We have a lot of satisfied customers and we love getting letters, emails and phone calls telling us how well our Baavets are getting on in their new homes.

I think we are especially chuffed because Bob really knows his stuff. He has lifetime of experiance with inventing and inventions. He talked about innovation on the BBC's Tomorrows World and really appreciates great engineering and manufacturing when he sees it. This is one happy customer's stamp of approval we shall not forget.

So many letters have made us smile but this one made us grin from ear to ear. Thanks Bob!

And if you don't mind us quoting your own catch phrase... "It's clever isn't it?"

Here is more information on Bob: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Symes

And Bob in action recently:

And if you never saw Tomorrows World: http://www.tvcream.co.uk/?cat=6744

...or when I were a lad in the 60’s things were different.

When you get to my age (oh god here we go) you may have either spent your life in one or maybe 2 careers, got the gold watch and nice retirement plan and now be trekking in Nepal, scuba diving in the Red Sea ,or taking life easy sitting on a beach in Benidorm. Or, as in my case, chopped and changed careers; and at one time cashed in a pension plan to do some serious travelling; and ended up at retirement age still having to work for a crust. 

At one time the retired baby boomers just used to head for the sun in Spain but I know retired people who fly off to Florida, Australia or New Zealand on a regular basis for some sun. In fact I am forever saying to my contemporaries ‘I don’t want to know where you’re going to next, thank you very much’.

A friend of mine has just come back from 2 weeks skiing, which is what he averages most years. He will then be heading for Spain climbing in three weeks time, then France or Greece which he does usually 3 times a year and now someone has asked him to go to California in the summer!. 

For some years now I have been somewhat jealous of all these people my age who seem to be flitting around the world enjoying their apparent freedom.

But I wonder what they and the rest of the grey brigade do to fill their time when they come home? I don’t really know; what does anyone do to pass the time when they retire? A little gardening, cooking, day time TV, some light reading. I’m sure there are plenty who have very positive pastimes and hobbies or even look after the grandchildren, the traditional role of the old in the family. 

So where is this all going…. well it’s a little ‘nostalgering’ on my part because after 2 years of being formally retired and still working full time I would still love to travel, to climb and have more freedom (wouldn’t we all) while I am still active. But we have a very old dog, Gwen who is 13 going on 14, who relies very much on us now and can’t be left with anyone else; and of course we are in the early stages of a new business and we still have a farm to run. 

So where do the bananas and tarantulas come into my life’s story?

Back in time when the world was a far more naive place than today, when the roads weren’t choked with traffic, before the age of the motorway, and when freight travelled the land by train, I reached that time in life when work or further education beckoned. 

I lived in a large industrial city where 30,000 people or more worked in factories, mainly car factories, and engineering was the main profession.  The normal route into a career was to get an apprenticeship with a big company and go to night school or to ‘day release’ to further your academic qualifications, then work your way around a factory until you found something you liked or were good at. 

After several visits to large factories, all I seemed to see and hear was noise, dirty working conditions, and the sheer scale and size of the factories I found overwhelming, so I decided it wasn’t for me.

It was a very difficult time, as it is for all young people even today, asking the question, ‘what am I going to do with my life?’ (That’s one of life’s most persistent questions and never goes away; well I am still not sure what I want to be when I grow up!).

Then I saw an advertisement for a trainee manager with Elders and Fyffes, the banana people. Their office and warehouse were in a large wholesale fruit and vegetable market near to where I lived so I decided to apply for the job.

I duly arrived for the interview with the manager and was shown around. Basically it was the main Fyffes depot for distribution of their bananas in the Midlands. Bananas would arrive there by train from the docks; the train line was at the back of the market immediately behind Fyffes depot.  The bananas arrived green and still be on the stems, then from the train they were put into temperature controlled storage rooms where they were ripened. After ripening, the bananas where cut off the stem, cut into hands (bunches) and boxed according to grade and type. These were then loaded onto lorries to be delivered to shops around the Midlands.

The warehouse was on an industrial scale and Elders and Fyffes employed quite a few people for what was a really simple manual job looking after the ripening process, cutting and packing. 

Elders and Fyffes is a massive company, or it was, they had depots all over the country and they didn’t just import bananas they actually owned the shipping line and many banana plantations all over the world. A hark back to British Colonial days.

My job was to start in the office, and if good enough, work my way up into management which would also include a spell on the lorries as a salesman to get a real feel for the job. I seemed to be getting on well with the manager during the interview; and he eventually offered me the job.

Now, this was not a time of high unemployment where 100 people or more chase one vacancy, in fact it was more the other way round, jobs were easy to come by. That’s another thing about the 60’s; globalization was along way off and everyone who wanted a job could get one. See things were better then (oh yeah?). 

So I took the job and began my first ever full time job with a proper wage every week and I wasn’t working in a smelly, noisy, huge, dirty factory.

The job entailed helping keep all the office records, and there was a heck of a lot of record keeping which included an old fashioned daily ledger which had to balanced everyday. I found this a nightmare because if it didn’t balance you had to go through all the sales of every salesman and you didn’t go home until it was done. It was very Dickensian, Bob Crachit and Mr. Scrooge, and no digital calculators just a mechanical contraption, and see how much better things were then!!

My career path seemed determined as I settled into the routine and I even found a day release course at the local Technical College. But then something happened which was to have far reaching consequences and completely change the course of my life. In fact looking back now it was to become an ongoing theme in my life; something happens and I completely change course…. Baavet ..Baavet.

I was a Rover Scout (they no longer exist now) it was the branch of scouting for 18 to 24 year olds. Many of these older guys worked as leaders with younger scouts and I was persuaded to give a hand. 

What has all this to do with Bananas and tarantulas?  We’re getting there.

I enjoyed working with the scouts so much I thought that perhaps my old Housemaster had been right when he encouraged me to try for teaching. I contacted him for advice as I hadn’t any ‘A’ levels and wasn’t sure if I could get into college.

Well he seemed to pull some strings and I got an interview at St. Peter’s College, Saltley, Birmingham, one of the oldest colleges in the country.

Well to cut a very long story short I was accepted to start in the following October for a 3 year teacher training course. But that was nearly a year away and I needed to have a job in the meantime.

At about the same time I was summoned to the manager’s office to be told they were very happy with my progress at Fyffes and they were going to put me permanently onto the management training programme. 

I had to come clean and say I was planning to go into teaching instead.  The boss wasn’t too pleased and the trouble was I still needed a job until the teaching course started.  Thankfully he said I could stay on….as long as I worked down in the warehouse…I accepted.

It was a considerable climb down in status and working conditions and I took some stick from the rest of the workforce but I put on a brave face and just got on with it.

Basically we started work at 6.00am and we worked all day moving, cutting, picking and packing banana bunches.  One of the jobs involved going into the temperature controlled ripening rooms. The first time I went in I was paralyzed with fear, the walls of the room were covered in huge tropical spiders and insects that had stowed away in the bananas and were now waking up in the tropical heat of the ripening room. The other workers recounted stories of tarantula’s, snakes and one time a mongoose.

I didn’t like the idea of any of these tropical beasties as I really hate snakes and not very keen on big spiders. So I found going into the rooms quite worrying to say the least. It was awful when the bananas were ripe we had to go into the ripening rooms and grab the big stems lift them off the hangers and put them on conveyor belts to go to the cutting room. 

