What’s happening? It’s Monday night right now and I, as of roughly three hours ago, now live in the Lake District. I spent Friday evening dining on the finest khao soi gai and then the rest of the weekend shovelling Haribos and whatever those cheese circle crackers are called (why can’t I fucking remember) down my throat with litres and litres of mountain water and electrolyte salts. The Three Peaks of Great Britain have officially been conquered. Took us something closer to thirty-odd hours than the twentyfour hours we told ourselves we’d do it in, but in our defence we (the guy who said hiking is “my shit”) got heatstroke and fainted off the side of the mountain at the thirty-five minute mark, according to the the official stopwatch we set to make sure we were up and down in sub-five hours. We did it in about six and a half and by that point we fucked off the twentyfour hour dream and I went to sleep in the boot of the minivan. I honestly can’t tell which moment of the weekend was my favourite. I’m gonna throw some honourable mentions out there to begin with: a three-hour poker game in the minivan up to Scotland (I am now hooked on poker and 888poker.com is waiting in another safari tab), steaming up Mount Snowdon with Ennio Morricone’s trumpets blasting on the JBL speaker and the B team lagging half the mountain behind, a good forty-five minute chunk walking down Scafell Pike with the lad who got injured on the first mountain and just chatting about life – one of those conversations. But honestly I think my favourite moment of the weekend came after two of us, Liam and I, had to help the lad who passed out with heatstroke and fell off the path and ended up alone after dropping him back off at the car park and ending up an hour behind the rest of the lads. We set off at a nice leisurely pace, freed from the tyranny of the birthday boy who wanted to hit the twentyfour hour goal, and had accepted the fact that the rest are gonna be marching back down from the summit way before we ever reach it and that we will probably have to join them on the way down instead of reaching the summit ourselves. I was happy with that – it was bloody hot and I wasn’t so fussed at the time about finishing the mountain or not, just happy to be strolling along with Liam. But then something changed. I think it was when we realised we were only an hour and a bit away from the peak, that it was – relatively – within arms reach. Then, ten minutes after this, the inevitable Whatsapp message came through with a video sent from the highest point in the UK. They had reached the top while we were still, apparently, an hour away. Something about this, and a phone call from Louis five minutes later joking we can probably make it to the peak if we just start running now, lit a fucking fire under my arse and suddenly we were marching. “An hour away I reckon mate” started to become “Ooh, I don’t know, maybe thirty, forty minutes” from the people we marched past and in fifteen minutes, 200 of the last 400 and odd metres from the summit had disappeared. Twenty-five minutes from the point where I first checked our altitude – when we passed a woman who threw a spanner into our calculations by telling us we were two hours out at least – we crossed paths with the boys. Now I don’t know if it felt good because they were surprised to see us so close behind, with 40 minutes of ground made up, or because Louis wasn’t surprised at all, like he knew all along which buttons to push to get us up that mountain. By this point, I had been dragging Liam along like a dog to get to that peak and when I saw the boys in the distance I steamed ahead and left him lagging a few minutes behind. So I don’t mind admitting that walking through ten gawping faces and a little dap up from each in disbelief, being told that the peak was five minutes away from here, was honestly one of the best feelings I have ever experienced. Maybe that’s boastful, but it was, to my memory, one of the proudest moments of my life, and the few minutes of indulgence in this pride before reaching the peak were minutes I will hopefully get to relive every time I gobble down a cheese string – my last resort to stave off a brutal cramp about thirty seconds from the top.
Anyway, a long kip ensued in some hostel after finishing Snowdon and the next day I grabbed all my stuff and drove back out to the Lake District – where I’ve found myself a little pub job and I now live. To me, this move follows naturally from doing a challenge like the three peaks, it’s just the next peak. Will try to keep the blog well updated on life around here in between my 11-hour bar shifts… goodbye.
Dr. Appletie's notes 