Cader Idris

Cader Idris is a mountain in North Wales. The name means Seat of Arthur - King
Arthur of course. The seat is a scoop in the mountain, like a steep amphitheatre
or indeed a great seat. The slopes of the scoop are rocky with grassy perches
where sheep graze on the tilted ground, indifferent to the precipitous drop below.
Down the middle of the seat is a scree slope - loose rock and rubble that has
flowed down in a dry avalanche. At the bottom of the seat is a small llynn, or
pool, as clear, clean and mysteriously still as any other of the llynns in the Welsh
mountains.

The beginning of the walk up is a pleasant stroll. You follow a track which gets
steeper until it is like climbing stairs. Before your eyes pass rocks, tiny plants,
flashes of lichen, the liquorish nodules of sheep droppings, the heels of the
person in front - a hypnotic repetition. The trail gets steeper, the breath shorter.
Until at last you reach a surprising easy walk over a grassy area.

At the very top you know you have arrived. Suddenly you are in a wild driving
wind. You pick your way through tumbled random rocks. Not neat rocks that allow
you to hop from one to the other like rocks at the seaside - these have been
thrown by giant inhuman forces with no regard to human interests or comforts.
You have to squeeze through inconvenient gaps, clamber up unfriendly rock
faces.

The legend of Cader Idris is that anyone who spends the night at the top, by
morning will be mad, dead or a poet. It is easy to believe. You feel yourselves to
be puny intruders in the domain of mighty and unsympathetic forces. Jude lost a
contact lens up there. It felt as though we had to pay for our intrusion.

You descend by the scree slope - slithering a little faster than you intend - down
to the silent llyn.