But the very worst job was when the bananas arrived by train. We had to go into the goods wagons grab a large stem of bananas which were wrapped in polythene, break the polythene cover and blindly put our hands into the bag to grab a stem and loop a chain around the stalk to lift the whole thing onto a conveyor belt. The thought of plunging my hand into a nest of tropical spiders or venomous snake really freaked me out and I held my breath every time I did it.  I just hated that job, fortunately it was short lived, but it was certainly a memorable experience.

My friend John came down this weekend for my birthday and when we went out on the mountains for a birthday jaunt the topic of conversation turned to age and he asked me if I felt I had made the best of the years I’ve had. Well we then discussed how both of us had faired with the passing of the years. John has never been married, never had children and doesn’t have a farm in Wales but he is one of the most travelled people I know. He has trekked and climbed and mountain biked all over the world and despite his years he continues to do so. For my part this blog is becoming testament to a lifetime of adventures. So we came to the conclusion that although our paths had crossed many times and we’d shared many experiences and adventures we now find ourselves in very different circumstances, but one thing we agreed on was that we couldn’t really have fitted much more into our lives than we have, and that in itself was enough to feel that we hadn’t wasted our 60 years and so we could now sit in a chair and contemplate old age….

…….oh no we won’t there’s still so many things to do! www.baavet.co.uk

But you know the irony is that my friend John, who seems to be permanently on holiday, also envies us with our lifestyle as much as I have envied his apparent freedoms. The grass is always greener… so they say.

For now I am content with my lot because, as I head into my 68^th year, I must say I don’t feel anything like that age and I am convinced that to stay younger and active you must do just that, be very active both in mind and body because if you don’t use them, you lose them. And it wouldn’t surprise anyone who knows me if I said on my 67^th birthday yet another commercial adventure has presented itself, and I might just take it up!

So if you are 20, 30, 40, 50 or even 60 it’s never too late

Good life’s adventuring to you all!

So we are suddenly plunged from Indian summer into winter with biting cold winds and lashing rain. It must be the usual UK weather then, completely unpredictable.  When we were in New Zealand, (a little name dropping or should that be place dropping) their weather was so changeable and unpredictable they would often call it a 2 season or even a 3 season day. And of course they are our antipodes but the main difference is they are in the middle of the pacific with no land mass to protect them so it’s far more an exposed place than us. We were cycling around New Zealand at the time and it’s the only place where I have literally been blown off my bike by the wind and it was so windy we had to walk for some miles. We don’t really get that here although I have been blown off my feet on the mountain tops quite a few times; it’s quite scary.

So on with today’s story.

When we first arrived in Baavet land we came with little or no money and the first decision was, ‘do we buy a tractor or a Landrover for the farm’, we just couldn’t afford both. When I say Landrover I mean an old Landrover (or that would have been an old tractor). We thought the Landrover would be more versatile so that’s what we went for.

It was an old 1968 series 3, in blue; no power steering and very, very basic. But that’s what we needed for the rough jobs around the farm especially carting rocks and stones for our stonewalling. 

Sorry about the quality of the photo which was taken 13 years ago. It’s taken beside the first stone wall we rebuilt with the trusty old Landrover in the background.

We had just a small parking place away from the cottage then, next a semi ruined barn. Well almost ruined as the roof had mainly gone and one wall had collapsed. We had been here for some time when one day I took the Landrover over the fields. It started to rain so I turned the wipers on. This in itself is an experience in an old Landy. In fact in most of them you could work the wipers by hand. There was a scrapping noise on the windscreen as the wiper blades crossed the window. I stopped and looked and saw that one of the wiper blade rubbers was missing. Oh blast… never mind I’ll get another one when I go to town…Which a week or so later I did. 

Life continued, work was done with the Landrover then sometime later, I can’t really say how long, the same thing happened when another wiper blade went missing. Now on the old Landrover you can just replace the rubber in the wiper blade not the whole blade, lucky really because no sooner had I replaced that one than another one went missing. By the third time I noticed it straight away and got out of the Landy and looked around and there on the roof was the missing rubber.

I was beginning to get suspicious now, this couldn’t just be a case of old rubber blades coming lose, I was now onto 3 new ones. So I pushed the rubber back hard so it was really difficult to get it out and felt sure nothing would move the rubber.

Sure enough nothing did move the rubber because the next thing that happened was the whole wiper blade rubber and all went missing. Whatever had been stealing the rubber couldn’t get the rubber out so they took the whole bloody wiper blade. I just couldn’t believe that some thieving little magpie, or was it a squirrel, I will never know, had managed to get the whole blade off. So from then on I took both wiper blades off complete with the rubber and put them in the cab and only put them on the Landy if it rained! Huh try and get the rubber blades now you little critters.

Of course we eventually saw the funny side of things perhaps it was a squirrel with a rubber fetish. Can you imagine the cartoon image of a squirrel lazing back in the old barn on a nice cushioned bed of rubber!

That wasn’t the end of the Landrover saga. As I said we used to go out to different parts of the farm to work so we would go in it especially when stonewalling as we could take all our tools and buckets and so on. Gwen, our Border collie, was really quite freaky when she was young (what Collie isn’t). She was particularly frightened by any loud bangs or low flying aircraft (we are on the training path of RAF Valley) so she used to like to sit in the Landrover cab while we worked.

Now don’t ask me why, but on this particular day I had parked it up on a steep hill by the side of our stonewall job facing downhill I left the hand brake on, obviously, and I also left it in gear, you know the big old Landy gear stick and I know you can guess what happened next, why didn’t I see that?

It was a lovely spring day, everything was going fine we were into a rhythm with the wall (Roger was at one with his rocks! Lesley once bought a coaster with this on!)

Lesley and I were both working with our backs to the Landrover when I decided to go over the wall for a pee. I was just relieving myself and admiring the view when Gwen put her head out of the side window, she always sat on the front seat. There was a clunk and suddenly the Landrover lurched forward and started off down the hill gathering speed.

Now if it wasn’t so serious it would have been quite comical as the landrover gathered speed with Gwen quite happily looking out of the window. But for a moment it was far from comical as the Landy was careering now down the slope and heading for a very steep drop which would have trashed the Landy and been fatal for the dog.

Lesley had her back to the action and hadn’t noticed what was going on. I don’t remember doing my flies up as I screamed at Lesley, bounded the wall in one leap and raced after the Landrover but there was no way I could catch it I stopped and just stared in disbelief and just waited for the inevitable.

Gwen was just calmly looking out of the window as if to say ‘where are we going?’ There was absolutely nothing I could do, my heart was in my mouth as I watched, as almost in slow motion, and the inevitable crash to come as the Landrover would go over the edge.

Just at the very last moment a miracle happened, well not just a miracle, a feat of robust solid Landrover engineering the one without power steering. Just before the edge it went over a bump in the hillside which turned the wheels and as the wheels turned with the bump so the steering wheel went with them like an unseen hand. It would have taken another strong hand to turn it back. The Landrover changed course and instead of heading downhill it headed across the slope and actually turned slightly uphill and gently pulled to a halt just as if Gwen was driving it herself. I raced down heart pumping completely overjoyed and rushed up to Gwen who just looked at me as if to say ‘So where the bloody hell have you been, how did you expect me to drive this thing.’

