Gelli

The Great Man himself - Eric Jones, his Tremadoc cafe below

Jane & I went for a drive this afternoon as the weather was good and looked like it might last today, unlike the storm-remnant unreliability of the last week or so. We fully intended to go and revisit the old quarries at Nantlle and set out accordingly. We made our way toward Waunfawr, taking in the small town of Llanrug en route and using the back-roads for preference.

Beyond the centre of town and going away from the Caernarfon end, you pass the Railway Station and the brew-pub that sits beside it, at the head of Nant Y Betws. Up into the valley you reach the beautiful Llyn Cwellyn on your right; a reservoir which serves parts of Gwynedd and Ynys Môn, where on some days and with the right conditions; especially in early morning, the waters form a perfect mirror; reflecting like for opposite like, the crag of Castell Cidwm on the other side of the lake, in it's stillness.

The far end of the valley brings you to Rhyd Ddu, at which point you can either head up Dyffryn Nantlle or down into Beddgelert. Although Nantlle was our original goal, we drove on into Beddgelert anyway, to see how busy it might be. The place seemed to be thriving, with plenty of alfresco dining options available, although just stopping for a pint seemed to be out of the question. Can't blame the landlords, though - with only half the number of punters due to the two-metre rule, they've got to maximise profits somehow and food & drink only makes sense. So we carried on out of town towards Tremadoc.

On the bends just before the crags appear on your right and with Eric Jones' famous little cafe opposite, we passed by the gate and just beyond, the stile from which an ill-defined path leads up over half a steep mile of dried-up stream-bed and field-paths to Gelli; a hafod situated high above the valley floor, remote from the settlements to either side. A hafod is a summer dwelling - lived in on taking livestock to summer pasture from the lower, winter feeding grounds and the winter home, the hendre.

Gelli was the scene of a memorable little chapter in my life, when I worked in the building trade some thirty-five years ago. The couple I worked for had secured a contract to re-roof Gelli, as the original covering was in danger of collapse. The cottage in those days was a holiday home for someone living in Surrey and the contract was with their architect.

Bearing in mind the location of the building and the complete lack of any vehicular access, taking the job on was a brave task in itself. All materials for the job would have to be carried to site manually, including slates (fortunately the architect had specified much lighter artificial slate on grounds of cost,) battens, roofing-felt, ridge and hip tiles - even the bloody purlins: all had to be moved by hand.

Bryan, the builder I was working for and also my climbing partner, came up with a plan worthy of any mountaineering expedition. We would sherpa the stuff from the roadside material-drops to the cottage using the fittest climbers we could get hold of and pay them by the load. The two main men were Paul Williams and Matthew Pod.

Both serious climbers and fitness fanatics; Paul was well known in the Eighties within the climbing fraternity and wrote probably the definitive guidebook to Snowdonia's rock, dubbed the 'Bumper Book of Fun' by those in the know. Pod was more of an enigma: a denizen of Bethesda's alternative scene. I don't know where he ended up, but sadly Paul later died in a climbing accident.

Bryan had specced the carry to consist of individual half-hundredweight (25Kg) loads to be paid at a couple of quid or just over per load, a decent amount at the time. The estimation was that ten loads would probably be the absolute ceiling for a day's work: around twenty-five quid for shifting a quarter of a tonne of material; a good day's pay. Expensive, but cheaper than a helicopter.

The boys had other ideas. They decided to turn the thing into a combined training session and competition between the two of them. Bryan was duly informed that they would be double-loading and expected twice the pay per load - around a fiver apiece per trip. Whilst the normal humans amongst us walked the route there and back between loads (half of their carry, remember,) Pod & Paul did the return from the cottage to the road to get a fresh load at a full fell-run pace. All day. Fifty kilos up at a good trot and a full-tilt run down. And they managed more than double the number of projected runs each, every day managing more than twenty trips apiece - four times the material and four times the pay. A tonne per man, per day. Mad, but awesome.

I carried a fair number of normal loads myself over the time we were loading up and only once experimented with a fifty kilo carry. I was not quick, to say the least, but it didn't hurt too much as I was still young, but the effort it took put the other two's performance in an entirely different light. They earned every penny of that money and some.

We used to have to stay up at Gelli for a week at a time whilst we worked on it; it was the only practical way to get the work done: the commute was simply too long to be practical. This was interesting in itself, as Gelli was still essentially a nineteenth-century rural dwelling. No water, just a local spring that issued from just by a gatepost; no electricity, gas or sewerage; the latter taken care of by an outside privy with a chemical toilet, although it was far more pleasant to take a shovel out into the fields than use the damn' thing. Primitive, but peaceful.

The cottage was lit at night by oil-lamps and the only entertainment apart from the then de rigueur Walkman, was a pub, five minutes drive towards Tremadoc - a dive but very welcome - and Radio Four on long wave radio at the cottage; 'Sailing By' and the shipping forecast being a nightly lullaby. I stayed there several times over the couple of months that the job took and every time I got back to Bethesda it was like hitting London or Birmingham after a holiday in the country: the pace! That's just how slow and quiet Gelli was. A tiny insight into lives past. I always returned from there much changed and always for the better. To do the same now would take a great effort of will to go that far off-grid so close to home. But it would be worth it.