Errrrrr......is death an option?

So, when I started writing this blog the 'whys' were manifest. I was going to write it as some kind of creative outlet/outpouring/out something else. I was going to write it purely for me, and it didn't matter if no one else was reading it. It was a creative outlet in its own right. La la laaaaaaa.

Well, having been beavering away on it for a few weeks now I can attest that some of those motives might have got lost along the way. It turns out I have slightly slipped into caring about whether other people read it and what they might think of it. Which I suppose is only natural when you've sent the links to a couple of people and heard nothing back. Ho hum.

However, I stand by my initial motivation, which is that it's a good thing to do in and of itself, heck, Richard Herring has even managed to collate his entries together and make a book out of it, so there must be something in it.

So on I press, I'm not going to beat myself up about it but I am going to try and contribute to it as regularly as I can, maybe this will inevitably mean taking my laptop places when I'd rather travel without it, but then again maybe that's no bad thing. Or at least no terrible thing.

So, found myself up some Welsh mountains upon the weekend doing some walking. My brother and father insist on calling it climbing but it is walking really. I can tell the difference between the two quite easily. I enjoy walking. I don't enjoy climbing. I'm not anti-climbing, just to be clear, but rather sometimes I've been walking with a person who will go unnamed and it has kind of sort of turned into a climb. And then I haven't enjoyed it. So that's how I know.

Anyhoo. The weather was clement on the Saturday and we went up a reasonably big hill called Cadair Idris which stands at 2930 ft so not too shit. What we were rewarded for in weather the god's of fate then took back from us in the form of post-mountain beverage, which I'd be lying if I said I didn't spend a far too significant amount of the walk thinking about. We were impressed and in turn seduced by a leaflet some industrious soul had left on the windscreen of our parked and all parked cars in the car park at the base of the mountain advertising what to all intents and purposes was a perfectly serviceable hotel and hotel bar.

What the leaflet should have read however was:

LEAFLET:

I am a very lonely man with no one to talk to. I run a hotel bar that no one comes to visit, in fact you would be the first person to visit this year. Come and say hello, I'll be initially a bit weird and then, uninvited, I'll come and sit with you and talk utter shite about topics of varying levels of excitement from speed cameras in horse boxes, to don;t gt me started on the pay and display car parks to the quality of Welsh Roads as explained by the distribution of monies from the welsh assembly and the highways agency. Say goodbye to any hope you may have held of reminiscing and telling tales of your walking achievement. Say goodbye right now. Goodbye.

Of course, for this leaflet to properly get across the league of gentleman without the laughs bar it would need to be handwritten, maybe even in blood, but one feels that this is too much.

Handwritten though, definitely.

Maybe not even handwritten and then photocopied, maybe just each one handwritten in a Bic Biro that's pressed slightly too hard against the page.

As it happened of course there were no such clues in the leaflet, it was typed, and said normal things like "why not come for a drink at our hotel bar", so were duped.

We promptly left after one drink. Does anyone stay longer? Maybe some extraordinarily polite English people do that thing where to overcompensate for how boring it is they stay longer. We were out of there though.

This long ramble about the barman of doom with the slightly over sized shiny shirt hiding (so he thought) his barman's gut has meant I haven't' had time, as usual to tell of a much better story involving a climb, now this was a climb, or at the very least a climbing 'moment' I know because I wasn't enjoying it, in fact I was reasonably concerned for my own life and rightfully so.

Said climb happened a few winters ago one March Saturday I believe it was when my dad and I found ourselves shinning along a ridge of a mountain in the Lake District called Blencathra along a ridge known as Sharp Edge. All the clues are there Ladies and Gentleman, all the clues are there.

There was quite a bit of snow around and it was a beautiful sunny day but I had walking boots with gripless soles through too much wear and was slipping and sliding all over the show. We found ourselves at a very notorious spot at the end of the ridge before you ascend the summit where you have to climb, yes climb around a rock which overhangs to a 1000ft ish drop which I presume would kill you if you fell.

Anyhoo, long story short, we were perched on this precipice, with quite an experienced climber in front of us, I didn't really want to go on but in terms of survival shinning back down Sharp Edge wasn't top of my wish list either. The guy in front of us was talking out crampons from his rucksack and attaching them to his shoes and I suddenly had a very clear sinking feeling that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person and the wrong equipment.

Anyhoo. I had made an equipment faux-pas if such a thing exists.

An extra danger to add to the list was my father, god bless him, he's not dead or anything but god bless him anyway, who decided the 'safest' approach was to completely ignore any danger, show no fear and press on as if he's done this a thousand times. He was also doing that macho thing where he made it abundantly clear that if I did turn around and not do it I was being a pussy.

He was saying things like "we can turn around if you want" cue subtitles, if you're not man enough to handle this we can always wimp out. Just to be clear though. I am man enough to handle it.

So, with the help of the guy who knew what he was doing.