But I must end this with a story with something I didn’t actually witness on the farm but it has been told to me by my neighbour about our predecessor old Mr. Evans. I always refer to him as old Mr. Evans it just seems fitting.

Now back in the 1950’s Mr. Evans liked the old ways and stuck to his horse and cart on the farm (we still have his cart minus the wheels) and he didn’t want one of these new fangled things called a tractor. The horse’s stable was the ruined barn I referred to earlier and just below it is a small well, it’s a spring really which has four stone sides and we are told the horse always preferred to drink from its cool clear water. Our young Border collie, Moss, always drinks from there now.

But as time went by he watched his neighbours buying and using their shiny new Fergi Bach’s. The Fergi Bach, Welsh for Little Fergi, is the immortal grey Ferguson tractor which became a legend throughout the UK but particularly in the hills of Wales where its small rugged frame could handle the rough going. It’s now a collector’s item and can be seen at all agricultural shows. I used to have one myself, they are brilliant.

So the day eventually came when even old Mr. Evans went and bought himself his very own Fergi Bach and he was really pleased with it.

This is a photo of a photo of my neighbours pride and joy the Fergi Bach he rebuilt and lovingly restored… not a bad photo of a photo really.

Mr. Evans hadn’t had the tractor very long when one day he was coming down the field to park the tractor up for the night. This field is immediately behind the barn and it has a particularly steep slope; it’s the same hill we toboggan down; and for some reason he stopped at the top of the hill to get off the tractor to do something. Now he must have either not put the brake on properly or he must have knocked the brake off as he get off. Whatever the case, the result was the same, the tractor set off on its own at an ever increasing speed down the hill. It quickly gathered speed, careering towards the bottom of the field and a hedge. But unlike our Landy it didn’t change course it just thundered on down. When it reached the hedge it was travelling so fast that it went straight through it. Now the hedge wasn’t the real problem for the tractor, it was the steep vertical drop straight down on to the farm track the other side of the hedge which was going to do the tractor the real damage. But luckily the tractor was now going so fast that it went straight through the hedge and shot into the air like Evel Knieval and sailed straight over the track. Then it continued its flight through the air and over the fence the other side of the track and eventually it landed upside down in a bog on the other side, completely unharmed I am told. Behold a flying tractor!

Can’t you just see the look on old Mr. Evans face!

More stories from the crazy people in the hills soon. You can see why we invented the Baavet can’t you?

Talking of which, if you didn’t see it on twitter, Baavet is going global, well abroad anyway, with sales to Ireland (the Irish just love their Baavets), France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, and America (it was taken as luggage). But the most amazing one was the Baavet that was sent to Australia a couple of weeks ago. We told the guy, by email, to buy his duvet locally several times but he insisted the Australian wool duvets were lumpy and insisted we send him one. Well what could we do? We sent him one, and you know what, it took no longer to get to him than to our regular customers in the UK! He emailed us to say his new Baavet was brilliant.

And this year with the added anniversary of 2011 making it 11..11…11 ...11

Memorial Stone to the people who died while serving at the airfield close to our village

I was born just a few months before the end of WW2. It was a world none of you born after 1970 would recognise. I grew up living with my grandparents in a terraced house in a Midland’s industrial city, the kind of street that was replicated a thousand times across the industrial cities of Britain. It wasn’t exactly back to back as we had a yard and a small rear garden which I could play in. When you went out of the back door to the yard you first passed the window of the kitchen then came a coal house, after that a plain brick outside loo and I can tell you we didn’t sit around too long dreaming. In the winter we even had to leave a small paraffin lamp by the pipes to stop them freezing.  Nice soft toilet paper, on a toilet roll on the wall, forget it, it was ripped up squares of newspaper with a hole punched in the corner with a piece of string through and then hung on a nail in the brick wall. On top of the outside toilet was an enormous tank which all the house gutters ran into to catch rain water. Now I don’t know if this was the original water supply for the house (it was built around the 1890’s) but we still had a tap in the kitchen from it and my grandmother used it for washing because she said it was soft water unlike the mains water. However there was always a lady’s stocking over the end to catch any small creatures or dirt that came down the pipes!

We did have another tap in the kitchen it was one cold mains water tap, no hot water tap, and no bathroom or bath. Well there was the tin bath hanging on the wall and yes I did have baths in the kitchen in it! If you wanted hot water you boiled a pan on an old gas stove or for the bath or washing clothes we had a galvanised boiler in the kitchen corner. But there was always a kettle on the hob at the side of the open fire or actually hanging over the fire. It was a particularly black kettle! We still had the Victorian black steel range with an open coal fireplace with an oven at the side in the living/dining room, although my grandmother no longer did the cooking on it. This was the only heating in the house and in winter we would huddle around it with thick curtains across every door to keep out the drafts of cold air from the other rooms which were like fridges. There were fire places in the bedrooms but you only had a fire if you were ill, it was too expensive. We had a front parlour which was only used when guests arrived or for family parties. 

No television of course, well we did get TV when I was about 14, before that we all sat around the radio of an evening. I can still remember when I was young, and still hadn’t gone to school, cuddling up to my grandmother in afternoon and listening to the BBC, Listen with Mother story time. No Cbeebies then to stick the kids in front of while you go and do something else. 

Although times were hard, compared to the luxuries of today, in many ways, at least for children, times were absolutely great. The streets were empty of traffic we played football in the middle of the street and lots of chasing games and there were always loads of friends to play with. The alleys between the houses were a rabbit warren for chasing and hiding games, you could run from street to street for a mile. They were quick ways for everyone to cross streets without going around. The streets were full of kids in groups playing together with not an adult in sight. Today these same alleyways are gated and locked in fear.   In those days everyone knew each other and when it came to child care guess what, all the teenage girls in the street and some younger would just knock the door and say, ‘can we take your baby or youngster out, Mrs Jones?’ You would be popped in your pram and off they would go. Mum could get on with what she was doing without worry or fear.

We made trolleys (wooden go carts on old pram wheels) we made what you would now call mountain bikes. We would find old bike frames and wheels, make them up with one brake sometimes no brakes and take them out in the fields to off road on them. We even made dirt racing tracks in the woods because although it was a city and we were in terraced houses we were never far from wild parkland or open fields which we could bike to, bus to, or even walk to. In every street there was what we called bomb sites where houses or factories had been flattened in the war. These provided adventure playgrounds for us. We could do what we wanted, make dens smash bottles, play cowboys and Indians. No adults bothered us; we were free to do what we wanted. The only rule was to be in when it got dark.

Young people and children experienced a freedom to grow up.

Perhaps in some small way that’s why I cherish freedom so much. I think my two sons experienced something similar in their childhood because we always lived in the country. They experienced the same kind of childhood freedom of space and no adult supervision; the only rule was to be back by a certain time. I am sure they got up to tricks I still don’t know about. But one thing I do know was that Christian climbed to the top of some mature 60ft beech trees and pinned a flag to the top of each. They remained there for years.

I remember one night when they broke the rule of coming in on time they were about 10 and 7 years old.  I wasn’t too bothered at first (it wasn’t a rigid on the dot thing) but, as time went by, and it was dark, I first became annoyed, and then of course quite worried when suddenly the door opened and Christian, stuck his head around the door.

