Hurray hurray it’s a holi holiday,... at least that’s what
we thought.
Reliable Ryan Air brought us to Manchester on Friday morning
(tada tada tad tadaaaaa) where we were picked up by our guide and bus driver.
A 7 hour bus ride to Fort William lay ahead and as I sat
down and realised my legs didn’t really fit in front of me, for the first time
in my life I thought Ryan Air was luxury.
So we drove and drove, picked up the rest of our 13 man team
and arrived in Fort William on Friday evening. We stayed in a basic hotel but
very clean and had our evening briefing. A big glass of red wine and we were
tucked into bed by 10 with a 6am start ahead of us.
In the morning we were taken to the foot of Ben Nevis by our
Scottish taxi driver who put Darline in the wee little seat in the back. The
scenery is stunning, lush green, lakes absolutely beautiful. The weather was
holding out nice so we were excited about the hike ahead.
It was a glorious hike but it soon emerged that there were a
lot of I’s in our team. One person just sped up ahead like lightening leaving the
rest of us behind trying to catch up. Two brothers were at the back and unable
to keep up. We all reached the top though but where as we were supposed to
leave at 2pm the latest we still had to wait another hour for everyone to
arrive. During the hike my hair had taken on the shape of giant dreadlock!
The trip turned into chaos from that point on... I could
almost write a book about it but here’s a brief summary:
It seems the driver was only allowed to work 15 hours and
had a swap at 5am Sunday morning, giving us a deadline for Scaffel Pike to be
back on the bus at 2am Sunday morning. For every mountain we had our fixed
guide plus one extra local guide. Each guide could potentially take 8 people.
So we were told we may have to split in slow and fast group and the slow group
would just have to turn around at midnight. That means that for the slow group the
challenge would be over it also means that if 10 people could keep up with the
fast group it would not be possible either because that’s two too many. The
whole thing was surreal and put a lot of pressure on everyone one and kinda
dampened the atmosphere.
Well we set out on Scaffel pike desperately trying to stay
in the front when already one person had to go back down. The fixed guide went
back so low and behold there we were twelve people with a guide who, it
transpired half an hour into the hike, had left his radio in the car. We did
great and we all made it to the top well before midnight. Happy and elated we
started our descend and this is where it went wrong. Our guide didn’t take his
bearing and suddenly we were lost, in the middle of the night on the mountain
with a guide who seemed to be in a slight panic (no phone reception and no
radio remember!)
He ran across and managed to find a path, I can tell you
this was no path in my eyes but what choice did we have. After a bit more he
turned around and said he was truly sorry but we were about to embark on the
shittiest path of our lives ever. He wasn’t wrong there! We ended up in a
section called Lord’s rake, it’s extremely dangerous and not recommended at all
as it’s full of rubble and big rocks with a very steep descend and any rock
could trigger a slide. I was livid!
Darline was terrified and the guy behind her was actually crying from fear. To
do this at night, with one guide with no radio, I couldn’t believe it but we
had to get down. This is a section normally used to go up and only in the
daylight, not to go down in the pitch dark. In the mean time our fixed guide
himself was probably in a panic as he didn’t see us come down the normal path
and didn’t know where we were! Finally there was some phone signal so they
could coordinate. The result of all of it was another hour lost and we were
late for the driver swap that was supposed to happen two hours down the road.
I think the entire bus kinda dozed of at that point only to
be awoken after the swap of driver. I believe someone at the wheel thought he
was Nigel Manson on the formula one track and instantly everyone was strapping
on their seatbelts. The swap of drivers lost us another hour as wel,l as they
couldn’t find each other and so we had less time.
In the midst of it all it transpired someone still had to
book a train from Manchester to London and we all know the train system in
London so they booked the cheapest option at 5:35pm giving us again a deadline
to be back on the bus by two.
The weather in Snowdon was bad, rain and very windy but we
were making our way up quite steadily not far behind everyone else. The two brothers
again had to return after an hour and our guide caught up with me and Darline.
We were very close to the end, half an hour someone had said
we passed. We caught up with the rest of the group just before the last
sections and this is where our guide freaked out Darline saying: are you sure
you will make it back down to the bus on time because it is at least another
hour. Now you have to know Darline was not the slowest descending the last
mountain someone else had been much slower than her but the rest of the team
didn’t bother waiting for this discussion and quickly continued. By the time
the discussion was finished the team was gone and we were left with no choice
but to head back down. It transpired we were only 20 minutes from the top, I
spent an hour waiting in the bus for everyone, I was absolutely lived and still
am.
This was by far the worst trip ever. The guide was a nice guy but I’m sorry
we have higher standards than that. We missed our Shaun. None of this would
have happened with Shaun, he would have taken charge from the first moment,
would have set the pace in such a way that we would make the time limits and
stayed all together. He would have encouraged us, reminded us to eat and drink,
he would never have put Darline in such a position so close to the end. He
would have probably taken her back pack and said Lets’ go, we can do this.
We
should have said, screw it were going anyway, if he missed the train, tough
luck, but we’re too kind and considerate for that and there is no point thinking about it anymore as Darline would say: had mijn nonkel tetjes gehad, het was mijn tante geweest.
It’s a tough challenge but
it’s very doable and therefore we will do it again. NOT with an open team
anymore and certainly not with this organisation.
We enjoyed our nice hotel in Manchester and talked through
the weekend, we didn’t possibly think anything else could go wrong. But I
dropped my iphone in the toilet in Manchester airport and for about an hour
after landing in Charleroi we thought Darline had lost her car keys in the UK
somewhere.
In the end all that was left to do was have a good laugh, which we
did in the middle of the airport because it was all just too much!
Luckily I managed to get my giant dreadlock out of my hair
with a bottle of conditioner and luckily it takes more than this to get us down
so we’re already planning ahead!
and hey, we saw a rainbow on a mountain!
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