Today was our first day of doing a main, challenging activity.We started our day with a nice, filling English Breakfast and sorted into our groups of 9 or 10 and given our instructor (Anne). We were then told that we were going to climb a 747m tall mountain called Yr Aran.

We set out on our journey up the mountain, and after only a few hundred meters our legs began to ache but we stayed optimistic purely because of Josh’s joyful singing. All the way up the mountain our instructor Anne made us take it in turns to carry a rope around our shoulders (in case of an emergency) and then that person took the lead to set the pace. We then continued our journey past many streams and a lot of grass.

We walked past our first stream – out of the many we saw – and surprisingly Josh and Ben decided that they were extremely dehydrated and just had to attempt to lap up the whole stream as if they were camels in a desert! They soon realised that the water was freezing and got up from the ground and smiled with their blue lips. Although it was cold, they insisted that the water was nicer than tap water even though they had no idea what anyone could have done upstream.

After a long walk that was described by the instructor as  ‘a third’ of the way there, we stopped for one snack out of our lunch boxes . This one snack slowly turned into two or three but we were told by Anne to save some for the summit.

We walked and walked and walked and walked but we also took some stops for some people to catch up (Olly). We have nominated him for the tortoise award! Olly’s only motivation to reach the summit was Mr.Stavri’s bottle of water, he followed him like a donkey. Olly talking here, “It was because I was taking lots of wonderful photos”.

We finally reached the peak and ate the remainders of our lunches with a beautiful view of Snowdon. everyone’s legs were tired but it was only Holly who decided to actually take a nap on the mountain. We then began our descent which was many times faster than our climb.

By Katy Gray and Olly Ansell