Pen yr Helgi Du journey

DSCF0574Waking up, not knowing where we were going, we struggle to the dining room to have breakfast and meet up with the rest of our group, the Raindrops.
Once we were told where we were going, to Pen yr Helgi Du (Hill of the Black Hound), we packed our bags, hopped onto the minibus, put on some tunes and set off for the mountain.
After a roughly 35-minute journey, we started our 2 hour trip to the peak of Pen yr Helgi Du. Our first obstacle was a 1 ½ mile long road leading up to a track which zig-zagged up the mountain, and when we got a mile up we stopped to wait for a few people to catch up and have a little spot of lunch.
We set off again and stopped by a running stream to fill up our water bottles, then headed off road up the mountain.
After stopping once again half way up and forcing Frankie to leave his giant piece of slate that he was determined to take right to the top of the mountain and having another snack, we started moving up again. Those at the front of the group with Jez and Carl started to talk about old films and TV shows while scrambling up to the ridge while those at the back just tried to keep up with the rest of us. (Sorry guys..)
Another break later we started to scramble up to the peak, with the people who were at the back last time at the front and vice versa. With no energy for funny conversations we just kept pushing on up the rocks.
Once we had finally conquered Pen yr Helgi Du, we stopped to admire the views and our success.
As everyone else started to prepare for the descent, Carl and Erin got bored and stacked up a tower of rocks everyone had brought up to the top and then, when they made it fall over by trying to stack one big rock on top of all the little ones like idiots, we made our way back down.
Our descent consisted of us walking down a horse poo ridden field and avoiding lots of mud puddles, eventually we managed to make it back down to civilisation.
We got back onto the minibus, blasted some sick tunes and made our way back to the centre.

By Olivia Hands and Erin Marshall