“Daniel won’t come in dad and I am getting cold” shouted Christian

“Do you know what time it is? Get in here “(relieved that they were okay I could return to chiding father mode)

“He won’t come in Dad he’s too scared”

“What do you mean” I shouted back as I walked to the door and looked out.

“He fell in the ditch Dad and he’s soaking wet and he’s scared you are going to tell him off.”

There was Daniel standing soaking wet in the dark looking very sheepish.

I felt bad that the poor boy was more scared of me than falling in a ditch and getting soaking wet!

Freedom they had but they also had to learn to do as they were told and how to behave themselves they were taught to be responsible for their actions.  Because with true freedom comes responsibility.

When they were 12 and 9 I decided we would take our bikes and go on a camping trip to France. How and why this came about is another story. The point was, I wanted to do it and it was easy to persuade them to come.

“Heh Christian would you like a brand new bike? Well let’s try it out in France”

Daniel being rather smaller was a problem but we found him a small second hand bike with gears and off we went

We never really do a great deal of planning for any adventure, we just kind of have an outline plan which was to take the ferry to Cherbourg and then bike down the Cherbourg Peninsula and into Brittany the rest we would make up as went along. 

It was 300 mile trip, its amazing how far you can travel on a bike in 2 weeks even when you are only 12 and 9. We camped wild most of the time and had some adventures that would fill a blog.

I knew of course about Normandy and the D-Day landings but as we sailed across to Cherbourg the boat was full of old soldiers with their war time berets. I didn’t know at first but it was the fortieth anniversary of the D-Day landings and they were going for some special parades. So our plans changed to include a visit to the D-Day beaches and Museums on the way back. I managed to pick up info along the way (no surfing the net in those days).

I remembered seeing the film The Longest Day and I remembered the story of the American 101^st Airborne Division landing at a place called St Mary Eglise. We decided to go and take a look as there was an American war museum there. As we rode towards the small town I told the boys the film starred John Wayne and in the film a guy parachutes down into the village and his parachute gets stuck on the church spire. You can imagine our surprise as we rode into the centre of the village and there was a parachute hanging form the tower with what appeared to be a soldier in uniform. It was a dummy of course but it sure impressed one 12 year old and his 9 year old brother. Later walking around the very impressive museum one small Daniel in a very loud voice, as only kids can do, said , “Heh dad where’s John Wayne?”

The parachute on the spire incident did actually happen by the way, it wasn’t just a bit of Hollywood theatricals.

We biked to some big German gun emplacements and we saw the Mulberry harbour which had been constructed in the UK and floated across the channel. Then we visited the War museum at Bayeux and all this made the whole thing far more real. 

There was an Allied war cemetery nearby so we all went across to pay our respects. But as I walked along the endless rows of perfectly aligned headstones which are kept immaculate and began to read the headstones I found it harder and harder to hold back the tears.

To our beloved father….left us so soon…  died in action aged 23

To our loving son we will never forget you … died in action aged 21

To my loving husband you will be in my heart forever….died in action aged 27

To our loving son who sacrificed so much for others.. died in action aged 19

They went, on row after row after row, hundreds of them and all over northern France there are millions of young men from all over the world who came to a foreign land to defend their right to freedom, who died defending the freedom of their friends, their relatives, their countries and us.

They willingly gave their today’s for our tomorrows.

Since then I have always remembered them at this time of year, because what they were really fighting for was freedom, their freedom and our freedom.

On the radio this morning I heard someone say her father was Polish and he managed to find his way to the UK in 1940 for one reason only, to fight for the freedom of his country.

Without their sacrifice I could never have grown up with the freedoms that I wrote of earlier, we would never have had the freedom to roam and think what we want, do what we want; to take an innocent bike ride across the channel with my children.  Instead we would have been living in a totalitarian state with secret police with no power of protection or redress for the common man. 

Llanbedr’s war memorial 

We always try to get down to our local war memorial in the village and join with the millions of people up and down the land remembering those who gave their lives. It’s extremely moving as the names of every single person in every world conflict since the First World War who came from our village and parish area and who gave their lives for us is slowly and solemnly read out.

The local army and air cadets parade through the village.  And we have the last post played by a bugler.

Memorial stone in Llanbedr to Corporal Barney Dylan Warburton who died trying to defuse bombs in Bosnia, he gave his life for others.

I don’t suppose we ever really understand the politics and policies of governments who go to war, but it seems right that we should spare a thought and pay our respects to those who lost their lives for their countries, our country and their fellow human kind.

It has taken thousands of years and the deaths of millions of men and women for power to be in the hands of the people. Cherish your freedom it’s not the default setting of the world. 

Further thoughts on this

http://baavet.posterous.com/baavet-blitz  Democracy and freedom are not the default settings of the world

It’s Tupping Time…nudge, nudge, wink, wink

Baavetman outside his shed, complete with stupid look (Moss…‘what’s he like!’)

The shed wasn’t built from a kit, it was planned organically (that’s fancy talk for, we made it up as we went along!) according to the lengths of wood we bought so there wasn’t any waste! It worked out fine.

The summer cows have gone off the farm to avoid poaching of the land through the winter. The heavy cattle cut up the soil badly, especially in gateways, and the land suffers from erosion turning things into a quagmire, so instead of cattle we over winter sheep, they’re lighter and do very little damage to the grass sward. Traditionally the sheep are out on the mountains in the summer and come down to overwinter on the lower hills where it’s more sheltered and they can be fed, although some of the hardy Welsh Mountain sheep stay up high all year round coming down only to lamb. 

In the spring we have the first flush of grass growth which grows quite vigorously after the long winter. This vigorous growth is not just due to the increase in temperature, grass needs around 10/12c to grow, but the grass also reacts to the increase in the amount of daylight as we go through the Spring Equinox (equal day and night light around the end of March). As we get closer to the colder autumn days you would expect the grass to stop growing but there is a phenomenon known as the Autumn Flush, the grass suddenly has a growing spurt because as we go through the Autumnal Equinox (end of September), and we still have reasonable day time temperatures, the grass thinks its spring and has another flush of growth. This is very important to farmers, and wildlife, with a chance for all herbivores to feed up before winter. This year the autumn flush has been longer and better than usual, it really does still look like spring in the fields. The old farmers say ‘feed a ewe well before Xmas and she’ll feed herself until spring’. I often look at the fields in mid winter and think ‘what on earth are they eating’, as the grass dwindles away and there seems to be nothing left, but the sheep seem to keep their heads down munching quite happily, but today the meagre winter grass is generally supplemented with a commercial pelleted feed and mineral licks.

Daylight also has an effect on the breeding season for most wild animals such as deer, foxes and badgers, not just farm animals. The autumn light affects the female’s eyes which triggers the release of a chemical which is the signal to come on heat and prepare for mating. For sheep it’s called tupping time. A tup is another name for a ram; and sounds very much like the Welsh word for stupid ‘twp’, I’m not sure if that’s any reflection on the ram!  (‘w’ in Welsh is pronounced as a ‘u’ in English)

A fine Welsh Mountain Ram, a ram can serve about 80 ewes in a night! 

