5°C, gales and heavy rain all-day.

Thirteen girls on Silver practice. I picked them up this morning and eventually started them off in Corwen, North Wales.

DofE 5.1; I’m taking 3 silver Practice groups to Corwen. Thus turned into a very late finish after compounded problems. The worst was Storm Hannah. We got off with a day of light rain, most of the storm blew out during the morning drive. However, it still sapped the morale of my groups who them went in circles in the woods after dropping down from the Moors. Group 2 was not heard of since the moor top, their radio had failed (I’m told it got wet), and there was no phone signal. By 8pm I was stressed looking for them in the bus while shepherding the other 2 groups into camp.

I should not have had 3 groups to manage but a member of staff dropped out and wasn’t replaced.

They needed some help at camp, one tent lacked pegs for example. At about 21.30, I got away for the 45′ drive back to the staff camp at Pistll Rheadr. See note later#.

5.2: Cadair Bronwyn; head up to the summit via Cadair Berwyn to man a checkpoint.. The storm has cleared with light winds and a cloud base about 1,000m above the tops. Even so, problems arose for group 1 early. One girl returned to the start feeling ill escorted by her team. Thus, team 1 ( who combined with G2) started again to arrive 4 hours late at the summit.

The prospect of another late finish loomed large. I redirected their route away from the 2 summits and refreshed their water supplies. The photo shows the spring I filtered from. An excellent spring I thought. Tasty water too.

To come off the hill, I escorted a walking casualty off the hill, their prime navigator as it happens. Good that they had other good navigators in the now merged team. They can’t travel as a 3 so I merged all three teams into one group of 8.

A colleague offered to drive over and see my group in, he could see how tired I was after that very late finish. I was worried about driving feeling like I did but was despirate to see them. Reluctantly, I agreed.

Apparently they didn’t arrive to camp until 8pm. We got in about 7pm along with another unwell group. That put me on the opposite side of the mountain from my own teams. Deeply unhappy about this, one of the ML guys knew about my 01.30 finish and could see how tired I was. He offered to go over to catch them, along with CH. Two MLs had to go in case a night search was necessary.

5.3: 9km to the finish on relatively low terrain, only 540m top.

#1: I’m going to camp nearby next time. This valley has no signal for any network and there is no landline or VHF reception. This troubles me profoundly. What if there was a first aid emergency in the night? We got away with this, but not again.