This piece of work was for Charity Challenge, for whom I did a stack of work in 2015, who had been contracted by the mental health charity Mind. The participants were doing a 24-hour sponsored walk either from the north or from the south, converging on the morning of Sunday 3rd July at Chirk Castle -- I was part of the day-shift on the southbound route, looking after the participants for the first 12 hours.
The evening before I was put up in the Premier Inn in Wrexham, luxuriating in the deep and generously heated bath in my en-suite bathroom, easing out my leg muscles after the National Three Peaks Challenge earlier in the week.
Because of timing constraints, the southbound walk started at a nondescript layby about a mile north-east of Rhuallt instead of at the coast. From there we walked at a steady pace for the next twelve hours, passing through well-tended farm-land, pretty woodland, and open upland giving grand views back to Livepool Bay and to our right across the Clywedog valley.
The only incident was on the approach to Moel Famau, the highest point around for miles, when from a rainy squall which I had been watching creep on us for a good half hour or more there were two thunderclaps in quick sucession, which I and the other two Mountain Leaders on this section took as an urgent cue to get everone to lower ground: we went to the junction of footpaths about ½km west of the summit. For the first time, I deployed my storm shelter, and we took refuge in it, filling it with steamy warmth and staying out of the weather until the risk of lightning strike had passed.
At the crossing of the A494 the night crew joined us, and we walked along together to the pass between Moel Llanfair and Moel y Plâs, where we were taken off and taken back to Wrexham, and the particiants carried towards Chirk Castle and the distant dawn, with the night crew looking after them. I was tired and needed a bath and then bed, but how I yearned to be walking through the night with them!
The next morning I woke too late to be bussed to Chirk Castle, but I visited the dining hall where the participants were having their celebratory brunch, to congratulate and check up on the particiants whom I had looked after the day before.
Well done all the particiants, especially those whom I had looked after. Well done for toughing out a 24-hour walk -- it must have seemed like a right old slog in the dog hours before dawn. Well done for helping to de-stygmnatise mental illness and for raising funds for the valualble work of Mind. It was a priveledge working with you.
