In today's post - Tara John, Associate Mortgage & Protection Broker here at Fowler Smith, is our guest writer. This post discusses hers and the team's efforts a little earlier in the year, as they arranged to climb Mount Snowdon.
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There aren’t many reasons that every member of the team would be happy to be awake and on the road at 5:30am (they may or may not agree that they were happy to be awake and on the road) – but heading to Snowdonia at the end of a cold September is a great one if you ask me.
To anyone who knows me this isn’t a surprise, but to those who don’t, I love mountains. And I love sharing them with newbies even more. So when an idea was thrown out there in March to drive the 270 miles, hike for a number of hours, stay the night, and drive back the next day of course I jumped at the chance, and got working on getting as many people as possible involved (I may have also begun making plans to get a trail run in the next day).
With a good group of us planned we all began training so only illness or injury could stop us (both of which hit in the week before, meaning 4 of us went on the journey and showed up for the rest of the team). I gave advice on what to wear, how to train, and 6 months went by extremely quickly which brought us to the morning of the hike.
We met at the car park at around midday, and begun our journey. Mount Snowdon (Yr Wddfa) is the tallest mountain in England and Wales, and by no means an easy hike. The winding path feels like it goes on forever. Which is brilliant if you love the outdoors. I didn’t expect to come across any peril on the mountain, however we did gain an action hero.
When you’re outdoors you do have a tendency to get talking to anyone moving at a similar pace, and we had done exactly that with a family walking nearby to us. They had a lovely little dog who looked like he had joined our group. Until he saw a sheep. He bolted. This dog was significantly smaller than a sheep, and just like that he had disappeared. To anyone who has ever worked with Travis Legge in the past you will know he is an extremely nice person, and couldn’t resist helping to track the dog down. Travis ran back down the mountain, eventually helping the owners to get reunited with their dog. He somehow seemed less out of breath than everyone else after running back up the mountain. That was certainly humbling.
To anyone who has done Mt Snowdon (Yr Wyddfa) you’ll be familiar with the kind words of everyone on the way up. From about halfway up the mountain strangers will be giving words of encouragement. “Only 15 minutes left to go”. “It’s just round the corner”.
Something about a mountain makes people very comfortable lying. Eventually someone was telling the truth. It was only round the corner and it was only 15 minutes to go. We saw the queue for the summit and it all got very cold. All the layers went on and we waited to get the obligatory picture around the trig point. I can’t express how proud I was of Joanna Everett and Leah Barry, for whom this was not an ordinary Saturday for. Luckily the café was open and we all got coffees and hot chocolates. Whilst I’m sure they were hopeful the train would be running; they pushed through and did the hike back down.
I understand that not everyone shares my love of the outdoors – I was thrilled to take them on this experience, and I remain hopeful (despite what they have since told me) that this may have ignited a love for hiking that sticks with them for life.
Tara John
Associate Mortgage & Protection Broker
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