#29 Climb to the Top of a Mountain

If the weather hadn't been quite so flipping cold and snowy the past few months I would have climbed a mountain recently. Honest! I used to be quite the walker. Did the Bronze Duke of Edinburgh's certificate and everything. I'm not a natural athlete. I was put off physical exertion at school when PE focused on sport and competition, rather than exercise, health and fitness. I would probably have been a lot more interested if we'd done cycling, yoga, aerobics, swimming etc - more individual pursuits, you know the kind of thing. So, that's all just my way of saying that I'm not really that fit, and blaming it on someone else.

Still, I love being outside in wide open spaces and enjoy the satisfaction of climbing a peak, and have climbed a few in my time. Recently a friend decided he wanted to scale the 3 major British mountains - Ben Nevis, Scafell Pike and Snowdon. I readily agreed to join him, unfortunately his timescale for doing this didn't fall into my timescale for doing my 'things to do' so I've trawled through the archives to recall the time the husband and I climbed Snowdon (which in Wales).



There are several routes and we chose the hardest one, the Watkin path. A lot of the first part was stepped which was ok to begin with but I soon got tired. And then freaked out a bit when we got to the last bit which is basically loose scree. My legs were shaking and every time I moved the mountain seemed to shift beneath me. It didn't help that a thick mist had descended and I couldn't see the summit anymore. To cut a long, and traumatic story short, I made it up, helped enormously by the husband's encouragement, and promptly burst into tears (I might be smiling, but I was also blubbing).



Check out how misty it was - no wonder I was scared!



I was proud to have made it, scared by how close I felt I had come to plunging to my death and vaguely bemused by the mass of tourist at the top who were wearing flipflops and t-shirts. It turns out a flipping train runs up the other side of the mountain! What a lot of hassle I could have saved myself....

But, the point is I did it. So, orange star for me and a reminder to do a bit training before the big 3...