Finally, wet to the waist as if I had waded a stream, I emerged on the brow of the hill where the heatherstems lay wriggling like the hair of a thousand Medusas. I walked rapidly, waiting for the sun to break through and dry me, and when it came soon afterward, I sat under a whinberry bush by a bank of rare Welsh poppies and ate a few dried figs and a piece of nut-bread for breakfast. From Shepherd’s Well nearby I took a long draught.
The day promised to be glaring hot and abundantly clear on the uplands, and doubtless steaming in the Vale. I passed on to find some brink for reconnaissance. Among the hilltops, what a difference a few feet may make in the prospect!
I found a place on the edge of the sheer flank of the north of the Forest where the wide plains and fastnesses for miles about were revealed in shimmering prospect. I reclined and rested here for long, dried out thoroughly, and had luncheon: two legs of chicken, a chunk of unsweetened chocolate, and an orange which had wonderfully escaped crushing in my ascent. While I ate, I looked at the cloud-flecked hills spread all about in lovely confusion with fantastic writhen crests and crowns of Silurian rock. They were scraped and clawed by rivers channelling: Ithon and Clywedog and Wye gliding down their shady courses with here and there among them a glimpse of hill-hung woodlands, or church tower peeping over castle rise, or drowsy village looking unchanged for centuries. Surely from Aidenn Forest one could see the better half of Wales.
Of a sudden I slapped my thigh. “I’ll do it!”
My large-scale map of the Forest was in my pocket, as was a map of greater scope, showing Wales and the western counties, from which I could transfer the angles and make a fairly good job of it. I would draw sighting lines on the Forest sheet, so as to identify those magnificent and anonymous hills that showed crags and colours from twenty, thirty, forty miles away.
I was at the northern end of the Forest. Should I work here? No, the sun had not yet driven the vapour from the remotest peaks of which I wished to find the names. Besides, there was no shelter near, and I saw some cool-looking groves on Whimble. I headed south for Whimble.
Wryneck and woodlark sometimes came curiously past while I worked on my maps under disadvantages, without table or board; I had to fold one sheet for a straight-edge if I wished to make a mark on the other. Sighting was difficult without a firm plane surface. But I had enthusiasm, and patience. I fixed lines pointing to mountains that, when I had found their names, for the first time seemed real to me, Cader Idris, the Brecon Beacons, many others—as the tracing I include here will remind me when I look through these pages in later years.
I still had some cheese in my pocket. I ate it for tea.
Then out of the sultry day came a sudden dash of rain along the hilltops, blotting out my mountains, and hedging in my horizon to the profiles of the nearby slopes. I realized that the copse of trees I occupied abutted the field where I had fled from the bull. Fair shelter must be near.
I made short work of hastening across the field and climbing down, this time, to the long broad ledge upon which I had fallen on the other occasion. There I found refuge from the weather, snugly ensconced on a lichenous seat of stone where the slaty rock was hollowed out underneath the eyelid of the hill. In my dim cubicle I laughed at the storm that was sending down its battery of rain.