Snowdon!

This was the perfect weekend away.....no traffic hold ups, great company, beautiful weather, a fantastic walk with amazing views!

Some time back, a few of our fundraising group decided it would be nice to take on a personal challenge, a step away from our community fundraising, and something different to Race for Life which we'd all done a few times.  So, we settled on Mount Snowdon, and after months of planning and training walks we set off for Wales on Friday 7th September.

After a little deliberation on the friday night, a look at the weather forecast and some advice from a friendly local, we decided to take the Pyg track up the mountain - "the most rugged and challenging of the 6 paths up Snowdon" - quote from Snowdonia park website, I'm not making it up ;-)

I still can't quite believe how lucky we were with the weather.....there's not much I can say about this hike so I'll let the photos speak for themselves.....

I would like to thank my lovely friends for making it a weekend I'll never forget, and also all the fantastic people who sponsored us - in particular the many people who sponsored me some of whom I've never even met and only know through twitter, I really appreciate the support.  Altogether the team raised over £1300, which is more than double our target!!

Nx

Scafell Pike....almost

This post is way overdue, and I was actually about to write about my latest adventure when I realised I hadn't written about my Scafell Pike trip....or as it turned out, my non-Scafell Pike trip!

So, having hiked up Ben Nevis last year, my aim this year was to try to do Scafell Pike and Snowdon - I would then have done all 3 of Britain's highest peaks, and would consider doing the 3 Peaks Challenge in the future.

My friend Helen convinced me to sign up to the Scafell Pike challenge for Marie Curie Cancer Care and after I convinced my friend Amanda to come along (in turn she convinced her friend, Donna) we were raring to go.  Now, you may remember June was a pretty wet month.....well, after being on the road up to the Lake District for about 6 hours, we got the message that the event had to be cancelled due to flooding at what was meant to be the start of the walk.

Disappointed, was not the word.  Amanda, Donna and I had meticulously planned time off work and childcare to take this trip - it's not something busy mums can just do at the drop of a hat, we weren't going to get the chance again any time soon.  We decided to make the best of the weekend and pressed on to our hostel.

After much discussion with the very friendly and helpful staff at the hostel, we decided against trying to do Scafell Pike without a guide - the weather was set to be extremely wet and windy and 3 birds on a mountain with no map-reading skills wouldn't have been wise!!  So we settled on Skiddaw instead.

Wet and windy doesn't really describe our day - on our way up, nearly everyone we met coming down said we wouldn't make it to the top, it was just too windy.  And they were right...visibility was poor, and when you have to crouch down on the ground for fear of being blown over, you know it's time to head back!  We weren't far from the top, another 100m or so and we'd have been there... very frustrating, but we were happy we'd made the decision to do something, even if it wasn't our intended challenge.

 We were delighted to receive our medals from Marie Curie even though we didn't do the planned event - we felt we'd deserved them :)

I would dearly love to return to the Lake District to explore more of its beauty - but in better weather!!Nx