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Climbing Ben Nevis with the missus |
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Climbed Ben Nevis at the weekend, a really hard four hours of slogging up the mountain only to be rewarded with the usual misted up top, a strange weird place the top almost flat with a sheer side that gives you the feeling of being on the edge even when you are well away from the cliffs. |
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The day started well, choosing the tourist path, I am in my forties, my good lady and I slowly danced from stone to stone up the steep path, to explain, conversion officers, who look after the mountain have rebuilt the path using, would can only be described as huge boulders, this requires the climber or walker to hop, skip and jump all the way to the top, rough for most people, should guarantee a good collection of bruised and broken angles by the end of the tourist season. To stop moaning, the sun was shinning, plenty food and water (chocolate cookies), up we went sweating and dripping all the way, the 'Boss' had a terrible problem with balancing on the aforementioned rocks all over the path, this really slowed us down to a crawling speed, about half an hour of climbing brought us to a wooden bench, so high up your legs dangled like a school kid, but the view was already starting to be breathtaking, right below us was lied out the Nevis glen.� The youth hostel directly the Nevis Inn, over to our right |
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Slowly as you ascend the vegetation changes from the lush ferns and birch trees on the lower slopes, to a ground scape more resembling Mars in some of Nasa?s photographs, all stones and rocks with just a suggestion of green moss scattered about, strange although this is it only goes to increase the special atmosphere of the place, so even on the overcrowded path you become aware of the solitude of the place. |
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About half way up you level off and get your first feeling of having climbed something, the loch over to your left, sitting as it does on a peat bog crawling with midges you admire from a distance only, looking at it, it's just an unimpressive small loch but against the huge backdrop offered by Ben Nevis it becomes special, we sat here high on the slopes of scotlands highest mountain and munched our chocy biscuits and drank our water, the sky was frightening blue with the sun beating down on us, the legs were fine, just the feet, I was wearing nice new light weight climbing boots, looked like trainers, |
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After the loch you pass a number of waterfalls none in them self very specticular, but they add variety you the climb as you continue to clamber over the collection of geological giants called a path. |
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To be continued |
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