new mountains

We’re back in Italy today but I’m trying to catch up on a few things I meant to post. Here’s the first…

While in the UK, I took some time off work and headed to Snowdonia in Wales for a week of mountaineering courses. The first was a weekend navigation course at Plas y Brenin, the National Mountain Centre in Capel Curig. Although isolated and tucked right into the national park, the centre was fantastically tooled up: good accommodation, indoor climbing wall, heated pool for kayak training, artificial snow slope, full on-site catering, bar, and tea and biscuits every afternoon at 4:30. The best bit was the gear store, where taciturn, long suffering quartermasters dispense everything a mountaineer could want. In their literature they recommend that you don’t buy a lot of new equipment just for a course; instead they encourage you to come and try theirs and see what works for you. I was very impressed. If I lived in this country I would be a Plas y Brenin addict.

After the navigation course I caught a ride a few miles down the road for five days of scrambling with Jagged Globe, who run their Snowdonia courses out of Cobdens Hotel. My original intention had been to spend a week at PYB doing their mountaineering skills course, but it was cancelled so navigation + scrambling was my cobbled-together solution. After the camaraderie of PYB, the Jagged Globe setup was a bit of a comedown. Rather than relaxing in the pub with crowds of fellow outdoorsy types, suddenly I found myself at a table by myself in the down-at-heel bar at Cobdens, staring into a pint of Guinness and wondering whether it was wiser to mind my own business or strike up a conversation with the freaky French barman. There was only one other person on the course (a woman, I guessed, as I’d been given a double room all to myself) but she hadn’t turned up.