Climbing!

12/4/2011 

Today was Archie’s Birthday, so Happy Birthday Archie, I hope you had a nice day.  

Today the first and only BIG thing we did was climb Ben Nevis, Ben means mountain in Scottish. We started climbing Ben Nevis at 10:20 and got back at 4:25 so it took us 6hrs and 5mins. 

When we started climbing it wasn’t that cold (probably because we were walking  up a hill at that point), the path was rocky and we weren’t on the mountain yet, we were on the hill next to it. The path was quite steep and there were lots of rock steps and big rocks just lying around. 

At 11:30 we reached the part of the hill that joined to the mountain and there was a big lake just of the path on the hill side. We then started to walk up the mountain but when we had been walking for about 10/20mins it started to snow! The snow was real snow, the type that looked like the cutout snowflakes and it was wet and windy to! 

When the snow died down we walked on, crossed a river, the path turned rocky like the beach and it got colder and windier. 

Further up the path was still little rocks (but they were smaller, more crushed) and we had reached the lightly snowed on part of the mountain. At this point of the trip I had my trackies, long-sleeved T-shirt, short-sleeved T-shirt, Jumper, wind/water proof jacket and my New Zealand ski gloves on (and I was still kinda cold). 

Then came the proper snow. We walked for about 40mins on snow and ice covered paths, then for another 45mins through just plain snow! The snow was deep, the path wasn’t clear and this was the steepest part of Ben Nevis but we kept walking till we got to the top. 

At the top there were two war memorials and a hut thing (that was packed). We were surrounded by clouds so, everything was white. Then the hail came, it was really weird hail, it was like the snowflakes we saw earlier but balled up. 

We then started to walk down Ben Nevis. Going down was colder, wetter, slipperier and felt a lot quicker but was only 40mins quicker. 

When we got down we were so tired that we decided to have McDonalds for lunch (we forgot to pack food), it’s the same around the world. We drove back to the campsite and then had Spaghetti for dinner, played a few rounds of Uno, a few rounds of 500 and then went to bed. 

13/4/2011 

Today we were sore. 

We first we drove to a cable car (I finished my book ‘Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl’, it had a sad ending) that went to the middle of a ski slope mountain. At the end of the line we got out and walked 13 meters up the mountain, looked at Ben Nevis properly and then went back down the cable car. 

Then we drove, on our way to Ayr (air), for our last night in Scotland. On the way we stopped at the side of a loch and had lunch (Tuna and Corn for Mum and Dad and Chocolate Hazelnut spread for Sam and I) then went on driving. 

When we got to Ayr we went for a walk around the town. We looked at all the shops we could before they all shut (the game shop and the sport shop for sam and dad) then went to look at the beach, it was an actual beach, with sand and all! There was also a sign that said, if you walk from one end of the beach to the other you will burn 110-180 calories. Sam and I then played on the beach side playground, I only went on the sitting flying fox. 

Then we had dinner at, as Sam called it, a fancy pub, the dessert was really good, it was a biscuit made into a cup, by heating it up so it is soft, with ice-cream and caramel sauce. The reason Sam said it was a fancy pub was that the bathrooms had loads of mirrors. 

14/4/2011 

Today we drove from Ayr to Coniston, in the Lakes District. The drive was sort of long and we crossed the English border again so we are now in England, again. 

When we got to the campsite we went for a walk. We had little booklet with five easy to follow walks around Coniston Water and we did the first walk backwards so we could get to the town at a reasonable time to have dinner. The walk was quite easy and it went through some of the sheep fields, in one of the fields we saw about 7 sheep jump over a wall from one field to another, it was really funny. 

The town of Coniston is not very big and is surrounded by fields or water, but we still managed to get lost on the way home.  

15/4/2011 

Today we spent in Conistion, we walked the same track that we walked yesterday into the town. We posted a postcard and got some money out then went to find the track up Old Man Coniston (it’s a BIG hill, it’s 200m off being a mountain). 

The first part of the track was through someone’s farm, there were lots of little lambs, they were so cute. Then it went on to a rocky kinda steep path along a river, this was nice and if it was summer the little pools in the river would have been very inviting, then it just looked cold. 

Then we went onto a muddy, rocky, not so kinda steep path along the side of a smaller hill next to Old Man Coniston. At this point we couldn’t see the top of the mountain because of all the cloud and fog up there. Sam was complaining at that point too. 

We got to a lake at just over half way up Old Man, the lake was named low water lake but it was not low, it was on the same level as the path at that point. There was lots of fog over the lake and you only just see the other side of the lake, it was pretty though. 

As we walked up it got foggier, cloudier and colder, the path also got rockier, steeper and muddier, now it was raining to. 

At the top we had lunch, it was eaten really quickly because it was freezing! I was eating my hazelnut spread sandwiches with my ski gloves on that was how cold it was. Then we remembered that at the top of Ben Nevis it was colder, snowing and hailing and we felt warmer (just a bit). 

We climbed Old Man Coniston for 3 things, number 1, because Mum said that if you are in the Lakes District and you don’t climb a big hill or a mountain you will have nothing to do. 2, for the fitness and 3, for the view, we got none of that because it was white, there was nothing to see until we got down to the fake top.