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I spent this weekend all over the UK as part of a three peaks team raising money for Diabetes UK (donation link).

It was lots of fun. Right now I have a back injury (so no climbing or Judo at the moment) and was a little worried that my body wouldn’t hold out. As it happened I made it all the way up Ben Nevis and most of the way down before things (knees and ankles) started to go wrong. I had to miss Scarfell  but managed to get myself into a place that I could join the others on Snowdon.  Overall I was caught between surprise that I was doing so well and being annoyed that I was injured.

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Learned lots of things:

  • If you are using walking polls to protect your knees then you can get blisters on the palms of your hands. Life was made much better by using my thin gloves all the way up and down Snowdon.
  • Knowing the mountain is important. I’ve been up Snowdon several times before  so I could make an informed choice about how hard it would be compared to how by body felt. If it had been a different peak then I  would have found it a lot harder to make that call.
  • I was prepared for the fact that there would be no phone service on the peaks. I was less prepared for the fact that there would be no phone service *near* the peaks. Because of this I missed out on a bunch of things - not least of which was seeing my sister who lives near Snowdon.
  • Packing is hard. I packed well but still  forgot that I needed bags for dirty clothes, my Thermos, even more food than I expected, pillows for traveling and a half dozen other things.

We were incredibly lucky with the weather. Clear, cool, days with excellent visibility made for really good conditions. These were the views we were looking at. (I’d put up more photos, but I’m yet to get permission to share anyone else’s likenes,  so it’s just me for now. )

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