I

Last night I had a good sleep, my first for a few nights; without any rain beating down on my little tent, or wind causing the canvas to flap and nearby trees to crustle. I was in sight of the farmhouse, its graustere walls facing me broken only by one small square window. This must have been the scullery, for no sooner had I emerged from my tent than Mrs Jones appeared from a door around the side.  She brought me a cup of tea, sweetened a bit beyond my preference, and a bacon sandwich that was exactly to it. We exchanged a few pleasantries about the weather, Mrs Jones dismissing my comments about the storms of the last couple of days as ‘typical weather around here’ emphasising that I was not from her local vicinity; a bit of an outsider. We both agreed though, that when the sun came out it was destined to be a fine warm day. She was in no doubt about this; it was written by the behaviour of the sheep on the hillsides. I glanced at the hillside but the white dots seemed merely to be spread evenly against the expanse of green.  She then probed my purpose in trekking across the Welsh countryside. I doubt she was entirely satisfied with my explanation that I was writing a book without further expansion; I was deliberately quite vague as to the subject. What I see here as a town dweller are new experiences and worthy of note will be everyday and mundane to her. Nevertheless, she gave me a little bag with some crusty and probably homemade bread, cheese and butter, possibly also homemade, and an apple that had yellowed considerably and had quite a few wrinkles. She must have noticed me studying it as she explained that it was from last autumn and had been stored in the barn over winter and would be sweeter and juicier than it looked, displaying her practical knowledge of such things. I thanked her politely and profusely, set to work collapsing and packing my tent, and made sure the corner of the field I had occupied was as good as I found it, apart for the unavoidable patch of grass flattened by my presence.
I set off down the mutty track from Tyn-y-Fridd farm to the narrow road that led up to the a dead end near the old lead mines at the head of the valley to the right, where a thin line on the barren rocks marked the incline that led to a dark portal to the subterranean world of the old miners. To the left the road twurns down to the village some eight miles away, the distance dictated by the way the road is forced to follow the course of the meandering river for most of the distance. Opposite is an even narrower lane, which my map suggests may shave a mile off that distance as it takes a more direct route over the shoulder of the hill that now faces me across the river. But perversely I choose the nearly direct route to the village which would involve crossing that hill, named Foel Gogledd, on my Ordnance Survey map, not far from it 2,240 foot summit; a 1,400 foot slog uphill followed by a more gentle slope down to the outskirts of the little community where I hope the local public house can provide some good wholesome food and ale; I will save my farm food for the evening. Despite the climb, I reckon I can be there shortly after midday. There are few hedges dividing the fields and those are of hawthorn, and rather spraggy. Interspersed is the occasional rowan, just coming into flower, but mostly it is loose stone walls and barbed wire fencing dividing up the land and bordering the lanes in the valley. A stile and footpath lead through a meadow down to the shallow swirling river, where flat slabs of slate from further up the valley have been laid as a home-made footbridge.  Though small, the river is fast and turned swallish by recent rains. You can see where it formerly ran, before it ate away at the bank on one side chipping away a field over there, but leaving a pebble bank on the other to be reclaimed by grass and reeds, redefining field borders on a yearly basis. At the valley bottom the land is flattish but insufficient in extent for crops. So it is here the farmers raise cattle. A herd just beyond the bridge survey me with sad eyes as if they know and are resigned to their ultimate fate, and that I am the deliverer. They are a motley bunch; a few Welsh Blacks, some more familiar black and white, and the rest a sort of muddy brown of mongrel breed I do not recognise. Two, more gaunt than the others are clearly pregnant and will calve soon. They move aside as I cross the bridge and enter their little realm. It is apparent that the cattle regularly gather near the bridge as it provides them easy access to drinking water. I have to skirt the trumpled area with its puddles stained green and brown. I am not too fussy about getting some of this on my boots, but if I slipped, which has a high probability, I would need to wash my clothing and change before being allowed admittance into any civilised establishment. Well, possibly the Bar where farm hands gather may admit me, but certainly not the Lounge which would be my preference.
I cross three meadows on a gentle upward slope before climbing one last stile before the incline becomes a serious proposition and the grass became longer and coarser. The cattle have been left behind and I am now in sheep county evidence by the wispy wool clinging to last year’s thistles. The sun still has not broken through, but I expected it will soon and the air will quickly warm up. I want and need to get the strenuous part of the walk over before that happens, so I set to at the hill with a determined stride, paralleling one of the dry stone walls that run unswerving from the river straight upwards and out of sight. These walls were built from the rocks that lay on the ground as a natural course of nature. Piece by piece they were picked up and carried over and put into position. I wondered why not one single hill farmer had ever come up with the same ideas that had occurred to the prehistoric peoples living in the Atacama Desert. But those designs are only appreciable from the air. Here on the hillside any stylistic animal patterns would be visible from the hills on the other side of the valley. That would spoil the surprise when man finally achieved powered flight.
