Mountain Leader Day 4

Today you can imagine my horror when I woke to find this tiny creature gouging on my blood.

As a lot of you know a tiny creature just like this is what started my chronic pain journey almost 5 years ago. A tick this size can reek havoc in its hosts body. This morning I successfully removed it from my lower leg, praying that I caught it early enough and cleanly enough to have no further consequences. On the very first day the instructor told us that he has three friends who have contracted Lyme. One has had to give up his job because the bacteria got into his heart. Another is having treatment in Germany and another is slowly making progress in recovery. Being bitten by ticks is a very real and common occurrence amongst walkers. In reality it’s something everyone needs to understand because no one is exempt from being bitten so therefore no one is exempt from contracting Lyme. We were all told to check every day due to rummaging in fern and long grass.

Today we did a bit of micro navigation around Cloddfa Gwanas and Craig y Bwich The visibility was quite low which restricted our views for a large part of day but still offered us great views.

Our task today was to lead our group to each of the purple dots on the map. This consisted of tiny rock spurs, sheep folds and other tiny points in the landscape. Some of the points were just a kink or bend in the contours. We only walked 4.6km with an incline of 330m and we took just over 4hrs.

This was a challenging day, but a very rewarding one. It was an excellent way to improve on my navigational knowledge and I really valued the challenge. The great thing was that when we got it wrong it was ok because it was challenging and pushing our navigational skills really high. We learnt a huge amount from the mistakes and by the end of the day we had all successfully micro navigated to at least 2 tiny land features and a contour mark.

Finding a tiny ring contour and navigating to it confidently was a really satisfying task. Repeatedly locating myself on the map when another group member navigated to a point unknown to us was just amazing. As we grew in our ability to read the landscape we became more and more aware of our surroundings and the connection we have to the land. Yet another fantastic day in the mountains.

This evening we are packing ready for our expedition including a bit of night navigation. This holds so much excitement and anticipation. We will be heading up the mountains pitching our tents, watching the sun set then heading out to have a bit of navigational fun.

I will leave you with a laugh of the day. I got so into my navigation that I walked away from a rest break without my bag leaving it nicely laid beside a drystone wall. I was completely oblivious until I heard the other group calling us back. I even thought the bag they were holding up wasn’t mine.