bewilderbrain

Surprise creatures in the dusk, spooky silhouettes, creaking trees and a possibly haunted mushroom…

Monday October 27th 2025
Walk start time: 15.35pm
Walk finish time: 16.49pm
Walk area: Mynydd Gelliwion
Miles walked: 3.9

It is T-minus 90 minutes till sundown. The impending dusk is creeping up the mountain like an embarrassed ghost.

Strange rustles in the undergrowth could be furry creatures preparing for bed, or they could be dark ghouls with the stolen souls of dead mushrooms.

Can I walk more than halfway up the mountain and back again, into and out of the darkening woods before the dusk catches my heels, and goblins come out? I’m not sure. But this is today’s walking challenge….

The clocks went back one day ago, and we enter a realm where for a walker, every second of daylight is precious. Sunset is scheduled for 16.59, and I am not able to start a walk today until 15.35.

There is a path….(There is always a path!) That I desperately want to discover the existence of or otherwise. Said path not being marked as an official right of way, but being shown on several maps nevertheless.

The problem with aforementioned path, is that it starts from over halfway up Gelliwion mountain, offering a possible alternative way down – but it is a fair stretch to get to that point, and an awful lot of walking uphill.

It’s not really a path to try and investigate with under 90 minutes of daylight. So needless to say, off I go.

As I start on the main mountain track, I am reminded of how long it actually is, and realise that I am going to have to try and quicken my pace.

My legs and my lungs both protest at my almost military assault of the first stretch of the track, but my brain overrides them. I have worked out that I need to get to the point where I think this elusive path might be by no later than 16.15, otherwise, I will run out of daylight to either follow the new path, or retrace my steps back down the mountain.

As I walk, the gravel path crunching briskly under my feet, as if egging me on, I catch a movement and bright flash of colour on the edge of the woods to one side. It is the notoriously shy and elusive jay, and it’s a pleasure to catch a glimpse.

Besides the jay, there isn’t another soul in sight. I peer into the looming stretches of evergreen forest on either side of the path, noticing that the deep gloom is already intensifying, revealing strange shapes and humps in the forest floor that are hard to identify.

Here and there, I spot paths into the depths of the woodland that I have never seen before -I am on the lookout for them now – my path antennae has been turned up to maximum.

As I approach the first dogleg in the main mountain path, there is a faint flash of white up ahead of me, and I am 90% sure I see a bunny’s bum disappearing into the understorey.

On the second leg of the path, I try and quicken my pace even more, it’s 9 minutes to 4, and I still haven’t reached the fork in the path that veers back on itself, steadily upwards, and into an older section of mixed deciduous woodland.

My feet join in with the complaining at this point, and I tell them that it will all be worth it if we can reveal the secret pathway.

Then I tell them that I shouldn’t really be seen in public talking to my feet.

I visited this section of the mountain in my recent autumn walk Forest life from the coal dust, but as I trudge along, I become eerily aware of my distance from civilisation, and the deepening grey sky.

I feel certain that someone has lengthened this bit of path. Which is frankly rude, especially when one is in a race against the clock.

Paths wending off to other side start to seem less inviting than they did previously, and in one, a short moss covered old man leans creepily, resting on a walking cane against a tumbledown wall, before resolving himself into a tree stump in the gloom.

Finally, I reach a section of woodland which I remember looking enchanted and magical in that last walk here, sunlight flooding through green onto dappled mossy forest floor.

Enchanted is not so much the adjective I would choose today I think. Foreboding, would be more accurate, with definite suggestions of portals to questionable realms within.

It is 16.14. One minute till my time to turn back deadline. With relief, I see the shape of the stone wall appearing ahead. I had forgotten how much this middle section of path ascended, and I am puffing with the effort as I go to investigate the wall.

As I approach, it feels like the light drops incrementally again, the wind suddenly rises, having apparently changed direction to due bloody freezing in the last five minutes, and tiny droplets of rain begin to pepper my face through the trees.

I follow what I can see now is a clear path from the woodland throughway, a track through the dead leaves beside the boundary, arriving at a tumbledown corner of the wall.

Crestfallen, I can see that what looks an electric fence has been laid alongside the wall, blocking what I had visualised as the entrypoint to the path, which is right at the corner of the wall, and should have headed away from the deep woodland out onto the open mountain and a stretch of farmland beyond.

I notice however, that there appears to be a path through the woods beyond this corner, and start to venture down it a short way.

It looks like it could be a real pathway, though there may be low lying trees blocking some of the way ahead. The view beyond and to the side is enticing though, I can smell the open land and air through the bank of trees, and have to force down the urge to plough onwards into the unknown. It is too much of a risk in the dying light.

Back at the corner of the wall, there is a discovery of mushrooms
(a collective noun I just made up) A discovery of mushrooms – sounds right somehow. Anyway, it is a little herd, or collective, just hanging out by the wall, doing mushroom stuff.

Once I tune my eyes into the gloom, you can notice them everywhere, sometimes bright and white sparking up from the russet leaves, at other times subtly inveigling themselves into the scene by subterfuge, clinging grey and clam-like to trees like secret watchers of the forest.

This is Bernard. Bernard hasn’t been feeling too well of late, as you can see. But he’s going to be okay, because he’s going to visit the discovery circle of wise woodland healing mushrooms tomorrow, and I’m sure they’ll sort him out.

I look at my watch, while I have been path venturing and mushroom bothering the minutes have ticked by to 16.19, and I am yet to start my descent.

I notice suddenly how much darker it has become around me, and somewhere, metres away in the darkest part of the woodland a branch or twig cracks, and something rustles in the gloom.

Feeling unnerved by the hour, and the dense mystery of the autumn woodland, and wondering if a werewolf might be the next nature find of the day, I start to, not to put too fine a point on it, hot-foot it back down the woodland path.

My pace now is truly impressive, and I soon pop out with some relief onto the main track.

At the first dog-leg, instead of following the full path, I take a woodland cut-through, which will take me through bracken covered mountainside to a lane at the back of Gelliwion road.

In my head, it’s a short cut, but I realise as I head into the bracken that I have forgotten it goes back steeply uphill.

The dusk views from the mountain are spectacular though, and as the skies mute to deeper grey, the autumn colours speckled about the mountain seem more defined than ever.

The last section of the path behind the top houses is flanked with soft leylandii, whose intense resiny pine scent mingles with wisps of wood-smoke in the early evening air.

Trickles of car headlights can now be seen wending down hills in the distance, people making their way home for the evening. An owl hoots from the woodland behind me, as if to remind me that night-time is taking over.

Now is the reign of the forest creatures, and I’m suddenly glad to be on the home stretch, and if I’m honest, off the mountain, much as I love the place.

There are autumn walks of classic beauty, colour and spectacle, like my last one, Season of mists and fellow bootiness, and then there are walks like this one, which are an altogether different adventure…

I feel I was, for a time, like Mole and Ratty, lost in the Wild Wood as the snow came in, and while I didn’t actually spot any goblins, the mystical sense of All Hallows Eve wound its way invisibly through the trees tonight.

My expedition in the dusk woods has me elated, but tired and hungry, and I am just about ready for tea and crumpets at badger’s house.

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