 The one thing that always fools you on treks like this is that though you think you can see where the top of the hill is, as soon as you reach the brow and expect to see the expanse of the hilltop all around and be able to behold grand vistas from the top of the world, you discover that there is still another slope to climb and another brow to cross. I pause for a minute and looked back down into the valley. It seems that I have hardly climbed any distance, even though I had been walking for half an hour. There is now a bit of a mist down below. Perhaps that is causing an optical illusion, though logic says it would appear that I had travelled further. I press on. The hill sheep watch me, unsure whether to flee or not. People are not a feature on this landscape and the ewes are easily confused. They are still unshorn after the winter and their fleeces are long and scragged, hanging nearly down to the turf, and rather filthy. I pass an old stone sheep fold, its walls in disrepair and what may have once been a corrugated iron roof for a shelter lying rusting on the ground, twisted and left to rot away and disintegrate. Nettles are beginning their seasonal growth around the walls.  I set off towards the brow ahead of me, but the mist I had seen in the valley now begins to descend here. I look back, but cannot see the valley anymore. Now the features I was heading for are beyond visibility. I know I should be heading due south so check the pocket compass I carry in my breast pocket, and continue in that direction, still climbing slowly. The sheep drift into view and shuffle off again in the swirling miasma, like cowardly wraiths. I pass another derelict sheep fold. It is not until I am alongside it that its similarity to the other one becomes apparent. This similarity extends to another piece of rusting corrugated iron, bent and twisted in identical fashion.
Checking my compass again it looks like I have strayed from my intended path somewhat, and need to strike out to the right. Looking at my watch I find I have been walking the upper hillsides for an hour and still have not reached the summit. I am getting frustrated now, but not yet concerned that I may be lost. The path still heads upwards. But another twenty minutes and I pass another yet another identical sheepfold. It cannot be the same one because not only am I approaching from a different direction, but now the compass suggests I bear left to head south. This time I decided to ignore the instrument. Now I do have concerns about how long this mist will last, and how far I may be away from my intended course. This delay may compromise my carefully devised itinerary unless I can catch up on time. I will continue on my present course, which my trusted and unerring sense of direction tells me is the way. After another fifteen minutes I come to a wall of dark peat barring the way. I must be close to the summit now for these hills are often topped by wide expanses of blanket bog. The build-up of peat has been accumulating since the end of the last Ice Age, when the dial for Welsh hill climate was set permanently oscillating between dank through to sodden. With precipitation outweighing drainage the mountain tops were colonised by heathers which turned the soil acidic, so that sphagnum filled the lower lying area, trapping more of the rain, and decomposing to peat; layer and layer of peat form by an unending cycle. Amazing what you can remember from school lessons all those years ago. The surface is woefully uneven with heathers and bilberry on the higher parts, with tussocks of coarse grass, and the moss filling the hollows hiding the pools of water that lie beneath. Jump on a more stable area and you can almost feel the ripples spreading outwards through the sodden peat.
I know I need to cross this bog, for at last a touch of a breeze temporarily clears the mists, a watery diffuse sun is starting to appear, promising an improvement to come, and then finally I can see the rocky outcrop that pokes out from the soil, marking the summit. From there I can rest a while and get my coordinates. Finding a break in the wall of peat before me I carefully make my way onto the bog and carefully strike towards the outcrop. My path is never direct. Dark evil pools and rafts of sphagnum moss have to be skirted, while scrubby heathers, perhaps older than myself, spread their branches out across the ground threatening to trip the unwary traveller. I recall the set of pictorial stamps I collected as a child, called Plants of the Welsh Moorlands. They came as a free gift with bars of chocolate, and I collected these avidly. I probably enjoyed the stamps more than the chocolate. Each set was carefully added to the albums you could purchase, but which Father Christmas brought to me each year. The memory of the stamps is still vivid. I recognise black cloudberry and toadrush and bald  moss. A bit later in the season I would find sundews growing in the mosses of the wetter areas, with microscopic insects trapped by their glutinous leaves.
 Eventually I reach the rocks. I can sit down on a dry island in midst of inland version of the Saragossa Sea. It is now well past midday, and I am hungry. The little package Mrs Jones provided is now most welcome. The bread fresh, the butter creamy, and the cheese full flavoured. I am without liquid refreshment, but the apple makes up to good measure, for despite its appearance it is sweet and juicy. I eat it right down to the core, and amuse myself by seeing how far I can spit the individual seeds.
Now rested and having taken the opportunity to bring this journal up to date, I need to press on. My compass again seems to be misbehaving. The needle settles on north, but then slowly drifts anticlockwise. I still cannot trust it. Perhaps there are magnetic ores deep beneath within the earth deluding my little instrument. At last it looks like the sun will shine through and help disperse the mist. That watery disc is becoming more distinct and a faint warmth can now be felt. A quick reconnaissance around this summit hopefully will reveal some landmarks now that I have approximate bearings from the sun. I would like to find the track marked on the map, used in bygone days by peat-cutters, leading down to the village.
 

