Now..anyone with an ounce of business sense could probably see that helping a national outdoor magazine with their fitness academy is great PR and is probably going to attract more customers and more money, right? Not so Bremex, who chose to suspend operations just days before they were due to provide the course for us in Capel Curig this weekend.
All was not lost, however. Into the breach stepped (and I almost feel there should be a fanfare and flashing lights here) Mal Creasey from MLTE and a band of men I can only describe as knights of the hills, or, as they’d probably prefer to be known, Mountain Leaders Steve, Barry and George. It was a top, top, top weekend, and better than my wildest dreams could have predicted.
Friday
After all those weeks of not knowing whether I was brave enough to even go to Wales or not, even I was suprised to find myself on the road to Wales on Friday afternoon. After five long hours of twisting Welsh roads and turning up at the wrong Youth Hostel, I found Claire and Tom from Trail, Sian, Emma and Mountain Leaders Steve and Barry in the hotel/pub down the road. It was very clear that Darren (the personal trainer from the Lake District trip) wasn’t coming, as the girls all had enormous plates of steak and chips in front of them!
I knew in advance that I was going to be paired up with Steve and I was reassured to find myself sat next to him and able to discuss the plans for the weekend. It was clear he wasn’t going to make me do anything I didn’t want to, but at the same time wanted me to get something out of the weekend. Apparently there were a number of routes that they’d worked out with Mal to cater for all our different needs and requests. After meeting Steve I was actually starting to look forward to the next day and it was really good to see the girls again, but sad that neither of the men could make it. Ah well – even more individual attention for us! 
Capel Curig Youth Hostel is basically the same as the one in Ambleside, but much noisier! At one point I was debating going out and joining in the conversation outside our room as it was clear I wasn’t going to get to sleep! Thankfully I’d managed to bag a bottom bunk so at least there was no climbing to be done before bed.
I don’t know if it was because we had dinner late, or if it was straight forward fear, but I felt really sick and didn’t sleep very well!
Saturday
Saturday morning arrived the same way that the first day of the last Trail trip to Loughrigg in the Lake District arrived – with a now familiar tune blasting out of Claire’s mobile. That tune will always remind me of Trail!
Still feeling sick, I managed to eat about half of my breakfast and some orange juice. We all gathered in the lounge of the youth hostel and waited for Mal and George, the other two leaders, to arrive. Everyone else seemed to be bouncing off the walls with excitement but, although I’d been reassured by meeting Steve the previous evening, I felt like I did when I was waiting to go in and have my wisdom teeth out. I just couldn’t get the memory of Loughrigg Hell out of my mind and desperately didn’t want that to happen again, or feel like that again.
Mal arrived and gave us a briefing about what to expect from the weekend, who they all were and what sort of gear we should have with us. He explained that there were going to be two routes for the day with the mountain leaders split between the two groups. One was Moel Siabod – described as a bit of a climb with some easy scrambling. The other route was one chosen with me in mind with plenty of navigation practice and options to choose from. Everyone else chose the more difficult route, which left me on my own with Steve. I was expecting that so it was ok – after all, they were all there to challenge themselves, not to go at my pace. Then Barry decided to come with us as well, so it was no longer one-to-one with a mountain leader, but two-to-one. How lucky I was, but also how terrified that I now had two experts to prove myself to and not fall apart!
It was a little bit of a drive to the place where we started our walk (conveniently the car park was part way up the hill we were headed to, so that was a good start in my eyes!) so we said goodbye to the others and set off. This is probably a good point to tell you how spectacular the weather was on Saturday – there had been a hard frost and it was still freezing, but as we drove away from the youth hostel the sun was pouring down onto Snowdon, which, incidentally, didn’t look so big or challenging from there!
We arrived and got the map out. Steve showed me how to spot paths, walls and contours so that I could see where we were going to go. How different this was to the Lake District trip where we weren’t told where we were going or how much further it was at any point! I also learned how to measure distances on the map with my compass and to try and estimate how long it would take to get to certain landmarks on the map like paths coming in from the right, hills and cairns. Later on Steve showed me how to find north, how to walk on a bearing and how to tell that I was walking the right way by taking bearings from objects like walls, paths and streams. Apparently they were impressed at how I picked all this up, but it seemed like common sense to me once someone had shown me how to do it. The challenge will be in remembering how to do it when I don’t have an expert with me!
