Day 72
Moel Arthur to Rhuallt: 9 miles
Accomplishment of the day: Not knocking over a potentially ancient monument
Reason: It's not like it hasn't happened before
So, I believe that everything that happened today was probably punishment for going to Sodom.
If I may back up a moment
First of all, let me admit that I have no idea what the title of this post 'The Vortex of Causality' means. P was telling me many months ago about someone saying something along those lines when writing an academic paper and basically getting lost in their research. But to me it really sounds like a fancy way of saying sh*t went wrong.
Well, sh*t went wrong today.
As I was checking out of my train station, I went to pay with my credit card. And said credit card was declined. Sometimes the scanner things don't work in the hills so we tried again. And it was declined again. My Amex was similarly declined but with a different title coming up on the screen.
Luckily I had almost exactly enough cash, because I make a habit of carrying actual physical money just in case - and because sometimes people honestly only accept cash. I was getting brought back to the trail again today, and on the way I went to take money out of our British account - and of course there was only 50 pounds in it. Sigh.
Hoping that the next B and B I was staying in would be understanding and/or that my credit card would magically work there, because seriously wtf else was I supposed to do as I was walking and not going to be able to contact my credit card company on the way, I was dropped back off at Moel Arthur.
Where I was nearly immediately taught that if I'd thought yesterday was windy, then clearly I'd never learned the proper definition of wind. Not being entirely certain which direction I was facing, I'm not sure which sides of hills were the non-windy ones, but let me tell you, when I came out into the wind it was incredible.
I couldn't really take my camera out much because it was being ripped out of my hands, and I also couldn't really stand still particularly well, as I kept being pushed around. This was particularly unfortunate when I got to the top of the Penycloddiau hillfort. This is a 2500 year old stone relic, the largest in the chain of hillforts I'd been seeing in the Clwydian mountains.
According to the information panel below it, there's a cairn at the top. In WWI there was an American man serving with the Canadian Army posted in the area, and he left an inscribed stone in the cairn for other people to find. Looking forward to finding out what that was about, I headed up through some steadily increasing wind.
When I got to the unprotected top of the mountain, I was frankly just being blasted around by the wind. I climbed up to the cairn to try to figure out what the sign had been talking about. But the only place I could stand was the same direction the wind was coming from (i.e. it was at my back as I was facing the cairn). As I tried to sort through what was where, I started to get knocked forward repeatedly, and suddenly had a memory of something that happened to me in Herculaneum like 20 years ago that you know what, actually I'm not going to go into that just now.
But let's just say I suddenly became very worried that I was going to uncontrollably pitch forward and knock the entire thing over. And I didn't think that that would be great. So I ran back behind a ditch, relatively out of the wind, and made my way back down toward Rhuallt.
As least I made it to Rhuallt
Although there wasn't much I could do the rest of the way given the wind, at some secluded spots I could stop to look at the view - and the best part was really that I could see all the way to the north coast. Not just that, when I passed road signs, I actually recognized the names of the towns they were going to - clearly I was back in North Wales!
Actually, I lied, the best part was when I was walking along and suddenly realized I was in Sodom. No, nothing weird was happening. I was actually in a town that for some reason actually allows itself to be called Sodom. Do I know why? No. Do I hope that at least they're enjoying themselves? Yes. But really it looked like a lot of fields with cows. So, Sodom. Lots of cows. Just like in the Bible.
Anyway, I got into Rhuallt no less than three and a half hours early for my ride pick up - and again I wasn't sure where I was supposed to be going. But I had the phone number, so tried to find a phone box to call the B and B and get directions so I could just walk there and not make the hosts have to pick me up.
Unfortunately the phone box I found wasn't just out of order, it appeared to have been taken over by bees. So not only is BT now luring unsuspecting customers with false promises of phone calls to non-working phones, they're luring them into actual bee hives. Great. Luckily I'm not allergic, and also that nothing stung me anyway.
I walked on and decided to get lunch. At the end of which I remembered my credit card might not work. When the waitress ran the card and it failed to go through, I of course put on my 'Oh, what a surprise, how did that happen?' look, but luckily had the whole 50 pounds of cash I'd taken out earlier so I didn't have to go wash dishes.
Off I went again in search of a phone. A mile later, I found another phone box, that appeared to work, but in fact just took my money without doing anything. Now a mile away from where I was supposed to be picked up in the first place, I decided to just walk back and sit and wait on a bench. So I slogged back there, nearly immediately fell asleep on the bench, and woke up because I was being rained on. Because of course I was.
My B and B host came through right on time, and after being driven nearly right back to where the second phone booth was (sigh) I decided she didn't think I was a crazy person (yet) and so asked if she could run my card to see if it worked as soon as we got inside. And she did, and it didn't work. And she said they didn't take Amex.
Now, in many places in the world, you show up dirty, smelly, wearing the same clothes you've been wearing for two weeks, hair askew from the wind, and without a phone, money, or credit cards and a given business owner usually will tell you to get the [expletive] out of their place of business or they will call the police. Not so in Wales, where I was immediately given a key to my room to freshen up, and then a phone with which to call the U.S. credit card company, who told me my credit card had been turned off because someone in the U.S. had stolen it online in order to try to purchase clever t-shirts on a yeti-themed website. Which led me to wonder whether their need for clever t-shirts was more than my need for food and drink. Probably not, but they probably also didn't care.
In any case, although I started off by being very frustrated with the credit card company, their eagerness to help me (after they'd caused the problem, admittedly by turning the credit card off) did eventually win me over. It was possibly when the woman asked me if it had caused any problems, and I said through gritted teeth 'Well I'm hiking a thousand miles around a foreign country right now. So, you know. Yes.' '..Oh, and do you have another card you can use?' 'Yes, I have an Amex, but not everyone takes it.' 'Oh, so you don't have access to. . . anything?' 'No. Not really. And there aren't ATMs where I am right now.' 'Uh, oh, ok.'
And then she suddenly proceeded to ask me if there was a hotel I wanted the card shipped to so that I could meet up with it, or how else we could get me a new card. And also that they could turn back on the card I had until I got the new one, but they could restrict it to Wales-only and non-online purchases (so I could pay for the B and B I was already staying in, apparently just on credit of smiling ingratiatingly at the B and B owner). And so basically they actually fixed the problem. Who knew that could even happen. So there was a bright point.
So I went back to my room and pondered dinner. Apparently the closest pub was a mile away, and I'd already walked too far for lunch so I decided to just eat what I could find in my backpack and in the room. I realized I'd left the darn Swedish moose sausage MEl had given me in the car when P had visited. So, at this point, dinner consisted of half a bag of peanuts, three cookies I'd taken from the last place, and two cookies that were in the tea set in this room. Hearty. Filling.
Oh, and did I mention that when I finally took my shoes and socks off, that my socks were disturbingly stiff? Like, they didn't bend and stuck straight out. Because that was just the kind of day this was.
