Up the Pyg, down the Miners - Pt2 - the ascent

The stag weekend went well.

I will gloss over the Friday night, where we visited the local pub and met the locals. All I will say is that the local girls were terrifying, so much so that we let them beat us at darts just in case they got offended. "Let the Wookie win", as Dave said, quoting a scene from Star Wars, before realising that this itself wasn't the most complimentary thing he could have uttered.

I will only touch lightly on the local fish and chip shop, whose specialty was potatoes drenched in lukewarm fat (I would hesitate to use the word 'cooked'). This is worth an article in itself, so I'll leave this for another time. Suffice to say that I maintain that it was the Fish That Was To Blame for subsequent events.

And so Saturday dawned. We had a light breakfast (Sausages, bacon, black pudding, eggs, beans, tomatoes, toast - just the sort of thing after a Hard Night On The Town - Ok - village - OK, one pub and a chip shop). Preparing breakfast had the added advantage that the fire alarm went off, waking everyone (for some reason they had seen fit to put a smoke detector immediately above the stove, with obvious consequences). Finally there was the preparation for lunch (cheese, ham, bread, mars bars, no healthy fruit rubbish for us men)

And so we set off for Snowdon.

At this point I realised that something was wrong. I've walked up Snowdon many times in the past, and on every occasion there's been cloud. The rest of Britain might be baking in blazing hot sunshine and global warming but you can guarantee one thing; Snowdon will have a cloud hovering on the top. It's the sort of holiday destination for clouds. They go to Manchester for the shopping and Snowdon for the weekend (although those clouds not wanting to go foreen parts go to the Lake district and the clouds in Scotland never go on holiday - they just sit there and drizzle)

Not this day. It was bright, sunny and hot. We could have fried our breakfast on the rocks, and wouldn't have had to worry about the fire alarm.

So we set off. There had been a bit of debate about when to bring the doll out and blow her up, and we felt that doing this in front of the party of schoolkids that had disgorged from the bus with us would not be entirely appropriate, so we walked a little way up the path before pulling her out and revealing Andy's companion for his climb up Snowdon. We had planned on filling her with helium but eventually decided that she was probably too heavy to float and would most likely leak, so Dave and Ben took turns blowing her up; Dave, clearly out of practice, managed a few puffs before Ben, obviously highly proficient in this, finished her off. Aware that we should preserve some decency we dressed her in an oversize T shirt judiciously fastened with a safety pin, then strapped her to Andy's back. It was important to make this secure. We had visions of losing her over a cliff and the mountain rescue being called out to rescue this poor girl trapped on a ledge.

And off we went. We had been a bit concerned about how the other walkers would react. We needn't have bothered. In fact, we realised that we were doing a service to mankind. The nice old ladies who passed us shouted with glee; we had several requests for photos; we must have improved the sex education of a number of kids. "Daddy, what's that?", they would say. "Ask your mother", would come the reply. It was quite fun walking a few hundred yards behind Andy since by the time the people got to us they felt they were out of earshot and could comment. Three guys dressed in viking costume clearly felt that they'd been upstaged. The Americans felt that they had been confirmed in their opinion of the eccentric Englishmen; a few wondered about what would happen at the top (speculation on the Mile High Club was voiced). One kid asked "Why's he got a dolly on his back?"; "it's a punishment" Dad replied. We explained that it was a stag weekend. "That's what I meant" he said. We only got two lukewarm reactions. One from the father of the 5 year old boy who had been inquisitive enough to ask to hold the dolly "Come on son, we've got to go" was dad's hasty response. The other was from the Asian father out with his mother, wife and daughter, clearly disapproving on behalf of his family (His wife and daughter were killing themselves laughing when he wasn't looking).

And so the climb continued. I've climbed Snowdon before, but at this point I realised that something had changed. Quite clearly the mountain had grown. It had become taller and steeper. This is the only explanation for the puffing and wheezing that I was experiencing. It obviously had nothing to do with age, lard, or the 50lbs of wet weather gear I was hiking in my rucksack to deal with the inevitable rain, wind and snow. Jon pretended he had bad knees and shadowed me, making sure that I didn't drop dead with a heart attack. I borrowed a baseball cap off John (my woolly hat was a bit too hot) and then ran out of water. At last the top loomed into sight and the cloud descended. "That's more like it", I thought and as if to be bloody minded, the cloud lifted again, leaving a glorious view out towards the north east.

I arrived too late to be part of the group photo. This was taken at the top together with the blow up doll and several hundred people doing a double take and saying "what the hell's that?" (or in the case of small children "Daddy, why has that doll got her mouth open?"). I said several hundred people. It appears that most of Britain had realised that this was a once in a lifetime event to be up on Snowdon and be able to see the bottom, with the result that the top was a wee bit crowded. If they'd all jumped up and down a bit they could have flattened the mountain down to its normal size and made my life a bit easier. But they hadn't and I'd reached the top anyway. All I had to do now was reach the bottom.

But that's another story