Steve used to be a teacher and it definitely showed – everything about him was patient and reassuring. I imagine it would be impossible to panic with him around, even if you were hanging by your fingernails off some obscure ledge! Barry was full of banter and dodgy limericks, but seemed to have a real hold on how my mind worked and a sixth sense to tell when people were getting despondent (this wasn’t only apparent to me, he worked his magic on Sian later on in the pub too) They were a perfect combination for me, and, after hearing how George had also taken care of Sian when she’d struggled on her walk that day, I began to wonder if there had been a “being a really lovely person” module on the Mountain Leader training course – they’d clearly all pass that with flying colours.
Our walk started off with a bit of a steep climb (it probably isn’t to a normal person or someone like Steve or Barry but it felt steep to me) around the bottom of a hill and then a gently undulating (there’s that word that they tricked me with on Loughrigg!) meander round to a point between a number of hills from where you could see the climb up to Drum.
I started out walking at a normal pace, not wanting to embarrass myself in front of Steve and Barry, but they both kept telling me to slow down! Any slower, I thought, and I’ll be walking backwards! I was worried about them getting bored with having to do what to them must have been a walk in the park at such a slow pace when they could have been with the others on a more challenging hike, but they assured me this was not the case and they would genuinely get satisfaction from my enjoyment. Apparently you’re meant to still be able to hold conversation and walk at the same time, so there was lots of talking, and I learned lots about the area. Steve had a very sweet habit of saying we needed to slow down because he was getting puffed out, when it was clear he was only doing it for my benefit.
A strange thing happened. Normally, when I’m walking with Andy, and on the trip to Loughrigg Hell, I try and keep up with everyone and end up taking about ten paces and stopping, ten paces and stopping, ten paces and stopping. With Steve and Barry, the slower pace meant that I found a rhythm and just kept going and didn’t stop anything like as often. Ok it was slower, and people did over take us, but it was constant, and I got there. Occasionally we would reach the bottom of what looked like a challenging slope, and it was tempting to say that I didn’t think I could do it, but I just kept thinking to myself that these two highly trained people had given up the opportunity to do something they would enjoy more, to help me, and I had to try. And with my new found slow pace, I got there.
There were no tantrums (despite Barry’s plan to tell Claire there had been so that she would write it in the magazine – somehow I had managed to escape both Claire and Tom the photographer on my walk as they’d gone with the others) but there were tears at one point that I think I managed to hide from Steve and Barry. They weren’t tears of frustration or of pain though – they were brought about by the sheer niceness of the two men I was with. We had been walking for a couple of hours and had reached the point where you come around a bend and you can see the path going steeply upwards and across to the top of Drum. They had been gently broaching the subject of bagging a peak like Drum during the morning, and what an achievement that would be. Barry wanted Trail to be able to use the headline: “Sarah bangs Drum”! Now I could see the challenge ahead I wasn’t so sure so we stopped to have a look at it. Steve said he thought I could do it, and I asked if I had a choice. I just remember Barry bending down to look into my face (he is tall, I am not!) and telling me of course I had a choice. They really were giving me the chance to say that I didn’t think I could do it, and that they wouldn’t mind if that was what I wanted to do. I was so touched.
The rest, dear reader, as they say, is history. Sarah did indeed bang Drum! It was a long slog to the summit and I was just reaching the edge of my abilities with about 100 metres to go, so I was chuffed to have got there in time to have lunch and photos (to be added when Barry sends them to me) at the top. In stark contrast to the hot weather we had enjoyed all the way up, I was glad to have my fleece, gloves and hat in my pack to put on when we stopped. With the clear day the views were spectacular from the top – we could see the Lake District and Ireland!