With cows there is a strange behaviour called bulling. The farmers can tell when a cow comes on heat and is ready for mating with the bull because the other females will try to mount her like a bull. The other interesting thing in a flock of sheep or herd of cattle is as one female comes on heat so it brings the others on heat at around the same time. The important thing in this whole process is that the females come on heat and are mated at the right time of year for them to give birth to their young as the food supply begins to increase in the spring, so they have food themselves to produce their milk for the young. And the staggering performance of a ram is just part of that process of getting the ewes mated around the same time. 

Farmers can control the exact date of mating by keeping the rams away from the sheep. Welsh Mountain rams are traditionally put to the ewes around Nov 5^th then they know when lambing will start which would then be around April the 5^th.

Reducing daylight hours has a reverse effect on chickens as they stop laying eggs as the hours grow shorter and stop altogether in the winter. So it’s nature’s way of closing down their reproductive system when the food supply is poor. Commercial egg producers have electric lights put in their sheds to make the birds think its summer all year round. I have to say I have done this myself just to get some extra laying time. 

And its not just females that are affected by the light and time of year as stags start to rut as they fight each other for a share of the females that are about to come on heat and be ready for mating. Rams in the wild would do the same

Farmers now interfere with the natural cycles in most animals for commercial gain and I have to say I am not too happy with all of these practices although some, like factory farming, are much worse than others. Modern human beings insatiable desire for meat has led to some appallingly inhumane practices against domesticated animals.  More respect for other living creatures must be high a priority if we are going to regard ourselves as civilised.

Add to this the amount of land given over to growing animal feedstuffs to produce animal protein and some of our farming systems start to seem a bit crazy.  It would be far more beneficial and productive to grow food for direct human consumption. 

Personally I have been a vegetarian now for nearly forty years but I haven’t always been.

http://baavet.posterous.com/a-poor-excuse-for-a-vegetarian

I have explained about how and why we have different sheep breeds in the FAQ’s  on the Baavet website. 

How sheep have been bred over hundreds of years with wool for different purposes.

Now I want to tell you a secret, this year certain young ewes are going to be mothers to a new breed of sheep which we will call …. The Baavettes! They are Welsh mountain crosses, aren’t they just pretty, they are going to be crossed again with another breed of Ram, isn’t he a lucky Rambo.

Why blend Baavet wool in a machine when you can blend it on the back of a ewe.

Isn’t nature wonderful and just damn clever?

Our very pretty little Baavettes 

We are thinking of entering them for next years X factor as a girl band please vote for them no matter how bad they sing Baa, baa, baa

Baavet, trying to live life naturally.

The Ghosts of Maes Artro

Halloween, the night the dead return according to ancient myths and legends. It’s supposed to be the night when the portal between the living world and the dead becomes weak and can be crossed. The Celts lit bonfires to show the spirits of their ancestors how to find their way back. 

Our farm is at about 250 feet on the hills overlooking an airfield that stretches away across the flat expanse that once was the sea but which became cut off over thousands of years by the natural build up of sand dunes. It’s right next to Shell Island, a popular camp site which thousands of people come to enjoy the panoramic views of the mountains and the sea, you may know it.

Now the airfield was built during the Second World War when it was supposed to be an R&R station (rest and recuperation). But it had its fair share of fatalities.

A book has been written about the history of Llanbedr airfield it’s called Target Rolling 

On one occasion a Lancaster bomber was in the area and was experiencing engine problems so it was given permission to land at the airfield.

The next day a maintenance crew took the plane out to check it over in flight and almost at once it developed problems and very soon crashed into to the mountains behind the base killing everyone on board.

There is a memorial to 15 American airmen killed when there B52 bomber crashed into top of a local mountain, called Arenig Fawr.

In fact reading the book you get the impression as many airmen were killed or injured while on training exercises as during hostilities.

The old barracks buildings which housed the officers mess

RAF Llanbedr fulfilled its wartime services and after the war the airfield continued in use by the Ministry of Defence. The runway was extended to full international length so it could take modern RAF jets, both fighters and bombers. Its main purpose was to provide pilotless drones that were flown up and down the Irish Sea and were used as targets for missile practice. The base has now closed down for military use.

I discovered a post war secret about Llanbedr airfield a few years ago while on film location in Barmouth (oh yes we does get into the odd film you knows). I was sitting all day with an old retired gentleman who also there as a film extra. We got bored, as you do on these things, and got into conversation about his time working on the airfield as an engineer.

He was there during the missile Cuban crisis of 1962 when the Russians, under Khrushchev, were planning to site missiles in Cuba, in fact the missiles were on there way by ship when president Kennedy told them that if they continued it would be viewed by America as an act of aggression and this would be followed by a nuclear strike against Russia. I was in college at the time and I can tell you the world held its breath for 4 days.

At the last moment Khrushchev backed down and turned the ships around and the world heaved a massive sigh of relief..

Many thought it was a bluff on the part of the West and Kennedy. Well I can tell you Kennedy wasn’t bluffing and neither was NATO. This old gentleman told me that during those 4 days Llanbedr airfield was full of RAF Vulcan A bombers (the A stands for atomic bombs) armed to the teeth and on full standby ready to go.

See my blog democracy is not the default setting of the world.

But as time went on Llanbedr airfield closed down much of the outer perimeter of the once very large, war time camp which extended, with barracks and officers quarters, right into the village.

These buildings were sold off to private individuals and the officers houses are now private dwellings. During the 70’s the area of the camp housing the non commissioned personnel in wooden barracks and the officers mess became a tourist craft and museum centre with some wartime memorabilia called Maes Artro. 

(Maes means place in Welsh only it means more than just any old place and Artro is the name of our local river which then gives its name to many places and even businesses.)

They had an old tank, spitfire and helicopter amongst other things. But by the late Nineties the centre had run into financial difficulty and eventually closed. The site became an eyesore, the helicopter went rusty and the spitfire’s wing dropped off.

Then Maes Artro was bought by a couple who had worked in the Black Country Living Museum and they set about turning the place into a Second World War museum. Things picked up including the spitfire’s wing (It wasn’t an original it was built for a film set, it didn’t even have an engine)

As part of their programme of promoting the place they decided on having a big 1940’s weekend and invited many Second World War re-enactment societies to come along. Hundreds turned up with their 1940’s army vehicles and Landrovers the fields were covered in tents.

Wing commander Roger and Warrant officer Lesley

As part of the weekend they organised a 1940’s wartime dance. It was held in the officer’s mess with murals of spitfires and bombers on the walls.  It was great; the atmosphere was definitely Second World War; it was like stepping back in time with everyone either in uniform or 40’s civi dress. My friend turned up as a ‘Spiv’ with lots of watches on the inside of his coat to sell on the black market and Lesley and I were dressed in original WW 2 RAF uniforms. There was a Big Swing band in American uniform of the day, a Jive disco and even a Winston Churchill look alike gave out an impassioned speech. We had a great time.

I knew the couple who owned Maes Artro well so on the Monday after the dance I went to see them to congratulate them on the weekend.

“We had a great time Saturday Mike, great event so authentic.”

“Yes, we were pleased by the numbers that turned out, but have you heard what happened after the dance?”

“No,” I said, “was there trouble?”

“Well not trouble, trouble”

“What happened?” I agitated.

It seemed that late that night one of the visitors had asked Mike if he could sleep in one of the barracks because he had forgotten to bring a tent. Mike said ‘fine help yourself.’

So off the guy went and bedded down in the back of what had become a 1940’s village hall on the site.

