'Young Walkers' scale Snowdon for St Michael's

‘Young Walkers’ scale Snowdon for St Michael’s

With a combined age of over 200 years, ‘Young Walkers’ Peter Jackson (73), his wife Pauline (72) and friend Cheryl (69) set themselves the challenge of climbing Snowdon to raise money for St Michael’s Hospice.

Peter, Cheryl and Pauline came into the Hospice to donate the £500 they’ve raised, and Peter told us how it went:

‘This all started with the three of us (like so many in lockdown) just needing to get out walking again. So, as we had climbed Snowdon and done other walks for charity in the past, we thought ‘let’s get out and do it again.’

Throughout lockdown we managed to get out as much as possible: on the Downs, Bringsty Common, The Abberleys and walks with the Bromyard Walking Group.

We set off early, catching the bus from Llanberis up to Pen y Pas to start our walk. We decided to go up the Miners Path as the weather was perfect, the sun was out and all was quiet and peaceful for the first couple of hours – until the youngsters started to pass us, walking, and running as they do.

Around 1pm we noticed that the clouds and mist were starting to come in over the peaks. We stopped for lunch at the start of the zig zag path that leads to the top and by now there was a continuous stream of people going up and down. Several people coming down said there was an hour-long queue to get to the top. Meanwhile the clouds and mist were well over the top and were coming lower down. At this point we were only around a ¼ of a mile from the top, but we decided for safety reasons we would start to make our way down. As it turned out, this was a wise decision as the conditions deteriorated very quickly and we didn’t see the peak again that day.

We headed back down on the Pyg Path which we found quite hard, even though it was shorter (that was my decision, so I did get a bit of stick) and after what seemed an age, we made it down safely and to our relief managed to catch the last bus back to our B&B for a bath and a drink – or was it a drink and a bath?!’