We arrived at our starting point, 360 metres above sea level. It was very windy and it was spitting. Immediately we all started to realise that when Mr Alderson said it would be cold, he meant it. Everyone put on their extra fleece and their waterproofs. Torin Preston had been given the responsibility of carrying a rope as an emergency precaution and Isobel Smith, another group member, had to carry an emergency tent. We started our trek by heading towards Elidir Fawr on a long, uphill meandering path. About 20 minutes into the walk Charlotte said she needed the toilet, however she knew there would be no toilets up in the mountain. We carried on until we got to a gate where we turned left to start off-road walking. As we looked at what was up ahead we were excited and apprehensive on the obstacles we may come across but eagerly we began our hike. Climbing a mountain was a lot harder than we all thought. It started to make us out of breath and our muscles started aching, but we didn’t stop because we were determined to complete this hike. We thought we could see the top but as the group members at the front got to the top they saw that we had another part to go. This part of the mountain was very steep and the path was just small stones and large boulders, which moved as you took a step. As we got higher the wind speed increased and we started to struggle to keep our balance.
Finally all eight members got to the top, all that was left was to climb over gigantic boulders that covered the summit of Elidir Fawr. This was the scariest part because we were surrounded by a cloud and the winds were extremely strong at some points. We were aiming to travel to a bowl shaped summit shelter where we could eat our lunch. Pure hunger gave us the energy to complete the challenging task. When we got to the bowl we were very proud that we had climbed 924 metres. It was too windy to eat our lunch up there so we got out the emergency tent and ate our lunch. When we finished we started to head back, but not the way we came. The decent down the mountain was tricky and many of us thought walking down was trickier than walking up as you had to control yourself so you didn’t fall. It took long time to get back to the centre as we had to walk all the way because we had no minibus. On our way down we saw some rare mountain goats also called feral goats. They were all sheltering in a small hut. Also we had to walk through a park which was full of poultry. Whilst we were walking through Torin was trying to get as close to a sheep as he could and charlotte struggled getting past the birds that were in the park as she was scared of them. We got back before one of the other groups so we could have a nice long shower and we prepared for dinner and had time to lounge about for a while.
By Torin Preston and Charlotte Williams