The main hall had chairs in rows as for a village meeting so he went into the empty backroom.

During the night he was woken up by voices and chairs being moved so he thought some other people had been offered a bed space for the night so he just shouted “Heh guys keep it quiet please”

Sometime later he was woken again with the same noises coming form the hall.

So he shouted again

“Quieten down fellas”

In the morning he got up and walked into the main hall expecting to see lots of people bedded down but the room was empty and none of the chairs had been moved. He went straight to Mike and told him what had happened and said “Thanks for the room but I couldn’t spend another night there, I think it’s haunted.”

“A bit spooky,” I said “but he could have imagined it”

“He could have,” replied Mike “but we have seen and heard some strange things around here. Anyway someone else got to hear about it and came to see me. It seems he is a member of a paranormal group and he wants to come back next weekend with his group and carry out a paranormal investigation, so watch this space” 

The paranormal group did go back the following weekend. One of the guys brought his girl friend, who wasn’t a member, who just came for the trip. While the guy spoke to Mike and arranged what they wanted to do the girlfriend wandered off to look around.

When she came back to Mike and the other guys she said she had found the old air raid shelter and had gone inside to look around. Inside she met a man who asked her what all the people were doing on the site.

“What man?” said Mike “there’s no one else here….”  And so began a very strange weekend and weeks of strange events.

The old decontamination block

There was an old building which was originally built as a decontamination area in case of gas attacks but later it became a mortuary we are told. The paranormal team went in there and, according to Mike, the lead girl came out screaming because a mutilated face came at her and through her at great speed.  Their instruments, what ever they are, picked up lots of strange goings on.

Anyway enough paranormal activity was discovered that Maes Artro became a mecca for paranormal groups from all over the UK. You would be amazed at how many paranormal groups there are in the UK, but then again perhaps not. So weekend after weekend groups and mediums came along to commune with the spirits.

The gas decontamination room proved to be the most haunted part of the old camp so much so that a picture began to build up of some kind of disaster or accident that involved many casualties. There are no records of this but then many things that happened in the war that remained a secret.

During that winter so many groups came that Mike turned it into a winter business! Eventually news spread on the paranormal grape vine and the following summer Britain’s Most Haunted TV show turned up for a live weekend show.

Naturally the mediums on the show contacted lots of ghosts (well they had to really or there wouldn’t have been a show) and it transpired, from the ghosts themselves of course, speaking through the mediums, that the 1940’s re-enactment weekend had raised them all from the dead so to speak. So be careful about re-enacting the past in places with real history and be careful this Halloween you never know who might turn up.

“Is anybody there.....?”

I think it’s a good time for a look back at who and what Baavet Cyf is all about and how it all started?

It’s a saga, a long one, I hope you can hang in there!

I have been writing this blog now for a very long time and I usually write at night or the early hours of the morning. This morning I was woken up by the light, not by the day light, but the moonlight. If you live in an urban environment, and most of the human race does now, you will have been artificially cut off from the wonders of a full moon lit night by the scourge of the modern world, light pollution, the street lights and neon signs. On a dark evening you can no longer see the wonders of our starry sky with the silky, milky way, snaking across it (oh you smooth talker you). Constellations like the plough (the great Bear) and the belt and sword of Orion blazoned across a sky amidst billions and billions of stars that make up the universe we live in that seems to go on for ever. In a city not only are the stars of the night sky dampened by the glare of electric light but the horizon line is blocked by the lines of buildings.

But up here where we live the sky meets the land or in our case the sky meets the mountains and the sea our horizon line seems to go on forever.

In fact it can be so light from the moon that it can cast shadows on the ground or we can even go out and have some fun, you can see the picture of me with Moss and a body board when we were out in the snow at night sledging. http://baavet.posterous.com/the-winter-solstice-continued

Snowdon at its best with a covering of snow in winter 

So I love living in this little country of Wales with its mountains, sea, ancient language, standing stones, stone circles and its rocks that go back to the dawn of time. But most of all I love the space, which seems endless here, with not just wonderful moonlit nights but amazing sunsets across the sea. Here I can breath and feel free. I wish I were Welsh especially this weekend when the whole of Wales, and I really do mean the whole of Wales was holding its breath waiting for a miracle to happen on a rugby pitch 12,000 miles away.

There, the spirit of a nation was going to be played in front of television cameras watched by millions of people around the world. To be Welsh means not just your country but your language and Rugby football. It’s part of the culture even if you don’t really watch or support the game. 

On this occasion the dream was not to be; and history was not made; and Wales are not heading to a World cup final. And I put £10 on Wales to win the cup! But I for one think that the present Welsh team could now be the best in the world, if only they can play with 15 men!

For now lets get back to making a Welsh Baavet which also could be the best in the world. 

My wife Lesley is Welsh through and through, although from her accent you would never tell, she was born near Treorchy, well Llwynypia hospital really and most of her family still live in the area. You only know she really is Welsh when she supports any other team that’s playing England at rugby!

My love affair with Wales started from the day, aged 15 when I came on a school camp to Snowdonia. It was the start of a lifetime of adventures I have had in not only the mountains of Wales but all over the world.

So when we came here 13 years ago to live it was almost like coming home and it was the start of the greatest adventure of my life and probably Lesley’s too. Since then we have been running our traditional sheep and cattle farm in the Snowdonia National Park. You can catch up with us on the rest of our story and many more in our blog. 

These are our two working Border collies Gwen and Moss although Gwen has retired now. Some of you may have read some of their adventures on our blog already. (Another shaggy dog story)

During our time on the farm we have had to diversify into other things to make a living. As we both have a background in the outdoor world our first venture was into adventure activities for visitors to the national park. Then, after a few years, we converted some of our barns into high quality self catering. 

You would think that this would be enough work running 3 different businesses, especially in the summer, and you would be right. In fact Lesley has already cut back on the adventure activities to concentrate on the self catering while I looked after the adventure stuff, but age was taking its toll on me and I was keen to retire from active adventure service.

Then just over two years ago I had the bright idea for another farm diversification scheme which I hoped would mean spending more time on the farm and me giving up adventure activities.

The idea was quite simple, to reinvent the blanket and stuff wool into a duvet, just how, I didn’t know but it couldn’t be too hard could it? And that dear reader was the biggest under statement of my life!

My wife Lesley felt that perhaps the world wasn’t quite yet ready for a wool duvet and that we should call it a Baavet. So the idea was conceived, given a name and all we had to do was turn the idea into a reality.  And that, dear reader, was the next big understatement of my Baavet life. (For the unabridged version of how it all started with my vision on the road to Damascus check out… http://baavet.posterous.com/the-truth-about-the-baavet

But what started as a simple plan to help ourselves and our farming neighbours has grown into a full blown commercial operation far beyond our original expectations due to our involvement with parts of Yorkshire and Lancashire which were once home to great British textile industries. Having seen at first hand the terrible demise of these industries and British manufacturing in general we are now on a mission together with many other people to help in some small way, if we can, to restore British manufacturing, not only at home, but who knows we may even export to China!

But there has also been another important aim and that is to carry out our business both in an eco friendly way and hopefully an ethical way.

After the initial euphoria of thinking I had invented the wheel we were quite surprised to find out from son Christian of  Documentally fame that wool duvets were already being made but never the less he thought it was a good idea and he would certainly tell his friends on the internet about his crazy father’s idea… if we could actually make them. 

