From the station we walked up the lane and turned right along the A493 a short way to join the Wales Coast Path (WCP) as it ascends a narrow lane southwards, the warm sunshine nicely balanced by a cool breeze at this level. At a cattle grid the WCP departs westwards at a fingerpost and we continued on the lane to the signed public footpath at Clawdd-du with pleasing views to Barmouth Bay. As indicated on the map there is no path on the ground but the walking is very easy on grass and arrives at a farm gate where several large bullocks showed keen interest in our approach: no problem today as we resolutely marched forwards wearing our shades and avoiding eye contact.

Here we joined the stony track heading eastwards into the wide expanse of the Afon Dyffryn valley.

The wide and very shallow valley is basically featureless grazing pasture, not at all scenic, its only virtue being solitude apart from a very occasional off-road cyclist, but it improves somewhat higher up as the hills close in to bring steeper slopes.

Then it happened: I caught my foot on an embedded stone and tripped. Normally I would have easily avoided a full fall, but my other foot caught another stone and I went down very hard, hitting the upper right side of my face onto a rock. Even with the pain and concussive effects, I knew right away the big problem was the upper rim of my eye socket, there was blood everywhere (to make it a lot worse I'm on anticoagulant therapy). The blood was running out of the wound before reverting to a drip.

I hurriedly tried to stem the flow by repeatedly applying pressure with a handkerchief while my wife assessed the damage and readied the first aid kit. The bridge and side of my nose were cut and a bit bloody but relatively superficial. The main worry was an evidently deep rough gash by the eyebrow that took the full force of the impact. When the bleeding eventually slowed down enough, we cleaned it up with antiseptic wipes and covered it with cotton wool and applied a plaster.

In many situations modern plasters are crap, in all but optimal cases they come off in no time: after 10 years on blood-thinners with countless minor incidents I understand these things!. To this end we always carry a roll of athletic tape that is extremely sticky and will not come off. We secured the plaster with two overlapping long strips of tape across the forehead, an arrangement that seemed to hold with no further leakage of blood for now.

After resting and recuperating a while, I still felt a little concussed with an intermittent twinge in my ribs but basically ok with no significant pain, though I began to feel the chill in the wind a lot more, an expected side effect of the shock - a fleece mid layer to the fore. The conditions were not as good as hoped and we did consider bailing out and returning to the start, but that would bring logistical issues and besides, Esgair Berfa was the only summit of the route and a new one: I would certainly never return this way and I was determined to bag the blighter now!.

Higher up the valley by some sheepfolds, the track is fully in Access Land and the restricting fence ends. Here we left the track and ascended the easy grassy slope parallel to an uphill fence directly to the unremarkable flat summit. There were good views to the Idris hills and some good pitching ground here, but we couldn't face coping with the tent in a weakened condition with the very gusty cold wind and we pressed on with the aim of finding a more sheltered pitch near the forest ahead.

At the high point of the track we diverted a short way towards the forest but the wind was still quite gusty with little shelter afforded by the topography. We decided to investigate the forest side of the fence to get closer to the trees but the terrain looked grim, either horrible tussocks or sloping, but the last candidate we tried right next to the conifers yielded a patch just big enough for the tent body with guy lines straggling the tussocky lumps. The trees stopped the wind so effectively it was almost dead calm and it turned out an excellent comfortable pitch.

By this time the blood from the wound had seeped through the makeshift dressing. We carefully removed it and applied a similar new one and this would hold until we we were back home.

At dawn the conditions seemed miserable and unlikely to improve significantly. I felt quite drained and neither of us could see much enjoyment in pursuing the original route, moreover we were keen to get this wound examined by a nurse. We quickly designed the shortest route to Barmouth: from the descending track on the flank of Braich Ddu, we followed a byway to a road head and descended a steep lane to the A493. A lane opposite leads to the Mawddach Trail around to Barmouth Bridge across the estuary into the town.