Waiting and but not waiting

Since I last wrote I have been busy. Mostly at work, where as an Emergency Care Practitioner working for the Out of Hours Service, I attempt, along with my colleagues to bridge the gap between day time General Practice, working through the nights and weekends to provide a Primary Care service to the good people of Norfolk.

But less of that. Everyone has to have a day job.

I had a constructive and encouraging conversation with a fellow adventurer. About to launch himself on a race from the UK to Istanbul, we plan to meet up at the end of the month to check each other out and to head out on the bikes for a few hours. Apparently that's what guys do best; doing. Communicating through play.

I wish him well. That kind of distance in 6 days is a tough call and will certainly set down a marker for me to live up to. There's nothing like a challenge and a goal to motivate though and it will be crucial for us to be at our fittest if we are serious about rowing the Atlantic Ocean in four years time.

I have a long way to go on that score having been lax since my cycle back in 2010. In the last 10 days I have managed three runs, two cycles and a swim and it feels really very good to be working toward something again.

The weekend before last I took on the Welsh 3000s and was sorely beaten, but not. The temperatures were in the high 20s throughout the weekend. Climbing Snowdon the evening before, it was 24 degrees at 10 at night and I felt comfortable in my decision to leave my sleeping bag behind.

The summit was littered with other cacooned walkers intent on the same goal. I hunkered down on the platform and endured a comfortable though surprisingly chilly night before rising at 04:30 to head off across Crib Goch.

The forescast was for a hot sultry day and with the suns rays reflecting off the rock, it was to be a scorcher that sapped your strength and sucked the fluid from you. I thought of the conditions in a small boat mid-atlantic and began to get an appreciation of just how much brackish water I would be drinking.

I carried very little with me beyond some food and about 4 litres of water and some sachets of fruit juice. The water was all gone by the time I was down on the road below Dinas Cromlech and its most famous route, Cenotaph Corner. I was reminded of books I had read of this unforgiving routes' first climbers and of the famous that had since followed in their footsteps on their way to the worlds most renowned summits.

 A youth hostel by the road housed an early bird who kindly filled my drained bottles and I headed off down the road to Nant Peris, (Old Llanberis,) and the foot of Elidir Fawr.

Half way down the hill I stopped to admire a beautiful male Siskin as it hunted for food on the wall beside the road.