Or possibly a Four and then Two Of Them Again Raven Walk ... ? Anyhow, it doesn't really matter because we were up on the ridge south of Upper Wyche (whence we had headed north on our previous Malverns walk), ignoring the instructions I'd printed off that suggest you do the lower woodland section of the circular route first, in favour of seeing the sunrise ...
... if, that is, there was going to be one through all the cloud.
east over Worcestershire
north to Worcestershire Beacon
Oh but in all directions, it was beautiful.
south to Pinnacle Hill and beyond
west over Herefordshire to Wales
We'd crawled out of bed at 4am, pausing only for a cup of tea ...
... so breakfast should have been a priority but we just walked for a time, beguiled by the blue, autumnal light.
Perseverance Hill and Jubilee Hill were already behind us when we stopped on Pinnacle Hill, at the site of what is commonly described as two possible round barrows.
A drooling Ted, who'd spotted a young rabbit up ahead, had to make do with broken off bits of homemade quiche.
Sounds were magnified in the stillness. The ratchet of a cockerel, the mewling and puking of a buzzard, ravens and crows, the bleating of nearby sheep, a church clock somewhere below us striking seven ...
... and the yelp of a border collie who's just nuzzled an electrified fence, poor lad.
We were off again. Up ahead, British Camp - somewhere I'm itching to explore - had come into view, although we'd only get tantalising glimpses of it on this visit.
Looking back the way we came
Over Black Hill
At Wynds Point there was a view of somewhere I did plan to visit later that day, namely Little Malvern Priory, which was looking rather like a Tuscan campanile in the valley below.
We walked on as far as the road that cuts through the hills at this point, and then retraced our steps.
Past Wynds Point we took the path that leads down through the woods on the eastern side of the ridge, and soon reached Berington Quarry where we sat on the base of the winding drum and drank what passed for tea in our thermos.
What looked like a family group of four ravens flew overhead - one parent and possibly two youngsters, followed a little later by another adult, the two larger birds conversing with each other across the expanse of excavations.
From then it was 'simply' a matter of finding our way by reversing the instructions given on my downloaded walk.
'You slaaaaag - '
This involved much use of the word 'counter-intuitive' by the member of the party who wasn't a dog and wasn't in charge of the map.
Quick, the ring-wraiths are coming!
Two (more) ravens treated us to a fly-past.
Our next stopping point was Holy Well, the most important spring of many in the Malverns. It is the site, so they say, of remarkable historic cures and the present-day production of Holywell Malvern Spring Water.
A tiny visitor's cubicle told the story of how stalwart locals won the right to use the word Malvern on their bottles as part of their trade name, after Coca-Cola, which closed down production of Malvern Water and tried to sell the site for development into luxury flats, refused permission.
Onward. The route through the woods mentioned 'bench' and later 'green bench'. Actually, there were lots of benches and most of them were painted green.
So I checked we were on the right path by turning around to see the waymarks that were behind us ...
where the path has just split into three
where the path has already passed to the side of a prominent rocky outcrop
... and we found ourselves back where we started, with all the rest of the day ahead.
Up at 4am and off to Rhossili for the day as the sun rose in my side mirrors. We arrived at 6.45 am and, perhaps predictably, we had the whole place to ourselves, at least to start with.
My marriage was bookended by visits to this beach at the westernmost tip of Gower. The first visit, in 1985, was a literal washout. We arrived, couldn't see the sand for rain, had an ice cream and drove back to Cardiff.
The second visit, just four months before it ended, was positive for reasons that would sustain me during the hard times ahead, as I walked and walked with my friend, Jill.
We walked the high downs behind the beach. We climbed Worm's Head. We discussed the loneliness of motherhood, the difficulty of keeping a sense of self. I went home with a sequence of poems waiting to be written.
There was no climbing of Worm's Head today - for one thing the tide was coming in; for another, been there, done that, no need to do it again even if I still could (which I almost certainly can't). But I was there with my new life and it was beautiful.
Ted has spotted rabbits
As if to underline the turn in my fortunes, my attention was grabbed by two birds having a bit of a squabble, their yelps definitely corvine but slightly more musical than their cousins'.
Choughs!
We descended to the empty beach ...
... which was now emerging from the shadows.
First stop, the wreck of the Helvetia, a Norwegian barque which became stranded on the sands of Rhossili bay during a storm in 1887 - a story which has many parallels with that of the SS Nornen on Berrow sands in Somerset.
There were choughs there too: a parent bird, by the looks of it, and a couple of younglings. What a treat.
We were headed for Burry Holms, the tidal island three miles distant at the far end of the bay ...
... though it looked like it might take us a while to get there.
Up by the dunes there were herring gulls, kittiwakes, plovers and oystercatchers.
The lack of rain had coloured the island beautifully.
We'd planned to go out on it for a bit but the tide was further in than we'd expected and we would be in danger of getting cut off if we did.
We decided to explore the dunes instead.
Looking towards Burry Port and Laugharne
Ankle-high brambles indicate how harsh the climate is here. I especially loved the harebells and sea holly.
Discarded razor shells
Back at our starting point, the tide had reached the wreck of the Helvetia ...
... and it looked more like a prehistoric monster than ever.
The climb up the steep cliff path from the beach proved just about as much we could handle post walk and in hot August sun. We revived with a cold drink and a Magnum, and vowed to come back again before too long.
