Day 2
Machynlleth to Borth: 14 miles
Dedication of the day: The 2004 Boston Red Sox
Reason: If the Red Sox hadn't won the World Series in 2004, I probably wouldn't have the commemorative baseball hat with me. And if I hadn't had the hat, I probably would have drowned from inhalation of rain being driven into my face. So thank you Big Papi, for saving my life.
So it turns out the weather wasn't much better today either. . .
So from the title of this blog post, you might think that I found Borth so heavenly that thought I'd died. You would be incorrect.
Rather, I literally thought I was going to die. Then I somehow ended up in Borth. And ate a piece of lamb with a giant cave-man style leg bone sticking out of it. And fell asleep at 8pm from exhaustion.
Leaving Machynlleth
I left Machynlleth (which if you want to know about check out yesterday's post) in the pouring rain, despite one of the people at the hostel suggesting maybe I wait for it to clear up. My theory being that it doesn't usually just clear up, so I might as well get it over with.
While I wasn't wrong, that just meant I got soaked. Which at first was fine because I was wearing a lot of waterproofing. Then after 2 hours that stopped working and everything except my legs became a sodden mess. Since I was afraid this would include my camera if I took it out much, I don't really have many pictures, until I got closer to Borth and it eased up a bit.
Which is a shame, because when 20 brown cows suddenly run right towards you across a field, and you see a giant white bull twice their size with a nosering leading the charge staring right at you, what you want to do is pull out your camera to commemorate your impending doom. And also have proof should you survive. Which now I don't have - so it's just like the time we ran across a turkey standing on the back of a miniature horse in Maine, an amazing sight that no one believes happened.
Anyway, since I don't have many pictures, which generally serve as reminders for me, and because I believe I'm suffering from a bit of PTSD, I might not have that much to say about this walk (that is Wales or walk-related anyway - I have much me-in-pain commentary). Basically, the first 9 miles or so of this hike was hill and forest walking, but a lot of it was on roads, which can be tough on the joints. In my particular case, after only a few miles my left hip felt started to feel strained. Everything else was fine, just my left hip.
Normally that can be a signal of the backpack being lopsided or unevenly packed or somehow sitting wrong, so I tried to adjust all these things. Nothing made it better.
Since I was in the middle of the woods without so much as a house in sight when this happened, I figured the best thing (the only thing) I could do would be to keep going. About 3/4 of the way to Borth the track crosses Tre'r-ddôl and Tre Taliesen on the main road, and if I made it there I could decide what to do when I got there.
I figured one of two things would happen: 1) the pain would get much worse and by the time I got there I would have to call P to come get me and start over in a few days or 2) the pain would go away, everything would be fine and I'd forget about it. However, if I may quote Arlo Guthrie, there was a third possibility that I hadn't even counted upon: that the pain would stay exactly the same.
So it was that 9 miles later I ended up hobbling down the main road like an old lady. And I do mean hobbling - while the pain didn't really get worse, my body was still clearly averse to putting weight on my hip and I found myself casually dragging my left leg behind me like the hunchback of Notre Dame on his way to ring the bells.
Arriving in the Promised Land: Borth
You might think that a smart person in this hobbled state would sit down, stop, and reconsider going on. I however sat on a bench to eat an Almaty fruit roll up I had in my bag (don't ask), and then decided to keep going.
Why? Well, because when I first looked at this leg of the trail I remember saying to P 'It's 14 miles, which is a bit more than I'd like to be starting off with, really, but see this last stretch here? It's miles of flat land to Borth, all in a straight line. Should be fine even if it is far.' Remembering that, I figured, what was a few more miles?
Which is how I found myself inching (literally) along a dead straight path through miles of unending peat bog in a grey drizzle. On a normal day, and not in pain, this would have been a fine walk, there were ducks and sheep and horses and it's a peaceful conservation area. Instead I found myself going slowly insane, singing out loud (with occasional emphatic hand motions) to the sheep try to distract myself from noticing my hip, and from noticing that I probably would have made better time crawling.
Speaking of crawling, always one to be open to new possibilities, I also tried other ways of walking to see if they hurt less - I walked backwards, I tried a sideways walk to the left, sideways to the right, leaning fully on my walking stick, lifting my knees, squat-walking, etc. I was my own personal Ministry of Funny Walks.
None of it helped. If anything I was going slower, less of a hobble and more of a shuffle, really. When I saw Borth in the distance I practically yelled 'Halleluejah!' - then I saw a sign indicating I'd actually only walked a mile and a half, and I could only see the town because the bog was so flat, and I almost started crying.
The end of this walk is kind of blur. I remember trying to lift my left leg and having very limited range. I remember being motivated to not just lay down and die by not wanting the guy from the hostel in Machynlleth (who left for the same trail after me) to run across my prostrate body when he got there. I remember thinking, having just watched Dr. Zhivago a few nights ago, thinking that if Yuriy Zhivago could walk across all of Siberia in the winter, I could probably make it to Borth.
I don't know why any of this was motivational, but after more time than it should have taken, I found myself shuffling through the street of Borth (there's really only one street), with elderly people passing me on the sidewalk. I remember getting to the hostel, and rejoicing at it's having a drying room, because I suddenly remembered that I was covered in mud and water, and my socks were basically two sponges. I remember surprise at discovering that I had two of the largest blisters I've ever seen on my big toe. I remember shuffling back down the street to have a meal at the Victoria Inn, which has lovely seaside seating. But since the restaurant ended up being closed, I remember mistakenly flinging a giant lamb legbone across the table at the restaurant down the street that I ended up at. I don't recall how I ended up ordering something with a footlong bone in it in the first place.
But more than anything, I remember hoping against hope that if I just could get a good night's sleep, I'd be able to walk like a normal human being again in the morning.
