Martinis, mountaineering and more

Hey Chris, hope you've been having fun in Hawaii...

We've been having some fun and games over here this week (although I'm sure you've had much more sunshine). There was some football training on Thursday in which various people were taken down in a variety of interesting ways (I warn all of you to watch out for the Beserk Turk and Tom "Hitler" Roberts, they show no mercy). Sartre are keeping in good shape and are looking forward to their next match, which should be coming up in a couple of weeks.

The training on Thursday was followed by a wonderful party at the abode of Ms Lisa McKeown, which she had organised to take advantage of both the cocktail shaker that Conor had bought her for Christmas and the martini ingredients that Ezio, Tom, Dave and I bought her for a birthday. There was tasty guacamole from both Conor and the inimitable Chris Morris, lovely pasta from Lisa, a marvellous salad from Zoe and some jolly nice fruit salad from me. A spiffing time was had by all!

And so, to yesterday. Some drunken evening a few weeks ago it was suggested that we climb Ben Nevis and the day came yesterday. The expedition commenced when the intrepid explorers set off from Edinburgh in the car of Chris Morris early in the morning. The brave souls who were setting out to pit their wits against the mountain were myself, Chris Morris, Chris' brother Paul, Dave and Tom Roberts (who had offered his services as sherpa, having been raised by mountain goats on the slopes of the Ben, or something). After a very scenic drive to the foot of the mountain we were met by "Magic" Tom Davidson (also on sherpa-ing duty) and we set off. "It doesn't look that big" commented one of the party, at which point it was pointed out that it was actually the mountain behind the one he was looking at and the summit couldn't be seen since it was above cloud level.

The intrepid party continued up the hill, stopping frequently to let me catch up (being rather unfit, I wasn't very quick) and to eat sandwiches and dried banana poo (ask Dave). I was tempted to turn back after lunch but decided to continue on "for a little longer". We soon hit the cloud level which was good since it kept us cool and prevented us from seeing how horribly far from the summit we were. The pace wasn't very fast (due to me again) but we soldiered on, eventually reaching the snow line. At this point thinks were rather slippy and it was hard to see anything with the combination of snow and cloud but being the hardy souls we are we continued on to the summit. Having reached the top of the country's highest mountain some phone calls were made (there's surprisingly good reception up there) and we decided to come back down again.

The descent, although hard on the knees, was much nicer than the way up (in my opinion). Thanks to the aid of a staff which was acquired for me by Sherpa Tom Roberts, I managed not to plunge head first down the mountain at any point and quite enjoyed coming down. As we continued down the cloud was lifting and so we got some fantastic views that hadn't been visible on the way up and we even got some sunshine. As we approached the bottom Dave and Sherpa Tom Davidson got into a competition as to who would be first down and Dave ran the last bit, a pretty impressive feat for someone who's just climbed a mountain! At the bottom we had a bit of a paddle in the river to cool off our feet before heading into town for beer and food, a great way to end any expedition!

All in all, it was a great day even though parts of it were very hard. I am now making it my mission to get fitter and climb some more mountains!

Lottie x

PS The pictures of both the martini party and the mountain climbing are on my flickr page:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/ladycarlotta/sets