The Big Link

This more or less exhausts the most ambitious (and feasible) lockdown options from the front door. After the big Borders 50 miler in January, earlier marathon distance lockdown runs to the top of Moel Famau and back, and the compass point 20 milers, a plan to formulate a giant link-up of the hills of north-east Wales from my front door began to hatch. It was a beautiful morning, but unfortunately I felt a bit tired on the plod up the lanes towards Hope. I took a series of paths over the top of Hope Mountain then dropped down to Llanfynydd through the woods. Lovely warm sunshine, despite the early hour, as I crested Pen Llan y Gwr, continuing along the Wales Link Path (finding the right way this time) down to Four Crosses. From here, a path leads to the Nant y ffrith reservoir, after which I took a wrong turn, ending up in hellish bog and tussocks on the far side of the lake. Eventually, I gained the main Wrexham road, and turned off into the Llandegla forest to join the 10k route. This gave a perfect contouring line with more climbing until I dropped down back to the main road and turned into the village. As with the Borders 50, I was entirely dependent on particular village shops being open, and fortunately the Llandegla community shop was! After a cheese pastie and tunnocks tea cake, I was ready to go back to the fray for the lovely section of OD that follows the stream valley before climbing steeply up to Moel y Plas. This entire section is always good, my favourite part of the Clwydians, but was particularly special today - coming as it did in the middle of this giant loop, beautiful 'spring' weather, and very few people around because of lockdown. I skirted Moel Llanfair and Moel Gyw via the standard OD path, crossed the road at Clwyd Gate, and began to slow a little on the long drag up Fenlli. It was all really enjoyable, despite the increasing fatigue, and I took a little break on top of Famau. From here, the relatively simple matter of 13-14 mainly downhill miles back home remained. I descended down to the leat, then up to Pantymwyn and tiringly down weary willy to Mold, where I took a Boots sarnie and a coke! Thus fortified, the final climb up to Buckley (an urban mountain!) went surprisingly well, although the subsequent descent to HK was a tad uncomfortable: 58.2k/1771m in exactly 7 hours.