The day began well. Lovely weather, a lovely, cheap ‘Greggs’ and 9 lovely kids looking forwards to walking for 4 hours straight.
What could possibly go wrong?
Veering off left, we strolled into ‘Tin-can Alley’. Our first stop on our tiresome journey made out to be harmless, until a wild ‘Caterpillar’ stopped us in our tracks as we saved the ‘Caterpillar’ from a harsh stepping on, after taking a quick photo of it.
As if a rogue caterpillar was not enough, we had a strange encounter with a herd of horses.
Further on in our trek, we discovered a rather large pile of rocks. Curiosity filled our small minds and we questioned our Pack Leader, Mary, on what these large piles of rocks were.
The ‘massive mountain of rocks’ are considered to provide good luck to the mountain hikers who add a rock to the pile. Whether this was true or not, we added rocks to the pile anyway just to be sure.
The rest of the way to the top was a tough scramble. We clambered up the crumbly shingle and if we didn’t watch our step we could have fallen – maybe the rocks were lucky considering we all returned safely; we arrived successfully at the top. The wind roared in our ears, half-deafening us, it was freezing compared to the blazing sunshine we’d had on the way up. The way back down took a more interesting route as we stumbled down the high peak to a lake… here we had a sit down and caught our breath. After that we continued on our tiring journey to the biggest challenge of them all.
Descending ‘Devil’s Kitchen’.
(WARNING TO READER: This is where most things go wrong).
The slippery slope was like a death slide into a pit of dangerous rocks. One wrong move could result in certain death – or a scratch – you never know… Next, we found ourselves sitting on a lovely wall.
It wasn’t so lovely actually, it really hurt to sit on to be honest because the rocks dug up into your legs. And that hurts. Trust me. By this ‘lovely’ wall was a quaint waterfall. A small waterfall that you could drink from. The water was extremely tasty, I, in my opinion, have never tasted water so fresh.
After drinking this refreshing, natural water to quench our thirst, we scaled the wall and dropped down onto the other side. Now, the real fun begins. We struggled to remain balanced as we stumbled down the rocky, wet steps. These steps are either very small and close together or very large and about 5 miles away from each other, so yes, very annoying. After several trips, we banded together to help each other. This was a very good idea, because this place is named ‘Devil’s Kitchen’ for a reason. So we all decided to help each other. Slightly further down some of us came across a dark cave. Some of the more brazen of us decided to explore this cave, however they didn’t find much. Afterwards we discovered a ‘falling’ rock. It took two of us to ‘hold it back up’-ish… After this the struggles were over and we steadily descended down to another lake where many of us decided to skim rocks across it. A record of 6 was created; but not broken… We walked on slightly further and our hike was over and although there were some scarier moments; we came back happy and safe (with a few added blisters).
By Amelie Kemp and Erin White
