oddly less drunken than they usually are – although on the Friday night I simply crashed out early (ie midnight) due to being utterly exhausted. I think other people stayed up and drank crème de menthe from a teapot (apparently that strips the tannin off the inside rather effectively. And disgustingly). But on Saturday I think the soaking just got to us and everybody gave up and went to bed by about 1 – bar the newbie graduate who started to really get on my nerves by the end of the weekend byt trying too hard – and with the clocks going back that night, we actually got a full night’s sleep. On a Wales weekend. Unheard of.

On Saturday, we’d been told the weather was forecast to be good on Sunday. We wouldn’t believe it until we saw it. And see it we did – unbelievably lovely weather given the day before. There were even moments where I thought I could feel a little heat from the sun…by the end of the day most of us were even working in t-shirts. Amazing. This is a photo taken from up the still-pretty-soggy hillside, looking over the lake towards what I assume to be slate quarries.

I mentioned before the guy who always brings a Pinzgauer truck...

...it was in its element this time. We were in open countryside with tracks (having had to go through the yard of the hydro-electric power station at Tan-Y-Grisiau, which was always fun – sit around while someone deep in the bowels of the building presses a button to open the gates for us), and frequent breaks were taken for a few people at a time to go on a hell of a run up and down the tracks (without people sat on the top at the time). I went once and eeee. Good fun.

With the new weather and the reinstalled cheeriness - look at this happy tea break

- we got a hell of a lot more done this day, and by 2.30pm we had two shiny (and hopefully sheep-proof) new gates installed and semi-concreted in - the other group used up far too much of the concrete and left us with almost none, which is why the base of their gate looks a bit more professional than ours…we’ve gone for the English country garden look though and turfed it.

Where ‘turf’ is essentially sodden mud with a thistle or two in, but still.

(how did Kev manage to get in both of those photos?)

And that was the weekend, basically. And then I came back with aching shoulders and arms (I love using mattocks and crowbars but use them a little too infrequently really) and told people at work where I’d been and got accused of being a spotter. Sigh.

I didn’t even take that many photos of trains…