I know that you'll all have been waiting with bated breath * to hear whether I scaled a mountain and returned to face another day, or whether I wimped out like a big girl's blouse. Okay, so you aren't, you don't care in the slightest, honestly, is it so much to ask that you humour me slightly? Yes, right, well, I don't have anything else to talk about, so I'm going to bore you with the details of my trip to Wales anyway (the mountain to be climbed was Snowdon). Obviously I didn't die, or if I did someone is pretending to be me, but I'm not sure exactly how they'd gain from that.

We took three cars as far as my birthplace of Solihull, then we left my car at Dave's parents' house where I could collect it later, we needed it there so we could get back as Dave was planning on staying there after our trip.

Firstly, and probably most excitingly we did not camp as was planned, the plans changed again on Saturday and there was much rejoicing, well, there was from me, Pete would have liked to camp, "The Eagles" a luxury bunkhouse in Penmachno was not "well hard" enough, I think he'd have liked a nice ditch :-) but hey, he's in the army, I'm sure they have that all the time, so a bit of comfort for once shouldn't be too bad. It was very nice, Harriet and I had a twin room and the 3 boys had a room with bunks for 4 people, we were the only people staying. There was a bar and for an extra £5 we got a full breakfast. The breakfast was too much for us actually, none of us had the stomach for black pudding and most of us didn't like tomato. I probably shouldn't have eaten the fried bread, there's something about fried bread, it's just too greasy, I can't cope with it, we'll deal with that later. Oh and the breakfast contained a round thing which we don't know what it was, possibly meant to be haggis, but very small, kind of oaty or something, don't know, maybe they were baby haggis.

So, after a hearty breakfast we set off. We stopped to buy some sandwiches, and batteries for my little 2-way radio things, the batteries for the radios obviously, not the sandwiches, they'd just make a mess and not be very useful in making them work. We parked, quite high above sea level, which I'd say is cheating really, but it seems no one really climbs from the bottom, so who am I to argue? I don't mind. Anyway, we ascended via the Miner's track, the views were fabulous, we had heard on the weather that clouds would be very low meaning there'd be no view, but it was very clear, so that was good, it was quite hot though and after climbing not very high I began to feel rather hot and sick. It was after about an hour that I stopped, sat on a rock and said I felt sick, at this point the fried bread decided to make a reappearance, it was rather embarrassing, I threw up my entire breakfast, however, after that I felt loads better and was perfectly happy to climb the mountain then, yes it was tiring but I didn't feel at all ill, once I'd got that out of my system and had quite a bit of water to rehydrate myself.

Climbing the mountain was quite fun, we got to the top and the weather contrasted completely with what it had been like coming up, suddenly we were freezing cold and being blown around quite forcefully, monkey ** had to be held tight to his position on the summit so that I could take a photo, I would show you the photo, but I'm still living in the dark ages, so you'll have to wait for the film to develop, yes I know that's so 80s.

We ate our sandwiches behind the horifically ugly building that they've stuck on the top of the mountain, if you're going to build a cafe up there you could at least try not to make it an eye-sore, the cafe was closed and the railway didn't seem to be running, which was good as it meant the only people up on top had climbed, it was quite busy, but not too bad.

We came back down the pyg track, which seemed to be a lot longer than going up, which is odd, because coming down is a lot easier than going up, though I guess it's harder to keep your footing, if you want to know how I coped with going downhill, then close your eyes and picture a mountain goat, gaze in admiration as it leaps gracefully from rock to rock, never slipping or putting a foot out of place, my descent from the top of Snowdon was almost, but not quite entirely unlike that mountain goat.

So anyway, I got down, I think we took just over 3 hours to get up and I have no idea how long it took to get down, I'm trying to work it out, I think it was less than 2, but I don't really have any idea. I'm trying to remember what time we phoned Will's Grandma, it was half something, but I don't know what hour it was half past. Anyway, we left on our journey home, determined to bother some relatives, so the 5 of us invaded Will's Grandma's house in Llandudno (it was her birthday so Will wanted to give her flowers and a card), there we had tea and cake before departing back to Solihull where we invaded Dave's parents, where we were given a very nice dinner, fantastic. Then I drove my car back to Leicester, I didn't actually need my car in the end since Pete decided not to stay in Wales, his initial plan involved him staying in Wales and climbing a bit, so we would have to get a lift with Dave to his parents and then I'd drive us back to Leic, since Pete was with us his car would have been enough to get the 4 of us back, so we wouldn't have had to go back via Solihull and didn't need my car, however I was quite glad we did break up the journey anyway as it seemed a really long drive back, probably just with being cramped in the car when I had aching muscles anyway. Oddly I don't really ache today, I did all my aching yesterday evening. I got back to Leic just after 11 and was shattered. Then today I've driven to visit my parents in Cambridge, well Papworth, which isn't so exciting, basically just saw my Dad's new flat (he's bought a flat for living in during the week as he works there mostly and is only home at weekends, this'll save on hotel stays).

Anyway, right now I'm supposed to be next door in Pete's house as he's invited some of us round for dinner. So I'd better go, I didn't finish my excessive adding in of pointless links, I presume you noticed them :-) though sadly it seems to take ages to actually get a few relevent but pointless links in, but never mind. Bye.


* If you're thinking that's a spelling error you obviously haven't clicked the link for an explanation. back

** Daisy asked me for that link ages ago in Helen's blog comment thing, sorry I've taken so long to post it. back