II

“That was the last entry in the journal. Whether the author was the same person whose skeletal remains which were found in the tunnel of the lead mine 2 miles away may never be ascertained, but there is a reasonable probability it was. In the mist with no landmarks or change of scenery it is entirely possible that the author of the journal could have strayed that far in the direction of the lead mine. Neither the journal nor the human remains gave any clues to an identity or identities. We have heard the skull was missing, and was presumed to have been lost down one of the mine shafts, which was subsequently filled in with loose rock, perhaps when the district experienced an earth tremor twelve years ago. The remains could only be dated to lying undiscovered for 15-30 years, while the journal had almost certainly been lying in the undergrowth near the summit of Foel Gogledd for many years. The back pack was of a type on sale 22 years ago and contained a small amount of coinage, none minted more recently than 25 years ago. It is fortunate the back pack was weatherproof, and the pages of the journal were well preserved inside, with a strong elasticated band holding the pages tightly together. Much emphasis has been placed on the apple tree growing on top of the hill. We had heard that this is a most unlikely place for such a tree to grow, and that the seed was most likely to have been taken up there by a person. The age of the tree was expertly estimated to be twenty years old, though no-one was required to cut it down and confirm this by counting the rings”.
“The human remains were of a male aged between 30 and 40 years of age, and there were no marks to indicate cause of death. All the bones recovered showed no pre-existing pathology which could aid identification. I must stress at this point that there no evidence that there were animal tooth-marks on the bones, and that newspaper reports that the deceased was a victim of the Welsh Wild Cat are entirely spurious and speculative. I also suggest that the editors of these newspapers curb their enthusiasm for such fictions, and that the Welsh Cryptozoological Society desist from fuelling such allegations. The only unusual observation made was that there was not trace of clothing or possessions with the remains. We have heard that while one would expect some artefacts to be present, it is not impossible and not an indication of foul play. However, the haversack, if it did indeed belong to the deceased, was also devoid of anything that may have identified the journal writer. His camping equipment and spare clothing were all of makes and styles that could have been bought in any town at that time. There are, naturally, missing persons who fit the meagre facts we have at present, but no males of that age who went missing twenty years ago were known authors, or had any connection with this area of Wales. None were known to have planned a visit or a walking tour. Mrs Jones of Tyn-y-Fridd is now a widow, living in the nearby village, but she is now quite elderly and, as we have been informed, has difficulty remembering her children’s names these days. She has given conflicting replies when answering questions. On the first occasion she gave an apparently lucid description of a tall man with a moustache and ginger hair camping overnight in the field. When asked again she denied that anyone had ever camped there. Enquiries at various farms and villages, that the journal refers to on earlier pages, have yielded no admissible evidence. The author does not seem to have spoken to many people on his journey, and it is only Mrs Jones who is referred to by name.”
“Until the identity of the human remains is discovered this case will remain open.”
 

III

Few in the court room noticed the distinguished looking, yet casually dressed man who had sat on the back row of the public area, deep in the shadows and apart from others who had come to listen. He was tall and thin; some may say he still looked lithe and athletic despite his age, with craggy, yet still handsome, features. What most people would have missed was a mischievous twinkle in his eyes as he carefully took notes throughout the proceedings. Perhaps they just assumed he was a reporter for a local newspaper, but their observations failed entirely to notice that his notebook was very similar to the one found in the haversack on top of the hill, complete down to size, colour and the elasticated band he carefully placed around the book before placing it in a haversack when the proceedings were over. Coincidence is quite likely, but so is deliberate choice. If anybody had been thinking that he was a reporter, and had been able to look over his shoulder, they would have been surprised. The notebook entries were not direct coverage of what had been said. There were instead sketches of the rocky hilltop and the old lead mines quite detailed, more detailed than had been described, as if he knew the sites intimately. Arrows pointed to certain features and ticks and crosses placed by them. One by the mine sketch had a very emphatic “No!” There was some narrative present, but was limited to unconnected sentences such as “I never expected it would take twenty years to bear fruit” and “memory loss an unexpected bonus”. The former comment was not connected to the sketch to the apple tree atop of the hill. More mysterious was “You can buy anything if you know who to ask, do not ask names, and pay in cash” below the picture of the mine. In large capital letters on another page was “GINGER” followed by four large exclamation marks.
He left the room wearing his long leather overcoat, buckled at the waist, donned a well worn, brimmed hat as the entered the street, and headed directly for the lounge bar of The Griffin Inn.