I got the impression that Barry and Steve were originally angling to bag a few more peaks by coming down a different way, but I was pleased and proud with what I had achieved and we came down the same way we had gone up. I had my first experience of walking poles on the way down and they really did make a difference once I’d found a rhythm. Up until then I’d always viewed them as just another thing to carry, but after using them I found that my legs and knees didn’t ache half as much as they normally do when doing such things.
Later on I asked Barry how high I had climbed and he said: “about seven seventy”. I assumed this was feet, given a long running joke about the olden days, started accidentally by Claire in the pub on Friday night, and nearly fell on the floor when he said he actually meant metres. Shock hit again later still when I took my pedometer off and it was showing 21,500 steps for the day. I didn’t even know it went that high!
Considering I make my living through words, nothing I have written so far does justice to the sheer chest busting pride I felt in myself or the amount of admiration and gratitude I felt towards Steve and Barry after that walk. For the first time in my life I had climbed a hill with very little strife, in great company and had really, really enjoyed it. I had found a way to walk that works for me, and to top it all, I now understood how to use a map and compass. Barry sent Mal a text from the top and apparently he was very impressed that they had got me up there – praise indeed from someone who is apparently the god of mountain leader training in Britain.
I couldn’t have wished for any more out of that day, and I know I will remember it for the rest of my life as a truly terrific experience in which I beat more than a few personal demons and gained huge amounts of confidence. Later on in the pub we met a girl who had walked a particularly famous ridge on the Isle of Skye (I can’t remember what it’s called though!) and she said she couldn’t talk about it without crying through happiness for a while when she came back. Although my little Drum will never be a famous ridge, I really know how she felt!
Still buzzing from my achievement, I couldn’t wait to get back to the youth hostel and meet up with the others. I had climbed a proper peak – I finally felt like more of their equal instead of the rubbish person in the group! They had all enjoyed their day too, even Sian who had struggled but still managed to get to the top so had plenty to be proud of.
That evening we went to Pete’s Eats in Llanberris. Huge portions and full of outdoors people – it was lovely, although I couldn’t eat much, perhaps through excitement or through my body just not knowing what was going on after the exertions of the day. We were all tired, but buzzing too much from our experiences to want to sleep, so jumped at the opportunity to finish the evening in a nearby pub. The place was packed with people staying at the nearby BMC hut – I felt a bit of a fraud being in there to be honest, and had to keep reminding myself that I, too, had climbed a hill that day (albeit a tiny one that they would probably do before breakfast)!
We met one girl in the pub, Sarah, who knew Barry from mountain leader training. Sarah is not a skinny rake – she looks healthy and just like I would aim for. We were asking her how she got into mountaineering and climbing and she said she’d only been doing it three years and has been to all sorts of places like the Alps and all over Britain climbing and walking. She was so nice and really interested in what we were doing. Like Steve and Barry, she said she gets genuine enjoyment from seeing other people get into walking and climbing – another one who’s clearly done the ‘being a lovely person’ module on the ML training! Sarah was a bit of an inspiration to me – just a normal person who got into climbing and got good at it. She did invite us out with her and the club she belongs to. I don’t think I am quite up to that yet, but I think Emma will probably take up the invite.
I thought we were going to have to do some more walking when we left the pub and discovered that George’s car had run out of diesel, but Barry went to get some for him in his car while we all went back to the pub to wait in the warm! Back at the youth hostel we all gathered for tea and story swapping – there was a definite sense of not wanting the day to end as it had been such a good one, but end it did, and we were all glad to see our beds that night!
Sunday
I woke up on Sunday and immediately wanted to go back to sleep. I was exhausted, but quite amazed that I didn’t ache at all – it would seem slow and steady the day before was definitely the way to go.
I have to say that if one of the leaders had said to me: “We think you achieved more than enough yesterday, so if you want to go home today and not attempt anything else, that’s fine by us” I would have disappeared in a cloud of diesel smoke. I just wasn’t up for it on Sunday, and I was petrified that if I attempted something and fell flat on my face, it would take the shine off all my achievements on Drum and I would go home feeling demoralised again.
