FROM THE SUMMIT TO THE SEA
A FAMOUS LOCAL LEGEND says those who survive a night atop Cadair Idris will wake either a madman or a poet. As I lay my head down in my tent, encased in the sea mists that had rolled in and listening to the gentle patter of rain on flysheet above me, I felt confident I would come out of this experience able to write eloquent rhyming couplets. Then the wind picked up.
Cadair Idris is a mountain with which I have had a long love affair. But I’ve never had the opportunity to stay the night before, always slinking off to the car with backwards glances at its majestic peak, Penygadair, piercing the sky alongside its neighbour, Craig Cwm Amarch. Together, they look like the horns of the Devil himself. I’ve always thought of Cadair Idris, southern Snowdonia’s highest mountain, as being a bit rock and roll – not to mention that it’s shrouded in mythology and magic.
Just like Snowdon, it is named after a giant. Its folklore
