Brass Monkeys in Glencoe

nickjenkins Wyświetlono: 376 razy 2003-11-20 14:45:17

Ocena:3.00 (23 głosów)

I have never been so cold, tired and wet in my life. It was great!

I have never been so cold, tired and wet in my life. It was great!

I flew up to my favourite corner of Scotland to undergo some "Winter Mountaineering" training. I use the word undergo because, although I volunteered, it was more like being subjected to an arctic assault course than a sunny holiday tramping around the hills.

I flew into Glasgow late on Friday afternoon, picked up my hire car and drove the three hours out to the Altshellach hotel in North Ballachulish. There I met the various course leaders and professional sadists that were to run my life over the next couple of days.

The general plan for each day was to arise at the crack of dawn (or as near to it as I could possibly bear), pack your 'sack' and make your way to the dining hall for a "full English" breakfast.

For the uninitiated, a full-English consists of eggs, bacon, sausages, beans, mushrooms, fried bread and, optionally, black pudding. More lipids than I normally consume in a month and utterly revolting at 7am but necessary to maintain consciousness throughout the day.

After breakfast you pick up your packed lunch and collect your sack, boots, water-proofs and other gear and struggle out to the bus.

The bus drives you out to the foot of a mountain whereupon you disembark and don whatever clothing the weather demands. The whole team then stumbles up hill on the "walk-in" until you reach a convenient "corrie" or the head of a valley between two peaks.

In the relative shelter of the hills you carry out various training exercises for the day, stopping for lunch and tea breaks as appropriate. Early afternoon then sees you abandoning the corrie and head up onto the tops of one or two hills to bag a summit or two before you retire for the day.

The first day was a perfect mountain day. Bright sunny skies, cold air (-5°C) and fresh powdery snow. We started off from the bus up into the Mamores behind Lochleven, a chain of munroes running up the north side of the loch.

It became quickly apparent we had two distinct groups in the party. We had the professional walking hard-cases at the front with the irrepressible Olly and we had the normal sane people (like me) at the back with the other two guides, Graham and Phil. After a quick water stop half way up we split off into three groups, four students to each instructor. The nutcases went striding off with Olly and the rest of us strolled up to about 600m at a more leisurely pace.

My team consisted of Lawrence , the six foot plus electrical engineering contractor and Territorial Army sergeant, Rachel the fire fighter from Cork, Paul the London copper, myself and Phil George our instructor.

Strona: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

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