“Of course we can,” I said. Why did I ever open my big mouth?

So we naively decided that if someone else could make them abroad then we could find someone in the UK to make them for us and decided to give it a go. And that, readers, was yet another big under statement of my Baavet life!

There seems to be a pattern developing here.

Our first port of call was the British Wool Marketing Board’s wool depot where all the farmers of North Wales take their wool for grading, which is only 12 miles away from us. We met Merion, the manager who was extremely knowledgeable about wool in general, and wool grading and wool quality in particular and he really put us on the road of a long process of discovery. 

I will never forget him saying “Put your hand into the fleeces in that wool sack. Can you feel how warm it is?”

“Wow, yes it really is” I replied in astonishment.

“Well those sheep were shorn four days ago and it’s still warm now.”

I knew then we were possibly onto something really good and possibly something really big. 

Full of enthusiasm we formed a limited company and trademarked the name Baavet after buying some domain names.

Then, as everyone in business does, we looked at the competition closely, as in… we bought their wool duvets and took them apart. Some weren’t even 100% wool but had polyester inner linings to attach the wool to or had a polymer bonded into the wool to make the wool stable for manufacturing into the duvet. We should have realised then that making a wool duvet just wouldn’t be that easy.

Merion had put us into contact with the Wool Testing Authority which fortunately for us was only 20 miles away. They test all the wool that comes on the market for the whole Northern Hemisphere! Tim and his associates at the WTA did everything they could to help us. They tested the competitors wool so we had an exact profile of that wool some of it was supposed to be a merino wool mix, but tests showed there was very little Merino in it, hardly surprising really from what we know now about the different types of wool  but it was a decent quality wool mix with very little modulation and a good staple length.

The WTA then started to test local Welsh wools for us and they were able to give us profiles of these and other British wools to help us find a quality of wool to match our competitors and be the best type of wool suitable for duvets.

In the meantime while this was all going on we were on the hunt for someone to manufacture our Baavets. We contacted the British Wool Marketing Board. They were particularly helpful in giving us names of companies that might possibly help.

The list wasn’t very long, which is hardly surprising knowing the state of British manufacturing, but even we were shocked when we went in search of companies to card wool and then somehow quilt it into a duvet. We would arrive at huge mills only to find them semi derelict with someone just occupying a corner of the building that once proudly boasted being the best in the world or we would often arrive at a small back street and find a small building with quilting machines working away. 

Several companies offered to make our Baavets in China or Europe but that wasn’t the idea either although as time wore on I thought that that would be the only way we would ever make them. But Lesley was adamant not to go down that route and instead chose the very difficult road of still trying to make them in the UK.

Then we met David  and his son, also called David, who are both engineers, and who had a Mill producing manmade polyester foam for the bedding industry but they also had a wool carding line in Huddersfield. We got on well from the very first moment we met. They liked our Baavet idea and although they had no experience of quilting they were keen to be involved in carding our wool especially as they already carded wool for a Welsh company specialising in organic wool mattresses in South Wales. He also had a very experienced carding man, Roy, whom he had every confidence that he could card the wool into a very fine state which we would need for our Baavets. 

David and Roy inspecting a piece of quilting

We eventually found someone with quilting experience near Manchester, in fact he built quilting machines and he was prepared to try to move carded wool from David’s mill and quilt it for us in his own mill. We did actually make our first Baavets this way but the problems involved made it uneconomic and so he helped us to buy a quilting machine and set it up in David’s Mill.

But this was not a simple operation as David and his son have had to adapt their factory and carding line to take a quilting machine. 

Setting the quilting machine to run properly in a completely new environment has taken two quilting engineers plus David and his son and months of frustration as things have had to changed, new parts made, reworked, and tweaked time and time again to get over problems to set up what has become the first carding/quilting wool production line in the UK.

Steve the latest member of the Baavet team recruited to operate our HMS Baavet. (Well he looks like a captain on the bridge of his ship even if it is only a quilting machine.) 

At the same time as solving the quilting problem we also had to find a company that had the machinery and the expertise to individually make up the duvets. We actually found someone quite quickly and quite near to the carding mill and plans were made for them to make our second generation Baavets. But before that happened the company went into liquidation, another victim of the credit crunch and globalisation.

That’s when we decided to make them ourselves, in Wales. There then followed several months of finding the right industrial sewing machines for the job and getting training to use them and finding the right kind of premises to work in, as it couldn’t be done on the farm.

We have had to rely on the skills and experience of a whole group of people from pedigree sheep farmers to wool merchants, wool graders, scourers, and cotton merchants all coming together in the UK to make a quality product. 

Son Christian did put out the word of the Baavet to his friends out on the World Wide Web and as a result of that the Baavet sheepy icon was born thanks to Richard Mackney and his inspirational design. It was just what we wanted.

But the great thing is that all of the people and companies involved are small and often owner operated and somehow they how survived globalisation which has devastated so much of British industry, but only by the skin of their teeth. 

Believe me Baavets are made by people with true British grit. 

See.. 'How a Baavet is made'.

But we couldn't ever have got this far without the support of you, the general public who have told us from the start that they love our Baavets. When there was a way to make them better we have always been ready to listen and adapt. The support really has been overwhelming especially in those dark days when everything goes wrong. And we continue to listen and continue learn from the people that count and use our products, our customers. As a result, over the two years our product has got better and will continue to do so. 

It really has become more than just an idea, much more than just a duvet; it has become a very British Baavet.

A very nice Welsh lady called Haf (her name means summer) and Lesley at work in our industrial unit in Harlech making Baavets

And our latest product after 6 months in development… the Baavet hair piece (just to show we haven’t lost our sense of humour.) 

No its not … it’s our Pillows, but yes, it did take us 6 months of trialling different wool fillings before we put them on sale. http://www.baavet.co.uk/pillows.html#mini

And is everything ‘tickerty boo’ now, is everything running smoothly, you may ask, is the quilter now behaving itself?  Does anything ever run smoothly in manufacturing I ask myself? I don’t think so.

The adventure is far from over and there is more hard work and no doubt disappointment and heartache ahead.

But never mind because ‘this time next year Rodders, we will be millionaires’ ...or at the very least we'll still be trying to make the best natural bedding. We'd be happy with that.

Mark’s Big Adventure

It’s the stuff of all adventures great and small, a crazy idea, some tough times, against all the odds, pushing yourself to the limit and finally succeeding.

Mark by the way came on a mountain scrambling course as an absolute beginner at the ripe old age of 38. He took to the hills like a duck to water and hasn’t looked back. He has now had a wealth of experience trekking the hills and mountains of Snowdonia and probably has done more classic rock scrambles in North Wales than anyone else. He is an ardent ‘boulderer’ (and if you don’t know you will have to look it up) and goes to an indoor climbing wall 3 to 4 times a week. He moved up to Snowdonia 3 years ago to be closer to the mountains.

That’s the good news. I know he won’t mind me saying that over the last 4 years life has dealt him some terrible blows not all of his own making. I am sure he would say that his love of the mountains has probably saved his sanity. He is at present staying with us in Baavet land while he gets his everyday boring problems sorted out, you know like earning a crust and paying the bills.

He is one of our most ardent Baavet supporters.