When I went to bed on Saturday night I thought I was attempting Cnicht on Sunday with Steve and Barry again, while the others were all going up the north ridge of Tryfan. To be honest I was a bit worried, as Sian had tried Cnicht on Friday and had to turn back when the scrambling got too much, and she’s braver than me!
By the time I woke up on Sunday, having confessed my worry about taking the shine off Drum to Barry sometime on Saturday night, plans had been adapted to suit all our needs (the beauty of the leaders we had knowing all there is to know about the hills in Wales and the abilities of the group). Emma and Jess were going up the north ridge of Tryfan with Mal, Sian was going a slightly easier route up the same hill with George to meet up with Mal’s group and I had the pleasure of the company of Barry and Steve again, heading to Lyn Ogwen, from where we could see Tryfan and meet up with the group later that afternoon to head home.
Steve and I set off in the car and Barry was going to catch us up later. From where we left the car it was a fairly steep climb up to the bottom of the route where Sian was going to leave us and go up Tryfan with George, but it was nothing I couldn’t handle as I put the slow and steady option into practice again. We practised navigation and left the path to walk around and over some contours until we came over a bump and could look down on Lyn Ogwen. I was stupidly proud of myself when I was able to put into practice the skills I had learnt on Saturday and tell the difference between two walls by taking a bearing from one of them and lining the compass up on the map.
The weather was beautiful and it was lovely to hear the crunch of frozen ground, puddles and boggy ground under foot. There was one hairy moment when the ice broke and I was up to my ankles in bog, (well, ok, maybe it was deliberate because it looked like fun!) but, all credit to my boots, my feet stayed cosy and dry.
The fresh air soon perked me up, and by the time we stopped for a drink on a comfortable rock I was wide awake and taking in the beautiful surroundings. Steve knew so much about the ground, the different types of heather and a whole range of things that I didn’t even know I didn’t know, that I was completely in awe. As we walked down to the lake, Barry caught us up and the fact that he didn’t even have a backpack with him told me that I’d been given the very easy option that day!
Later on we stopped at a large rock face where there were loads of climbers. It definitely looked like fun! Barry was convinced that I would be able to do rock climbing because I’d picked up map reading so quickly and apparently it’s all about logic, but I didn’t give it a go this time! I think there might be a small amount of strength and fitness involved there too!
The rest of the day was a simple plod round the lake and back to the car. We arrived back before 2pm and the others weren’t expected back for at least another hour. The weather was beautiful and the surroundings were stunning, but, to be honest, I felt a bit…. flat. I had had another brilliant day with Steve and Barry, and I know now that I’d done lots more navigation than the others, but I felt like I hadn’t pushed myself at all, and I wanted to get back that sense of achievement I’d felt on the Saturday.
While I was sitting on another rock with Steve, I kept looking at Tryfan, silhouetted like a big craggy monster against the sky. I could see the Canon on a particularly unfriendly looking ridge that looked like it would be almost all scrambling and I said to Steve: “I bet nobody would attempt to go up that way” and he said: “That’s the way the others have gone up today.” I felt my heart sink, to know that people who started from the same place as me had attempted something that looked so difficult, that I will probably never do. When the others did finally arrive back, they were all on massive highs, even Sian, who had met up with the others at the top and they’d all come down together. Whatever had been messing with her head on Saturday, she’d conquered it that day. I felt so pleased for them, but selfishly sad for myself too.
Maybe I should have done Cnicht, but I might have failed and felt even worse. I guess I’ll never know, and I know I just have to focus on the achievement of the Saturday, rather than the flatness of Sunday.
Driving home I kept smiling and singing to myself in the car, exhilarated after the weekend, and surprisingly still in no pain at all! A game of super extreme fuel light bingo on the A34 certainly kept the adrenaline flowing!
Overall it was a brilliant weekend, thanks to Mal, Steve, Barry and George. The only problem is, we need to take them on every Trail trip we do now, or it wont be the same! That’s the problem with things like this – people come into your life, make a huge impact, and then you never see them again. Fingers crossed that wont be the case with our mountain leaders (one last pic of Steve and Barry below!)
