Cheer up came in the form of a visit from my partner & his daughter. Lizzie hadn't been up a mountain before so we decided this would be the weekend to give it shot. The forecast was for hot weather and sunshine so lots of drinks were packed. As it was so hot we decided to park the car at the highest up carpark to gain some altitude without the effort.
We headed off through a field of long grass admiring the butterflies and moths flying all around - it was a perfect summers day. Onwards we went, the jelly babies soon came out - the perfect antidote to tired legs! I took a quick rest stop to photograph the thistles in bloom with all the bees buzzing about. As the walk continued we had our first obstacle to tackle - ferns! Us adults take them for granted as they are above eye level but for a small kids they can be quite unpleasant! The jelly babies saved the day again, and us adults made sure we thwacked out the way what we could. We passed a fellow walker who saw us with the jelly babies, who told us how when he'd been walking with his kids when he was younger they would put jelly babies on the rocks to encourage the kids up the hills! We also passed quite a few trees en route and it was tricky to pursued Lizzie to cease climbing long enough to get up the hill!
We soon arrived at the bottom of the last climb, despite just being under the magic number to be classed as a mountain Sugarloaf looked pretty impressive from below. We detoured off to bag a geocache - over a pretty little stream (despite being up there on 3 other occasions I hadn't realised there was water so high on the mountain) I showed Lizzie how to cool off her wrists in the water and gave myself a good face splash to cool down. He headed slightly downstream and I got very excited as had found some really plump bilberries - first ones of the year so far - I was surprised to see them so early given the poor weather we'd had, I think the gully of the stream had given some shelter from the poor weather conditions, and they were down so far the sheep had missed them. Needless to say I scoffed loads - Lizzie tried a few but wasn't too keen so it was up to me to get stained purple hands and face! We had fun reading and signing the log then it was upwards and back onto our path.
Last section was a bit of a slog so we broke it up with some games and counting our paces and having little stops..
At the bottom of the last little bouldery section we noticed quite a few rocks had writing on them, this was one of them:
Lizzie who loves bouldering had to be persuaded not to take the hardest line up the mini rock scramble (it would have been impossible even for us adults) after much huffing and puffing she went up a slightly easier way and Steve joined her after getting stuck getting up the harder way (far too wet)
The next problem was where to stop for lunch to which a mini discussion ensued - Lizzie wanted to stop where we were, but there was another set of people having lunch there and us adults didn't want to intrude on their peace, but it's not something a cross and hungry 6 year old understands. Finally we got her to move on an we found and equally good rocky ledge. Order was soon restored, and it became a most excellent lunch spot as a shrew popped out to eat our crumbs - I wasn't quick enough to get a shot! We tried in vain to find the geocache we'd both found up there before but couldn't find it anywhere (looked it up when we got home to read it has gone missing, which explains why we couldn't find it - such a shame people have to ruin things for others).
Once lunch was done we headed to the trig point for photos, there was a huge charity group hogging the area which made photos tricky. I'm not overly bothered by groups so long as they take their rubbish home with them, but I wish once they were done on the top they'd move over and make a little room for others (that probably makes me sound like a grumpy so and so though!)
Skirrid in the background
Then it was downwards and onwards to St Mary Vale (we did a mini scramble over the summit rocks before heading down), a pretty little wooded valley. We reached the stream and the path became quite overgrown, it was still just about do-able though. We saw a frog which made Lizzie grin. Tired legs were kicking in, so we had to keep reiterating the promise of the nice river at the end. The path was quick muddy under foot which made it tricky for Lizzie in her hiking shoes.
We passed through a wooded area enroute and I entertained Lizzie by squeezing through tree hole and demonstrating my caving skill ;) Lucky I didn't get stuck! We also saw this rather lovely tree formation..
We finally reached the river and it was welcome relief - all out feet were aching!
Lizzie and I found a comfy spot in the middle of the river, Queen Lizzie!
Steve had fun building dams
We headed out of the valley past some houses then up some lanes to what was supposed to be our footpath back. We could not find it - google maps on the phone confirmed we were where we thought we were but the way on was through someone's driveway and they'd put up a big gate. We could see where we needed to be, so we gave up trying to follow the map , hopped over a barbed wire fence then over a few overgrown fields back to the car. Very frustrating not being able to find the right way on. Passing through the fields we admired all the butterflies which were being attracted by Lizzie's colourful hat.
We were all very pleased to get back to the car as we were tired and hot. Lizzie did very well on her first walk, and there will forever be a pack of jelly babies in my pocket when walking with kids!
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