On Saturday's Mary is out at work until 1.00am and Lucy is at work all day. This means I have the morning alone, I have to entertain myself, find something to do which I will not view as a wasted opportunity when my time of solitude comes to an end. Over the last month I have begun to get into the habit of taking Mary and Lucy to work for 8.00am and then driving on to the gym for an hours workout. This I did this morning and managed to run on the treadmill for 50 mins; 10 minutes longer than I have run for over ten years at least. Throughout the rest of the day I have felt slightly tired but in a nice healthy sort of way. As the weather starts to improve I will take the bicycle out into the Dales for a morning's ride and I might even try and get to an indoor ski slope and take some ski lessons.
Last Wednesday Mary and I, fed up of not getting in our weekly walk in the Dales because of threatening weather forecasts which usually come to nothing, decided to ignore the threat of unsettled weather and head for a quick sprint up Pen Y Ghent, one of the Yorkshire Three Peaks. I said a quick sprint because I know we can get to the top in an hour and back down in 40 minutes. On the journey to the mountain we had one or two hail storms but they were very short lived as were the gentle hailstorms on our walk up to the summit of the mountain. However as we approached the ridge, just about 15 minutes of climbing below the summit, all hell broke loose and we had to take shelter behind a dry stone wall from what I have described as some of the worst weather I have ever encountered anywhere. The wind was far greater than gale force and the hail flowed over the wall like a river. We sheltered behind the wall thinking that something that ferocious would soon blow itself out, but it didn't. The wind was screaming and we knew we couldn't have climbed even the few hundred feet to the summit so after ten minutes we decided that we needed to try and get down and climbed the wall following the track back down. After having walked for about 200 metres the storm started to calm down and walking became easier. Over the last 30 years I have walked and climbed in all sorts of weather in Snowdonia and the Lakes and am fully aware of how quickly the weather can change, but I have never seen it change that quickly or ferociously with such dramatic effect.
Ironically, just before we started the climb we had been parked in the car park and next to us was a car with "Mountain Rescue" sticker on its windscreen. I asked the driver if they had many call outs this winter and we got talking. His parting comments were, "Take care up there, you don't want to be seeing me again too soon."
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