Mark had been wanting to do the Rhinog Trail challenge for about 2 years, it’s not a well known mountain challenge, not like the Welsh Three Thousands, 14 peaks over 3000ft in 24 hours; or 3 peaks challenge of Ben Nevis, Scafell and Snowdon; or the Yorkshire 3 peaks of Penyghent, Whernside and Ingleborough, but it’s just as tough to complete the 22 miles and 7 peaks over some of the most demanding

terrain in Snowdonia.

Daylight fades on the mountains

We have done all 4 of the challenges mentioned above, several times, just for the personal challenge because that’s what these mountain challenges are all about, just you and the mountains and anything or everything they can throw at you.

When Lesley and I did the Rhinog trail we were in mist and rain all day, even though it was summer, and the same happened when we first attempted the Welsh Three Thousands where conditions were so bad we gave up three quarters of the way through.

But this was to be Marks’ personal challenge and as I said he had wanted to do it for some years. He had done different sections but never the whole thing in one hit. Then after some days of fine weather he suddenly said on Friday.

“I think am going to give the Rhinogs a go today” 

“It’s a bit late in the day”, I replied. 

“Yes, but if I go later in the day I can avoid the heat and bivi out along the way, and carry on early Saturday morning”

“That’s not a bad idea, in fact it’s a really great idea, but how about a night traverse of the mountains wouldn’t that be great, I bet no one has ever done that,” I said, always one for making a small plan into a bigger plan.

“Okay, lets do it”, Mark said.

“Hang on who said anything about we, this is your adventure I’ve done it twice already and anyway I can’t miss watching the Rugby World cup on Saturday. You get your stuff ready and I will drive you to the start.”

So I left Mark to pack his kit, bivi bag, stove, food and spare clothes while I went to Baavet HQ to check for orders as it was change over day in our self catering unit on the farm and Lesley was finishing off the cleaning.

Then I got to thinking, what a great little adventure this could be and I just wanted to be a part of it and give Mark some help along the way rather than just give him a lift to the start point.

I have really bad knees at the moment and I really did want to see the Rugby World Cup live Saturday morning so I thought I could at least start the route with him and see how my knees held up. There were several points along the route where I could escape down to the valley and be picked up if need be. And anyway Moss (our dog) would love any excuse to get into the hills even if it was in the dark.

I went back home and told Mark what I intended to do and he was happy for the company. It was 4 o’clock by now so I had to get my skates on pack a small rucksack with essentials and get moving.

Mark and Roger heading off in the Baavet ‘Bus’ for the Rhinogs

By the time I’d packed, we had driven to leave a car at the end of the route, grabbed some chips to fuel us through the evening and driven to the start point it was just after 6.30pm with daylight fading as we headed into the hills with 22 miles and 7 peaks in front of us.

We hoped to get to the first peak before it got dark which we did, topping out about 7.15pm. From here on we just used our head torches now and again until we were forced to use them all the time as the night darkened.

It was turning into a real adventure with a strong element of risk.  In this case route finding was a serious issue, combined with very difficult terrain of rocky plateaus deeply incised with narrow clefts covered in heather and bilberry, with a fair few steep cliffs thrown into the mix to heighten the seriousness of our trip.

Like all adventures great or small you should balance risk with experience (unless you are really stupid).

And all things considered we were doing quite well, so far so good; however we were acutely aware that there was much worse terrain to come and began to alter our plans with the idea of cutting short the night and biviing out before the most dangerous part of the route. But the change of plan also meant that if I stayed the night on the mountain I would miss the Rugby, and to be honest it was Marks great adventure and he really likes the loneliness of the mountains.

So while we were on the tops and I had phone reception, I phoned home for the Cavalry and asked Lesley to come and pick me up. It was 9.00pm by then and I still had some way to get down so I arranged for a pick up at the end of the valley at 10.30.pm

Meanwhile Mark and I headed down a Mountain gulley to a footpath cross roads; one way led down and off the mountains to a car, a good bed for the night and the telly in the morning; the other path stretched away across the mountains towards Rhinog Fawr.

For me it was the easy choice to go down; for Mark it was the choice of the difficult path into the unknown, with a night alone on the mountains, a first for him, and then a really gruelling day ahead to finish the mountain marathon. He didn’t know how things would go but he had no hesitation, he wanted to get on his way to find a bivi for the night next to a remote mountain lake. We said our goodbyes and I wished him well then as I watched him go, at first I could still see his torchlight heading over the hills, and I couldn’t help but envy him his choice of the difficult but the more adventurous way. I knew that if he completed the trek this would remain with him forever as one of the most memorable nights of his life. Then his torch light was gone and he was totally alone on the mountains while Moss and I started our descent.

His adventure continued the next day I phoned him often to get reports. He said he thought he had made the lake in the dark but when he woke in the morning he found he had slept on the edge of a precipice. As the day wore on he reported that the going was getting tougher especially as it was so hot. He breakfasted at the foot of Rhinog Fawr, and after summiting that he headed down to the valley bottom before a really steep climb took him to the summit of Rhinog Fach. He had dinner at Llyn Hywel a high mountain lake.  He was so tired he fell asleep for half an hour but then pressed on and up to Yr Llethr before heading down and across a mountain col to the final summit of Diffwys.

I heard from him there about 3pm. He changed from his boots to his trainers as the going would be moorland rather than rocky ridges and in theory it was now all downhill, apart from the uphills in between! We reckoned he had about 3 hours to go. At 5.00pm I phoned him, he was hot tired and had run out of water some time before and he wasn’t too sure of the way off. I did so it was then I decided to go up and meet him. I grabbed some water, some food and Moss and I jumped into the pickup and raced to Barmouth.

We parked up and did a forced march up the hill heading for a radio mast which I knew he would be able to see. We kept in touch by phone. I reached the mast just as I saw him appear over the horizon. He had made it but time was very critical, he had 20 minutes to go to do it in the 24 hour time limit.

He was positively sprinting down the hill.

Moss ran up to meet him and there he was very hot, very tired but a very, very happy man.

Moss greets the hero 

We slapped him on the back, gave him drinks and food and even managed a photo from a passerby to mark the occasion

Very well done Mark that was a tough 24 endurance, you did well and didn’t you have an adventure!

Mark’s chuffed and so am I for him.  See my wrist watch its 20 minutes past 6 with a 6.30 deadline

I have spoken about this before, life needs to be full of adventures and challenges not just up in the mountains but in our everyday lives, whether it’s in work or play.

Son (documentally) asked why we are still doing this after two years of nothing but problems and I had to remind him that Lesley and I have spent the last 2 years not only working on this Baavet project but we have put everything we have made out of the farm, our adventure business and our self catering business. We have put everything in and really, got nothing back yet. 

“So why” he said “are you doing it?”

Well we did it mainly for the challenge, the adventure; it seemed liked a great idea. But like all adventures there are risks and we are still taking those risks, and like Mark who must have thought more than once on his marathon ‘why the hell am I doing this’, that’s a question we’ve asked ourselves time and time again about the Baavet.  It’s been a massive strain all round and like Mark and I in the dark on the mountain we have had to change our plans. The Baavet adventure is far from over. There are still tough times ahead.

Mark on the other hand is already looking for his next challenge and already had his sights set on one as he sat by our campfire last night, feeling his aching limbs.

Live your Dreams