I’ve spent the last two days with Vince doing a hill walking course, although this was far from normal. Vince originally contacted me back in September asking about potential dates for a 2 day hill walking course and we agreed on a mutually convenient time. Although I then advertised these dates, no one else expressed an interest – perhaps they knew something we didn’t at that stage! Certainly the snow and exceptionally cold temperatures for the time of year made it far from a typical couple of days and not always a particularly comfortable learning environment.
However, Vince was keen to push ahead having taken a couple of days off work, so we amended the usual plans a bit. Normally on these 2 day hill walking courses, I plan to spend the first day in a ‘hill’ environment and the second day in the ‘mountains’, to give a breadth of experience. However, the extensive snow and ice at higher altitudes made it an inappropriate environment to venture into on an introductory course.
Consequently, we spent the first day in the Shropshire Hills around Church Stretton and the Long Mynd. After a delayed start, due to slow moving traffic on slippery roads, we navigated our way around the very creepy feeling hillside in the snow and low cloud. As a general rule, we found snow lying on the grass, but ice had formed on rock and well trodden paths, so we kept off the popular areas. Towards the end of the day, we had an interesting period of time when the visibility was down to about 40m, the daylight was fading and our compasses no longer agreed with each other. As a result, it took us a little while to get our bearings and we got back to the cars a little later than expected.
Rather than heading for the mountains of Snowdonia on day two, we opted for the less exposed and demanding region of the Berwyns. With significantly better visibility, it was a great opportunity to practice orientating the map to features and continually checking progress as well as comparing the map to the ground (which don’t always match as well as you might think!). After a long day yesterday, we decided to make today a bit shorter in order to rest those aching limbs!
It’s not very often that I get the opportunity to work with someone on a one to one basis, and it was a treat to spend two consecutive days with Vince. I wish him well with his hopes to venture into the hills a little more often.
